California last weekend dropped its mask mandate for schools, meaning that, starting Monday, students in most districts can choose whether to keep the face coverings on or rip them off. Despite the loosened rules, many Bay Area families have opted to remain cautious, at least for now.
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"We just don't know how this is going to go, so I just feel like taking the masks off is kind of rolling the dice," Romee Edwards, the mother of both a kindergartener and fifth grader in Richmond, told KCBS Radio.
"I think recently they were telling them that they could not take it off during recess," she said. "And my kids said they did not take their masks off."
California students have been masking up for over a year since they returned to in-person learning.
While the statewide school mask rules are switching from "required" to "strongly recommended," California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said individual districts can decide whether to follow state guidance.
"We know that there are many communities where vaccine levels are low and transmission rates are still high and we suspect there are some districts who will choose to continue to wear a mask," he said.
Thurmond said he doesn’t know exactly how many districts are following the new state guidance. In the Bay Area, Oakland Unified School District is keeping the mask mandate in place while San Francisco Unified School District is only allowing middle and high school students to go maskless.
"I know that many are welcoming that we can go without masks in schools, that means that many are doing a lot of great work," Thurmond said. "At the same time, I think there’s still reason for us to be cautious."
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