LAUSD students required to wear better, surgical-level anti-COVID masks on campus, starting Monday

Los Angeles Unified School District students will no longer to able to wear fabric or other non-surgical type facemasks on campus, starting Monday, Jan. 24.

With the omicron variant-fueled coronavirus surge still a concern for many students and parents who may be reluctant to return to in-person learning, the nation’s second-largest school district has maintained a wide array of safety requirements for staff and students on campus. The protocols have evolved over the weeks, in response to changes in the outbreak that has gripped the community for nearly two years.

Medical-grade masks, such as N95 and other surgical-level protective face coverings, will be required for all students at LAUSD schools, the district posted on its website on Friday, Jan. 21.

An announcement was sent to school families and employees, a district spokesperson said. The mandate applies to all employees and students on campus, indoors and out.

The masks will be provided to students upon request, the posting said.

Students may apply for exemptions from the mask mandate, if a medical or mental condition exists that makes mask wearing impossible.

In other policy shifts posted Friday:

–Unvaccinated students  in modified quarantine can participate in before- and after-school activities, if they meet certain conditions.

–For some families in which a student who tests positive, siblings must quarantine for the entire time the positive case is contagious — and for at least five additional days.

The district reported that the student absentee rate on Friday was 25%, according to preliminary figures — an improvement over the roughly 33% absentee rate last week but still higher than normal. It’s unclear how many of the more than 103,000 students who were absent Friday were out because they were isolating or quarantining versus missing school simply because they’re still reluctant to return to in-person schooling amid this winter’s COVID-19 surge. It’s also possible that some students were out for non-COVID-related reasons.

On Friday, the seven-day test-positivity rate was 6.3% among the district’s staff and 9.1% among students. Ten days ago, on the first day of second semester, the test-positivity rates were 15% and 17% among staff and students, respectively.

The push toward wearing higher-grade masks is a nationwide trend and has also been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

U.S. health officials earlier this month encouraged more Americans to wear the kind of N95 or KN95 masks used by health-care workers to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Those kinds of masks are considered better at filtering the air. But they were in short supply previously, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials had said they should be prioritized for health care workers.