Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District were allowed to attend class without masks for the first time in more than a year on Wednesday, after staff and administrators in the second-largest U.S. school district reached a long-sought deal on the issue last week.
Masks are still strongly encouraged in classrooms, and students and staff will continue to be tested for the coronavirus weekly through the end of the school year, according to the agreement. But the lifting of one of the last large school district mask mandates in the country was another signal that leaders are trying to guide Americans back to some sense of normalcy.
“Now that this important issue is behind us, it is time to focus on each student’s full academic potential,” the district’s new superintendent, Alberto M. Carvalho, said in a statement.
California schools were shuttered longer than in many other states — which Gov. Gavin Newsom and other state leaders credited with saving lives, but which frustrated some parents and helped fuel an unsuccessful effort to oust the governor from office last year.
Throughout the pandemic, Los Angeles’s public schools have operated under particularly strict safety protocols negotiated by the district’s large, powerful teachers’ union.
Still, as case numbers have decreased and restrictions have been rapidly lifted across the United States, California and Los Angeles officials have rolled theirs back in recent weeks. A statewide school mask mandate was lifted on March 11, although individual districts could opt to keep their rules in place longer. In San Francisco, masks will no longer be required in all schools starting April 2.
On a sweltering Wednesday across the Los Angeles district, which covers more than 700 square miles, students, parents…
