Prince George’s County in Maryland has indicated that students will wear masks until COVID “no longer exists,” according to the public school’s CEO Monica Goldson.
QUICK FACTS:
- WTOP reported that Goldson does not see an end to masks in the classroom anytime soon, as long as COVID remains a threat.
- “I have not been thinking about a maskless classroom,” Goldson said. “The only classroom I’ve been thinking about is one where teaching and learning takes places from the time the kids walk in until the time they leave.”
- While Prince George’s school district students are widely vaccinated and now testing weekly to attend in-person learning, Goldson has made her decision on masks clear, Fox News reported.
- “Today was the first day where students and parents were back in schools after utilizing their tests,” Goldson said Monday. “We had over 85,000 tests uploaded into our database and just a few students who tested positive. So as far as I’m concerned, that’s positive, because I never want those sick kids around other students and continue to infect them.”
MONICA GOLDSON ON WHEN MASKS WILL COME OFF IN THE CLASSROOM:
“The only off-ramp I want is the one where COVID no longer exists. I don’t think that that off-ramp will exist. I think this is how our life will be … and we’re showing that we’re adaptable and we can make whatever necessary changes so that we can keep our students learning and safe.”
BACKGROUND:
- Students in Prince George’s County Public Schools were scheduled to return to the classroom on January 18 before the district decided to return to virtual learning for the first two weeks of the month following the surge in the Omicron variant.
- Antigen rapid tests were given to students to take on Sunday, before kids returned back to school Monday morning.
- Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks also said she supports keeping the mask mandate in place for students, “The masks have been our best way of keeping all of us safe, and until and unless we hear otherwise from our health professionals, we’re going to continue to stay the course.”
- “We’ll see what the science says, and we’ll follow it, and if the science says at some point it is safe for us to remove the mask we’ll do that, but otherwise, we’re in no hurry to do anything that jeopardizes the health of our students,” Alsobrooks continued.
