SAN DIEGO — Starting on today, staff, teachers and students at the San Diego Unified School District are required to wear masks indoors.
That affects everyone going to summer school and summer enrichment programs. It’s bringing up a lot of emotions and push-back from some in the community.
High COVID transmission
Parents rallied and protested the mask mandate outside the San Diego County Registrar of Voters.
The reason: today is the first day people can file to run for school boards, in other districts other than San Diego Unified.
SDUSD already has candidates set for the full election. But the parents and candidates protesting say making kids wear masks in schools again does more harm than good.
There’s no state or county mask mandate yet, but San Diego County is now in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s highest COVID transmission level because of the latest wave of cases and hospitalizations.
Los Angeles County is also now in the highest tier. Health leaders there say a mask mandate could be coming in the next two weeks.
San Diego Unified School Board Trustee Richard Barrera says that back in the Spring, the board approved recommendations from health experts at UCSD and Rady Children’s Hospital and others.
Here are the thresholds
- At the school level, if a school has three or more outbreaks over a 14-day period or if it has more than 5% of students and staff test positive, the district would reinstate the mask mandate for 2 or more weeks.
- At the district level, if the county moves into the highest risk tier, as it is now, the district reinstates the indoor mask mandate to stop the spread.
Barrera said, “When it rains you put an umbrella up and when it stops raining, you put the umbrella down and that is the analogy we are now using with COVID.” District leaders are hoping to keep teachers and students in class.
“What we saw with the Omnicron surge in January was high rates of students absence and staff absences and that’s obviously very disruptive,” said Barrera.
The race for school board
Sharon McKeeman represents the Let Them Choose group and filed to run for the Carlsbad Unified District 1 School Board.
McKeeman said the new mask mandates hurt kids already behind because of virtual learning and school closures during the pandemic. She said, “Masking has been proven to harm social, linguistic, and academic development. Masking children makes no difference in transmission rates and most kids have already had COVID and have strong immunity.
McKeeman and other parents at a rally today against indoor mask mandates said they’re now running for school board seats because districts are not listening to parents or students.
Becca Williams ran and advanced in the primary for SDUSD. She said, “Anyone who's been in a classroom with kindergarteners knows that the reality of cloth masking and kids- it doesn't work.”
There are two weeks left in the summer school program so the mask mandate will stay in effect for that.
The new SDUSD school year starts August 29. If San Diego County is still in the CDC’s highest tier then, the indoor mask mandate will apply at all school in San Diego Unified.
WATCH RELATED: Masks requirement at SDUSD, other districts starts Monday