The Portola Valley School District will no longer require students and teachers to mask up indoors starting Monday, March 14, but many other Peninsula school officials are undecided if they’ll align with new state guidelines that make masks indoors optional, even as the San Mateo County Health Department said it plans to follow state guidance.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Monday, Feb. 28, that the requirement to wear a mask inside schools will be lifted at the end of the day on Friday, March 11, for the first time during the pandemic. The decision comes as COVID-19 case rates have fallen sharply in recent weeks and other states have announced an end to school mask mandates.
As of The Almanac’s Wednesday afternoon press deadline, the Sequoia Union High, Ravenswood, Menlo Park City, Las Lomitas and Woodside school districts were still mulling whether they’ll follow the state guidance.
Both the Ravenswood, Menlo Park and Woodside districts have said they’ll leave it up to their school boards to make a decision. In contrast, nearby Palo Alto Unified and Mountain View Los Altos Union High school districts plan to follow the state’s lead and drop indoor mask requirements on March 12, although masks will continue to be recommended in local classrooms.
The Portola Valley School District (PVSD) is an exception. Officials plan to strongly recommend wearing masks, but will not require it of students and staff starting March 14, according to a district email to families sent Monday.
“PVSD continues to move toward a true endemic state and is looking forward to classrooms and interpersonal interactions that help all students feel better connected and engaged,” said Superintendent Roberta Zarea in the email. “We will continue to take every step to preserve the health of our students and staff while keeping our community as safe and healthy as possible.”
The Menlo Park City School District (MPCSD) governing board plans to discuss the district’s mask mandate, based on county guidance, at a March 8 meeting, Superintendent Erik Burmeister told staff and families in a message on Feb. 27.
Earlier this month, the district lifted its outdoor mask mandate and officials noticed that about 40-50% of students are still choosing to mask up outside. We respect and appreciate their desire to do so, Burmeister said.
Sequoia district Superintendent Darnise Williams said that the administration and board of trustees have worked closely together on all decisions this school year, but didn’t go so far as to say she will leave the decision on indoor masking up to the board.
“We remain cautiously optimistic about the governor’s latest directive but are also quite aware of the fact that we have been here before,” she said.
Las Lomitas School District Superintendent Beth Polito said she anticipates the district will make an announcement either prior to, or during, its next regularly scheduled board meeting on March 9.
The Ravenswood City School District is working out whether it will drop the indoor mask mandate, according to a Tuesday, March 1, email to families.
Some hesitancy among teachers
John Davenport, president of Portola Valley Teachers Association and a teacher at Corte Madera School, said dropping the mandate “seems logical at this point in the pandemic.”
Jacqui Cebrian, a reading teacher at Oak Knoll School in Menlo Park and M-A parent, said she will likely err on the side of caution and see how things unfold before deciding to peel off her mask inside classrooms.
“I still wear it outside if I’m in spaces with lots of kids or going from classroom to classroom,” she said in an email, adding that she thinks it helps the kids who want or need to keep wearing a mask to see her wearing one sometimes.
“With testing so widespread every week, I also get to see if cases tick up and make a different choice then,” Cebrian said. “I started wearing my mask indoors this summer a little before we were told to because it just seemed like it was going to be necessary. I’ve trusted in the health guidance so far and I feel pretty good about continuing to do that.”
Others still have concerns. Sequoia District Teachers Association President Edith Salvatore said her district hasn’t shared student vaccination rates, so she doesn’t know the kind of risk teachers may face if indoor mask mandates are dropped.
During the fall semester, the district promised to collect data on student vaccination rates by September, but those survey results have not been reported. Staff vaccination rates, on the other hand, are known. For example, at Menlo-Atherton High School in Atherton, 92.5% of staff are fully vaccinated.
“I have not heard anything yet from the district about their plans, beyond their statement before our mid-winter break that they would follow county guidelines and ‘follow the science,'” she said in an email. The union met with the district on Monday afternoon, Feb. 28, and had discussion of the indoor mask mandate on the meeting agenda.
Why the mandate is dropping now
The state decided to drop the mask mandate in schools based on decreasing hospitalization and transmission rates, state Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly said during a Monday press conference. Cases are down 66% statewide over the last two weeks, he said.
“We said we would look at the data and we’re seeing really encouraging trends,” Ghaly said.
The same is true locally. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Santa Clara County has dropped to 351, down from over 5,000 at the height of the omicron surge in early January. Santa Clara County’s population is roughly 2 million.
In San Mateo County, cases have fallen 60% over the last two weeks, with an average of 163 cases per day as of Feb. 28, according to county data. Hospitalizations were also down 37% over the last two weeks. The county has roughly 760,000 residents.
Meyer said that she is happy conditions are improving and optimistic about the future, while adding that her district has been cautious throughout the pandemic.
“I’m pleased that this is signaling a shift to a transition away from many of the restrictions that we had previously,” Meyer said. “I also appreciate the county public health and state public health departments are using the data to drive that decision.”
At the same time that cases are dropping, Ghaly said vaccination rates among school-aged children in the state are still “too low.” In Santa Clara County, 72.7% of kids ages 5-17 have completed their initial vaccine series, compared to 93.9% of adults.
Rates among children in San Mateo County are lagging too. Some 63.5% of those ages 5 to 11 had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, as of Feb. 27, according to county data, lower than rates in other groups. This is still ahead of other parts of the state, such as Los Angeles County, which only has a 34.4% vaccine rate amongst 5- to 11-year-olds, as of Feb. 24.
Email Staff Writers Angela Swartz at aswartz@almanacnews.com and Zoe Morgan at zmorgan@paweekly.com.
