Students and staff can shed face masks — if they want to — starting Monday, March 14, at Manteca Unified Schools.
That’s the first day classes will take place once the State of California lifts the mandatory mask requirement at midnight on March 11 leaving whether to require them up to individual school districts.
Manteca Unified Community Outreach Director Victoria Brunn said the district will definitely follow the state recommendation that masks can be optional on school campuses.
The change in state mask policies comes as positive COVID tests among the 27,000 plus Manteca Unified students and staff members dropped to less than 8 percent of the peak they were at a month ago. As of Friday, only 39 students and 6 staff members tested positive for COVID and were isolating at home.
The Manteca Unified trend reflects the community as a whole.
Over a three-day period ending Monday there were only 21 new COVID cases reported in Manteca, 11 in Lathrop and one in Ripon.
The fully vaccinated in Manteca is now at 76.7 percent of the targeted population with another 12.8 percent with one shot.
The fully vaccinated rate in Lathrop is at 93 percent while in Ripon it is at 67.6 percent.
Brunn added the school district will continue to follow any mandate the state puts in place regarding COVID-19.
The district also will continue to exceed state minimums regarding student health in dealing with the COIVID pandemic by using portable medical grade air purifiers in classrooms and utilizing upgrade air filtration systems employed in heating and air conditioning units.
The decision to go with the portable Carrtier OptiClean air scrubbing units that were designed for medical grade use was driven by a desire to build redundancy into the district’s COVID-19 safety protocols.
Health experts call for optimum conditions to minimize the risk of COVID-19 being spread in a typical 900-square-foot classroom that involve air being recirculated twice in an hour. The Carrier OptiClean units can be set to recirculate air six times per hour using HEPA filters that capture particles as small as .03 microns.
Large droplets fall but smaller respiratory droplets can remain airborne for 30 plus minutes before they are dispatched via ventilation or captured by an air purification system.
The $2.8 million investment will be used to combat other concerns well after the pandemic recedes.
Obvious applications are during flu and cold season. That is when absenteeism is at the high point due to how those two respiratory ailments spread easily. They also help lessen allergy issues.
But they also will be critical to help make classroom air stay as clean as possible on days of heavy smoke caused by wildfires and during heavy smog events.
Unlike a number of nearby districts that elected to close campuses when Central Valley air quality conditions significantly deteriorated during wildfires, Manteca Unified kept campuses open. That was due to two realties the community is dealing with — a high concentration of households where both parents are working and are also fairly long-distance commuters as well as the fact a large number of students depend on school lunches and even breakfasts.
New state guidance also makes face coverings strongly recommended rather than a requirement at most indoor places in California starting Tuesday and at schools on March 12, regardless of vaccination status. In Washington and Oregon, all the requirements will lift on March 12. In all three states, the decision of whether to follow the state guidance will now rest with school districts.
The milestone, two years in the making, comes as much of the country relaxes public health orders, including school mask mandates, in an effort to restore normalcy and boost economic recovery. The changes reflect a growing sense that the virus is not going away and Americans need to learn to live with it.
The announcements signal a turning point that is poignant in its timing, coming almost exactly two years after American cities began shutting down to prevent COVID-19's spread. California was the first state to announce a shutdown with stay-at-home orders in March 2020, followed soon after by other states.
Earlier this month, California became the first state to formally shift to an endemic approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom's announcement of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business shutdowns.
A handful of California school districts have already dropped mask mandates for students in recent weeks in open defiance of the state mandate. Meanwhile, a survey published last week by the UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies found that more than 60% of California parents still support wearing masks in schools.
