The Cobb County School District on Monday updated its COVID-19 health guidelines to make face masks optional starting June 7.
That’s the start of the district’s summer schedule, and a release issued Monday afternoon said the masks-optional policy will continue for students and employees for the 2021-22 academic year, which begins Aug. 2.
“Any individual wishing to continue wearing a mask while attending school and/or school events should feel free to do so,” the district said.
The district’s decision came after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control on Monday announced new guidelines saying that fully vaccinated people could go without masks both indoors and outdoors.
On May 13 Cobb schools dropped the mask mandate for vaccinated staff and students for the last two weeks of the 2020-21 school year, and also did not specify any proof of vaccination procedures.
“Fully vaccinated” status applies to individuals two weeks after they receive the second dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or two weeks after the sole dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The Cobb school district opened the 2020-21 school year online-only until October, then imposed a mask mandate for all students and staff on campuses, as well as for extracurricular activities, including outdoor sporting events.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020, the Cobb school district has reported a total of 5,224 cases of the virus among students and staff.
The weekly figures have been dropping sharply since the first of the year. For the week of Jan. 15, that total was 470, the highest for any week in the district.
During that time, three Cobb school teachers and classroom staffers died, including a paraprofessional at Sedalia Park Elementary School on the day of a Cobb Board of Education meeting.
Public commenters urged the district to go back to online-only classes and some admonished Superintendent Chris Ragsdale and board members David Chastain and David Banks of East Cobb for not wearing masks at meetings.
But the district did not change its hybrid learning options.
By the first of March, the weekly case count figures had dropped roughly in half. By late April, they were under 100 a week, and in the final week of the school year in late May a low of 44 new cases was reported.
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, one-third of all Georgians are considered fully vaccinated (7.368 million doses) against COVID-19.
In Cobb County, 35 percent are fully vaccinated (264K with second doses) and 42 percent haved received one dose (317K).
Some Cobb parents filed a lawsuit against the district for its mask mandate, saying it was negatively affecting the breathing of their children and was creating “separate but unequal” learning environments.
A federal judge in Atlanta rejected their request for a temporary restraining order for the rest of the 2020-21 school year, and last week the parents dropped the lawsuit after Ragsdale said he expected the coming school year to be masks-optional.
The district will offer virtual learning for students for the coming school year but has not indicated how many of them have chosen that option.
For the spring semester, nearly two-thirds of the district’s 107,000 students attended classes in person.
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