Miami-Dade schools will make masks optional for outdoor, socially distanced activities

Effective immediately, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is making masks optional only for outdoor, socially distanced activities. All other COVID-19 protocols will stay in place for the last two weeks of school.

Looking forward to the fall, the nation’s fourth-largest school district may make masks optional for the 2021-22 school year.

At Tuesday’s ad hoc medical and public health experts task force meeting, Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he is “reasonably comfortable and confident we can announce a voluntary masking approach” for the next school year.

As for summer school in six weeks, he said he’d like to reconvene the task force and review the data.

Experts agreed that it was best to keep the district’s COVID-19 protocols, such as mandatory wearing of masks indoors and cleaning procedures, through the end of the school year. The last day of school is June 9.

They also agreed with Carvalho’s suggestion of making masks optional for outdoor, socially distanced activities.

Dr. Aileen Marty, a physician and an infectious disease expert at Florida International University, said masks have not only helped slow the spread of COVID-19 but have also reduced allergies, influenza and colds. She said people shouldn’t feel pressured to take masks off.

Carvalho said optional masks for the outdoors is “sort of a permissive step, not a mandatory step” and that it is a parental decision for their child to wear a mask or not.

“If you feel you need it, wear it,” he said.

School Board Member Marta Perez said she’s heard from fully vaccinated teachers who would like not to use masks in the classroom. Marty suggested that a face shield could be an alternative as “better than nothing” and would offer some balance.

But other experts, like Dr. Lisa Gwynn, a pediatrician and medical director for the Pediatric Mobile Clinic at the University of Miami, and Linda Brown, a nurse practitioner consultant, disagreed. They pointed out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still call for mandatory masks in schools.

The CDC announced last Thursday that fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks during indoor and outdoor activities, large or small.

Gwynn warned that pediatric cases of COVID-19 are on the rise.

On Monday, UM’s Pediatric Mobile Clinic started vaccinating kids 12 and older in Little Haiti, Doral, Homestead and other underserved communities throughout the county. Miami-Dade Schools has also begun vaccinating those 12 and older at select schools.

The Food and Drug Administration announced last week that children between the ages of 12 and 15 can receive the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine after months of research determined the shot safe and effective for that age group.