Blaine students and staff showed up to school without masks for the first time in two years March 14 as the Washington state indoor mask mandate was lifted March 12. While masks will be optional for K-12 grade students, Blaine school district superintendent Christopher Granger said social distancing measures will still be in place.
“We are not going to remove all the layers of mitigation at one time,” Granger said during a March 9 community Q&A.
Students will keep three feet of distance while in the classroom and six feet during lunch. Granger said he doesn’t want families to be overwhelmed by positive cases. The distancing measures will hopefully limit the spread and make contact tracing easier for district employees.
Students and staff are still welcome to wear mask in district facilities.
“We want any person who chooses to continue wearing a mask in our facilities to know that they will be welcome to do so,” Granger wrote in a community message. “Our building administrators have met with students and communicated the changes beginning [March 14].”
In the Q&A, Granger said lifting the mask requirement should be welcome progress, but he stressed that it was too early to remove all preventative measures.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” Granger said. “But the messaging has been the same from the beginning from the DOH that they don’t want to remove all the things – what they would call non-pharmaceutical interventions – that they’ve done for two years all at one time.”
Granger also told families in the Q&A to stay tuned because guidance from the Washington State Department of Health and CDC changes continually.
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