The School District of Philadelphia will require people to wear masks for 10 days after everyone returns from winter break.
From NBC Philadelphia:
The School District of Philadelphia announced Wednesday that starting Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, students and staff once again must wear face masks in classrooms, citing potential exposure to COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses over the holiday break. Face masks will be required through the second week of the new year.”In an effort to be proactive in supporting healthy environments and maintaining in-person learning following students and staff returning from winter break, the District will implement mandatory masking from January 3 through January 13, 2023,” the district said in a news release.The district’s COVID-19 Protocols left open the possibility of requiring masking out of holiday breaks. Mask wearing will be required at all times on campus in Pennsylvania’s largest school district.”This is a proactive measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses in school, reduce absenteeism and prioritize in-person learning after the winter break,” the district said.
The Washington Free Beacon mentioned that the announcement came out a week after an assessment revealed the horrid impact of lockdowns on education.
From the Pennsylvania Capital-Star:
The decline on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, was more pronounced in math, where approximately 16.2% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or better on the exams administered in the spring of 2022; in 2019, 21.6% of students scored proficient or better. In English Language Arts, 34.7% of students in those grades were proficient or better this year, down slightly from 35.7 percent in 2019.Those drops highlight the pandemic’s disruptions to students and schools since early 2020; schools in Philadelphia did not fully reopen for in-person instruction until the 2021-22 school year. The scores also show how hard it will be for Philadelphia to meet the targets it set for the past school year, and for the next several years.
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