Some School Districts in Arizona will stop requiring masks after winter break in 2022. 

During the 2020-2021school year, many schools went online but then after a short period of time, they came back in person. These school districts, including Chandler Unified School District, came back in person requiring masks. Once the schools went off for summer break, another mutation of covid called the Delta variant was discovered on May 31, 2021. This was a large wave that struck the US and continued to infect people up until now. Once schools re-opened for the 2021-2022 school year, some districts made masks optional such as CUSD. Gradually, the rate of masks in school was going down. 

Districts such as Scottsdale Unified School District and Kyrene Elementary School District decided to keep a mask mandate to reduce the spread of the virus. In the 2021-2022 school year, the vaccine for ages 5-11 came out and younger kids started getting vaccinated. These districts saw this data and made a plan to stop requiring masks after winter break. This could be problematic though. Only 25 percent of younger kids have actually been vaccinated which means that if more don’t get vaccinated, then the virus would spread like wildfire. If school districts confirm the decision to remove the mask mandate, then they are going to have to be very careful about the spread of the virus.