WA students, teachers wrestle with wearing masks in schools after mandate drops

Kindergarten teacher Betzabeth Alvarado-Jurista counted just four bare faces in her class of 18 kids on Monday morning, not including her own. 

It was a slightly surprising outcome on the first day masks were optional in Washington state schools, she said. But she and her colleagues at Bellevue’s Lake Hills Elementary School had prepared for it. 

A few minutes after school began, she gathered the tots on a rainbow carpet and gave them a 5-year-old’s version of a public health keynote in both English and Spanish: “Neither choice is wrong,” said one slide, featuring a photo of kids smiling with and without face masks. “Negative comments about wearing a mask or not wearing a mask can be bullying and is not allowed.” She asked the masked and unmasked to stand and applaud for each other. 

As one of the visual hallmarks of the pandemic falls out of public health guidance, schools in the Seattle region — where adherence to preventive measures is among the strongest in the country — are contending with an environment where comfort levels with unmasking are all over the map.