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1 1 (August 10, 2022)

handle is hein.amenin/aeiaekh0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Key Points * From September 22i to late Februar0 , school district mask mandates ere in olacetor 61 percent of students in the US. * During that period, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance advised a: studentsand teachers to mask indoors, with no flexibility based on local conditions. On Feuary 25, 2022, the CDC adopted nev adaptive masking guidance based on eca; case counts and hiospita capacity, Overnight, th CDC's recorniendation for student rnask- ing fell `rom apolying to 100 percent of students o 37 percent. 0 Appyng the curren CDC guidance fr mvvork to the earlier weeks of the 2021-22 school year shows that the currern guidan;ce ,would have reconmrnended mask rnandates for 99 percent of students during the heioht of the omicron surgie, when actual mandates cov- ered 55 percent or stucents. * The `back-rnapped gaudance would have recomrended mask rmandates for iust%10 percent of students durng the ll b etveern delta and ornicron frorn October througih mid-December 2021, when actual guidanc.e held recomnendationsat 100 percent. During the 2,0- 2 school car, America's schools were forced to balance the pandemic's threat to students, school cmplovees, and communities with the bene- fits of provading in-person instruction. None had easy decisions to make. With half of all mericans fully vac- inated at the start of the 2021-22 school year, schools reopened their doors foi learning with fewer interrup- tions than in the pandenmis first year The 2021-22 school year challenged schools to decide how to man- age the threat of COVID- ig w ile providing in-person instruction, and those decisions fell sharnly along polit- ical and demographic lines, From the start of the 202-3-22 school year through the lat day of February 2022, Centers for Disease Control and P rcv otir (CDC) guidance recommended 100 per- cent of teachers and students mask indoors. The CDC's current scl masking guidance, announced February 2 c, 222-just four days before President Joe Biden's State of tie Union address-----adapts to local CAOVID caseloads and hospital capacity, The CDC could have offered adaptive recommendations across the entire school year. These recommendations would have ac-r- ally guided school districts as to when masking was war- ranted and when it was not. Arriving much too late, the guidance proved strik- ingly misalihgred with schools' masking policies for much of the school year. Ph e CDC's blanket recommen- dations for universal masking at the start of the school ... V .. :e ;F .. l' .