Los Angeles school district to require students to wear ‘non-cloth masks with a nose wire’

Students in Los Angeles public schools will be required to wear “well-fitting, non-cloth masks with a nose-wire” and staff will be required to wear surgical-grade masks beginning Monday under the school district’s latest round of pandemic protocols.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Friday updated its coronavirus guidelines, which are posted on its website, to essentially ban cloth masks.

“Masking will be required at all times, indoors and outdoors. It is required that all students wear well-fitting, non-cloth masks with a nose wire. All employees are required to wear surgical grade masks or higher,” the updated guidance said.

District officials said the masks, which include N95s or other surgical-grade or higher-grade masks, would be available for students and staff upon request, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The new masking rules come amid the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, largely driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant.

LAUSD tweeted on Friday that there was a 6.3 percent seven-day positivity rate for staff and a 9.1 percent seven-day average positivity rate for students in the school district. About 75 percent of the district’s students were in classes on Friday, per the tweet.

Shannon Haber, a spokesperson for LAUSD, said in statement regarding the new mask requirements that the school district was “continuing to be diligent and agile in creating the safest learning environment,” according to the Times.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal indoor masking in schools from kindergarten to 12th Grade, but mask requirements vary for schools around the country.

Missouri’s attorney general on Tuesday said he would sue school districts over their mask requirements, while Virginia’s newly sworn-in Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, last weekend lifted a public school mask mandate in the state, allowing parents to make that decision for their children.