SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — Starting Monday, kids in the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) will have to wear masks again. The CDC says the county is in a high transmission zone; it's an announcement that comes just two months after the district lifted the mandate in April.
However for some, the change doesn't appear to a big one. Maringel Escamilla said her four younger siblings wore masks the past two months when it was not required.
“We prefer to have our masks on just to be safe whenever we’re around public, and we try to advise them to do that as well in school, even though we understand in certain classes like physical education it’s hard for them to be running around with masks on," she said.
SCUSD Superintendent Jorge Aguilar said the decision to reinstate the requirement was an obvious one when the CDC placed the county in the high community level category.
“We are following the science. We're following the data," he said. "This is a public health issue. We are part of a community.”
He said the case rate is now eight times higher than it was when the district lifted the mask mandate in April, but he knows this is a controversial topic.
“I know that there are strong sentiments about this issue in both directions, that is what I'm seeing and hearing in my email inbox," he said. "But again, I'm hopeful that this is a reminder to all of us that this is in the best interest of our community.”
Dr. Payal Kohli believes the reason behind the rise in cases is clear.
“This is almost exclusively the restrictions being lifted too early with the masking. We really should have waited for a much lower level of infection and maybe had a variant specific vaccine before we thought about universally lifting those restrictions,” Dr. Kohli said.
The school year for Sacramento City Unified ends for the summer on June 16, meaning it'll be roughly two more weeks of masking for students.
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