Ludington Area School District issued the following announcement on Feb 22.
At tonight's LASD Board of Education meeting, the board voted to modify the district mitigation plan stating that facemarks are now optional within all of the school buildings. The requirement to still wear masks on school buses is a federal mandate and is still in place.
The board based their decision to allow masks to be optional on several factors. These include that the number of student cases within the district has seen a sharp decline. For example, 19 students were required to be absent on February 17 due to having COVID or being a close contact with someone within their home. On January 21, that number of students was 112. The board also considered that MDHHS no longer recommends masks to be worn within schools, which was announced on February 16. The board considered how the Omicron variant has less severe symptoms, the number of COVID cases within Mason County is dropping, the number of hospitalizations due to COVID is dropping, and the wide availability of the COVID vaccine. Responding to the COVID pandemic has been a moving target. We appreciate everyone's understanding as we respond to the changing circumstances the best that we can.
The district will continue to have a test to stay option for students who are identified as close contacts. We appreciate the National Guard's assistance with this program. We will continue to evaluate this as well as our other protocols on a regular basis and will consider changing them as circumstances continue to change.
As always, thank you for your continued support of LASD!
Original source can be found here.
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