Face masks are now optional on Lafayette Parish School System buses after a change in U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.
President Joe Biden issued an executive order in January 2021 requiring masks be worn on all public transportation, including school buses, in accordance with CDC guidance. While that requirement is broadly still in place, the CDC on Friday announced masks would no longer be required on buses or vans operated by public or private schools.
The change was made to align with shifts in CDC guidance around school masking; the organization no longer recommends universal masking in K-12 schools and early education settings in communities with low or medium COVID-19 transmission rates, the organization said in a release.
In response, LPSS announced Thursday that masking on buses would be optional.
The district has practiced optional masking in schools since October, when Gov. John Bel Edwards gave schools the choice to forgo masks as long as they adhered to state requirements around close-contact quarantines.
That stipulation, and other references to COVID-19 mitigation measures, were removed from the governor’s health emergency order in mid-February, freeing districts to make independent choices about how to approach COVID-19 issues in schools.
The Lafayette Parish School Board voted Feb. 15 to rescind the 2021-2022 Learn Lafayette Plan that guided the district’s operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Administrators last week released a pared down plan to guide students through the end of the year.
Masking on campus continues to be optional and the district will no longer conduct contract tracing on campuses or require students exposed to someone positive with COVID-19 to quarantine at home.
While sanitation and personal hygiene rules were not laid out, district spokesperson Allison Dickerson said common sense measures like using hand sanitizer, encouraging regular hand washing, sanitizing high-touch surfaces and distancing as much as possible will be kept up.
The Acadia and Vermilion school systems have similarly announced that masks will be optional on school buses.
