LOS ANGELES — The indoor masking requirement for students and staff will be lifted next Wednesday in the Los Angeles Unified School District, officials announced.
In reaching a deal, the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, dropped its demand that masks remain in place until a particular percentage of students and staff had been vaccinated against COVID-19. The union had originally asked for a 75% threshold, which would have been difficult to achieve at elementary campuses. County health officials recently estimated that 29% of children ages 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated.
The deal also includes a commitment to keep in place required weekly coronavirus testing for all staff and students, which costs about $5 million per week, through the end of the school year.
However, the union agreed to reevaluate the testing plan in mid-April and mid-May, according to the agreement.
“I strongly support ending the indoor mask requirement and am committed to continuing to uphold our science-based approach to COVID-19 safety and protocols,” Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said in a statement. “I want to personally thank our students, employees and families for their support and patience. We know some in our school communities and offices will continue to wear masks, while others may not. Please consider your situation and do what is best for you or your child. Now that this important issue is behind us, it is time to focus on each student’s full academic potential.”
The issue of how long to keep the mask mandate has been challenging, with parents on each side of the issue holding strong views. The vast majority of the county’s 80 school systems have either moved to optional masking or have a timetable for doing so.
While permitting optional masking, county health officials “strongly recommend” the continued use of masks in schools. They also said they fully support decisions made by individual school systems on whether to keep the requirement.
Carvalho had said that he’s ready to make the transition to optional masking, but the district had committed to negotiating with the teachers union.
Throughout the pandemic, the teachers union has pushed for safety protocols that have been among the strictest in the nation — and typically district leaders have agreed.
Defenders of that approach said it has kept schools safer during the pandemic, possibly preventing illness and death, and has avoided labor strife.
Critics have said the measures have sometimes resulted in more harm than benefit to students. They cite an online learning plan that required less live online instruction than other large California school systems, a more gradual reopening of campuses and, more recently, a mask mandate that remained in place longer than required by health officials.
It’s time to deal with “a pandemic of learning loss,” parent Gabbie Metheny wrote in a Friday email to district and union leaders, urging them to end the mask mandate.
“We may not have herd immunity, but we have an incredible amount of immunity as a community,” wrote Metheny, who has two children at Bushnell Way Elementary School in Montecito Heights. “We have vaccines, we have rapid antigen tests, we have CVS handing out antiviral pills to people who test positive.”
She added: “Parents can still send their children to school with masks, if they want! But it’s time to let parents and children make that choice for themselves.”
Evelyn Aleman, who has organized a group of Spanish-speaking Latino parents to put forward their views, saw the mask decision differently.
“Our parents were hoping that the mask mandate would remain in place until the end of the school year,” Aleman said. “It wasn’t much to ask, given the Latino community’s ongoing challenges with COVID. Although Latino children are 74% of L.A Unified’s student population, we believe that in changing its mandate, the district is trying to appease a much smaller, but louder, group of parent voices. In doing so, it’s putting at risk our community’s well-being.”
More than half of Los Angeles Unified teachers who responded to a union poll this week wanted to continue the indoor mask mandate.
The tally was 58% for keeping the requirement and 42% for ending it, according to an update the union sent to members Thursday morning.
The poll was conducted on March 13 and 14, and more than 18,500 union members participated. The union has more than 30,000 members, according to recent figures, and represents nurses, counselors and librarians as well as teachers.
