PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The School District of Philadelphia’s mask requirement went back into effect on Monday. A few other districts in the suburbs are also mandating masks as COVID-19 cases are up.
In Philadelphia, the mask requirement applies to students and staffers. Students who take school buses or vans will also have to wear a mask while on board.
“As we’ve learned since the pandemic began, the coronavirus continues to evolve and so too will our response to it,” explained Superintendent William Hite, in a letter posted on the district’s website.
At Masterman School on Spring Garden Street, the vast majority of the students had a mask on, even while waiting outside for the doors to open.
Olyn who dropped off her 6th grader, is one of the parents who were supportive of bringing the requirement back.
“I felt like it should have never stopped anyway, because I knew there was more to it. So now they started it up again, there was a lot of children who had [COVID-19] in one class, and that was my daughter’s class,” she said.
The requirement is in place until further notice. There are about three weeks of school left, so it is not clear if the district will decide to leave the policy in place through that time.
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The district said it consulted with the city’s health department, which recommended the reimplementation of universal masking.
Still, even as COVID-19 cases have risen, the numbers are not as high as they were during the omicron-fueled surge in the winter. There has been an uptick in COVID hospitalizations, but they are far from the peaks that were experienced during previous surges.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also classified Philadelphia as having a “medium” level of community transmission. Federal health officials recommend widespread masking only when a county reaches a “high” level.
All of the suburban counties are at “high” levels of transmission, but officials are only recommending indoor masking, not making it a requirement. In Montgomery County each district can make its own decision. Cheltenham Township and Norristown Area School Districts have started to require masks. While the Lower Merion and Abington School Districts flipped from requiring them to strongly recommending them.