Indoor mask mandates potentially on the rise in California with Alameda county already implementing measures - LA county considering and Sacramento City Unified School District requiring students to wear masks starting Monday.
Sacramento City Unified has decided to return to mandatory indoor masking at all school sites beginning Monday in response to rising levels of COVID-19 transmission, less than two months after the K-12 school district ended its requirement. The district that houses nearly 40,000 students said it is reimposing the mandate after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention placed Sacramento County and a dozen other California counties in the high “community level” for COVID-19 danger on Thursday. The move means students, teachers and staff will once again be required to mask up next week and the following week, after which the district breaks for summer. 9n a message to parents and staff Thursday evening, the school district also encouraged masking on Friday. “Providing a soft start to our reinstated indoor masking requirement ... will allow time for our school sites and families to fully prepare for this change,” the district said in its announcement.
California ended the statewide mask requirement at K-12 campuses earlier in March, but Sacramento City Unified elected to keep its district-level mandate in place until its return from spring break on April 18. As of now, no other major K-12 districts in the region are planning a return to mandatory indoor masking, though many of them either end their academic year this week or next week, or have already adjourned for summer. Sacramento-area health offices have also not yet announced plans to return to countywide health orders, aside from Alameda County, which on Thursday announced a return to an indoor mask order, effective Friday.