On March 13, 2022, Los Angeles County will have closed schools exactly two years prior in hopes of flattening the curve of COVID-19 cases, planning to return to normalcy as quickly as possible. On the anniversary of this life changing decision, Glendora High School is finally approaching what it once called normal with the removal of mask requirements on March 14, 2022, putting an end to the three-week quarantine which spiraled into two years of quarantine and social distancing.
On Monday, March 14, all masks will be completely optional to students attending a school in the Glendora Unified School District, in accordance with the California Department of Health and the expiration of the mask requirement for schools. Los Angeles County remains aligned with the state’s decision to remove mask requirements, but still strongly recommends that students wear a mask while indoors.
In discussing the effects which the removal of the mask requirements will have on Glendora schools, Matthew Brummett, the principal of Glendora High School, explains that the biggest change will be that students will have the option to take off their mask or continue wearing them while in class and indoors.
Another major change which Brummett highlighted was that upcoming events will allow students the option to take off their masks while indoors, as long as the event remains in line with the maximum capacity and other guidelines which have been set in place by the Los Angeles County Department of Health. For example, the upcoming senior assembly will allow seniors to take off their masks while attending. Brummett clarified that although masks will be optional in this kind of situation, the school must still follow other guidelines which limit events, such as maximum capacity, but is able to allow mask removal so long as these other guidelines are being followed.
“Although most people don’t like wearing masks, there probably are a lot of students and staff who have some anxiety about taking it off. Maybe they have loved ones at home who are immunocompromised and need that extra layer of protection. There still is the option to wear the mask, this just gives people the choice,” Brummett explained, regarding how the changes in mask requirements will affect GHS. “We’ve been craving that return to normalcy and this feels like that a little bit. It’s a monumental change.”
Over the last two years, Glendora High School has gone from unorganized distance learning to mandatory zoom meetings and canvas assignments, and finally to the return to campus with masks; students have been starving for things to just go back to how they were before March 13, 2020. With the upcoming changes to the mask requirement in Los Angeles County, GHS will be as close as it has ever been to life before the pandemic, returning to a sense of normalcy.
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