While California K-12 students will still be required to wear masks once the state’s indoor mask mandate ends this week, one of the state’s top health officials said Monday that a decision on in-school mask requirements could be made by the end of the month.
State health officials plan to monitor COVID-19 metrics among school students in the next two weeks, with the expectation of formally announcing on Feb. 28 a date when students will no longer be required by the state to wear a mask at school.
State Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said in a media briefing Monday that individual counties and school districts will still be allowed to enforce their own mask requirements if they see fit.
Ghaly also said that if the state elects to lift its mask requirement for schools, it will be sometime in March at the earliest to allow schools and parents to prepare.
“It’s not a decision that’s happening the next day or the next couple of days, but certainly something that we will be sharing clearly and setting a timetable if we see the information that we hope and, frankly, expect to see,” Ghaly said.
Ghaly acknowledged the frustration some parents feel that the state has never lifted school masking requirements even as the state’s youngest students have become eligible for vaccination, but argued that the state has always taken a measured approach to lifting restrictions.
“Parents should not hear that we aren’t making a move,” he said. “We’re taking a little bit more time to consider the information, work with our partners across the state to make sure, when the move is made, that we are doing it successfully and with communities empowered to continue to be safe.”
Ghaly also noted that the state’s in-school safety measures like required masking for students and required vaccination for educators has led to far fewer school closures due to the virus.
California has 12 percent of the entire country’s K-12 public school students – the most of any state – but accounts for just 1 percent of school closures, he said.
As of Monday, the state’s COVID metrics have dropped precipitously from the records highs of the most recent surge in cases driven by the highly contagious omicron variant.
The state’s seven-day average test positivity rate has fallen from 22.9 percent to 6.2 percent while hospital admissions are down from 13,776 to 8,189.
Even with falling case data, however, Ghaly argued that state residents should be prepared for future surges and for the virus to remain unpredictable for the foreseeable future.
“I think for California and our future, it is about being ready and being prepared, learning from our experiences today and making sure Californians can feel confident in the tools that we’re putting together,” he said.
Child abuse. Unmask our kids.
Hey! State Health officials! Leave those kids alone!
99.997% survival rate for children 19 and under!
The jabbed teachers should be the ones to wear masks.
Herd immunity not this power grab garbage that has proven not to work…
End the Mask mandates. They do not work. The kids have been wearing since school started and there have been plenty of Covid cases since then. What is the difference between wearing and not wearing the mask. Nothing. If you are worried and don’t feel safe. Go ahead and wear a mask.
Why can’t democrats leave kids alone? Why they always gotta mess with kids?
Abolish teachers unions.
Also, these kids are going to be really angry when they get older and find out it was democrats who gave them mental health issues they will carry the rest of their lives.
If there’s one way to make someone never vote democrat in their life is to be their abuser and source of trauma. Great job democrats, really great forward thinking.
I will forever remind my kids that China was responsible for releasing Covid and the Dems were responsible for destroying our economy and sacrificing their education for political gain. I will never vote Democrat again because of what they did to my kids
Wish we could recall Ghouly … This is NOT based on science. How come most other states are not requiring the mask, or the vaccine mandate (except LA and DC) for that matter? Oh, because Ghastly and Nescum want to be ‘leading’ the nation … into the ground.
It is okay for the SuperBowl to be unmasked, but not our children.
It is okay to hang out in a bar, resturant without a mask, but not our children.
It is okay to do almost anything else without a mask, but not our children.
Well, when the teachers (or babysitters as some of them like to be called) strike, the children can take off their masks.
Not health, not science: Pure Politics.
Ghaly want to keep your job? Don’t cross Newsom.
Whoops, I meant to say that they’ll end the mask mandate for the VACCINATED so that kids who are vaxxed, don’t have to wear a mask.
End the vax mandates and then we can celebrate
I can’t stand the masks but at least it’s not an experimental gene therapy
Seriously, vax passports for senior all-nighters and proms. It’s completely insane and discriminatory.
If they held school at the Super Bowl masks would not be required for children or anyone else.
In March they’ll extend it until May 1 just in time for the kids to begin Summer vacation..
No.
No more anything.
We the people have spoken.
@ countrygirl … I’m thinking the same thing
Debunk this, and Stop calling it “Conspiracy theory”.
Any school which took the Filthy Covid money = Is required to mask. PERIOD.
Any word on whether Bart will drop its mask mandate?
Can’t wait to see these scum bags charged with the crimes they have and continue to purpotrate on children.
This is terrible! I feel so bad for these kids!
“Ghaly also said that if the state elects to lift its mask requirement for schools, it will be sometime in March at the earliest to allow schools and parents to prepare.”
Mark said IF the state elects to, not WHEN. And just what the heck type of preparation does one need to remove a mask?
These unlawful, unconstitutional mask mandates should have been ignored by all parents of school-aged children from the very start. Nothing more important than the health and well-being of YOUR children….not Newsom’s or Mark Ghaly’s children….YOURS.
This was my thought too. They’ll use the peer pressure in school to get kids to force their parents to get them vaxed so they can take off the mask.
Dems are psychotic child abusers.
Remember folks, two weeks to slow the curve…..
Governor Grease Ball meant two decades to slow the curve.
This is total BS. They should not be masked, there is no reason. There is more harm than good.
I would ask, “Why not lift the mask mandate now?”, but this was always about power and fear-porn, and never settled-science.
Translation: The decision to unmask kids in schools is 100% dependent on the ability to recover from negative press, bad polling numbers, and the public’s ability to be pacified like toddlers by the lifting of the general mask mandate. Not science. Not facts.
The only reasons for them to slow-walk this are: 1) to make it look like they are in control and following some rational data-responsive protocol; 2) because they know teachers unions will flip out.
Neither of these are good reasons, let alone adequate reasons to keep harming kids.
There is no data-based criterion for unmasking kids because there is no credible effectiveness estimate: so far as we know, masking kids doesn’t help at all. So you don’t need an off-ramp: you need the political courage and professional integrity to say: ” there is not and never was sufficient evidence to impose an intervention on kids like this, so we are stopping immediately.” You won’t hear anything like that from Ghaly.
“The head of the cancer center was asked when they would stop administering chemotherapy to patients who were revealed not to have cancer at all. He replied that the department needed to make a deliberate decision, wait until the data trends were confirmed, and give stakeholders time to adjust so that all could remain safe. “It’s about empowerment and coming together as Californians. That’s why we are moving, but at a deliberate pace, so that hopefully in the near future it will be safe to stop giving chemo to people without cancer.” At press time the director was heading off to a mask less, chemo-free party.”
It will be lifted soon enough. All these political A holes(politicians, school board members, etc) are toast! They know it and they are scrambling to find a way to get back in peoples good graces(which wont happen).