Back-To-School: What MD Requires For COVID-19, Other Diseases

MARYLAND — Public school systems in Maryland won’t require students heading back to school in the next few weeks to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

Last year, as the omicron variant surged following holiday travel and gatherings, mandatory vaccinations were floated in several states and school districts to control the spread of the virus that, nationwide, has killed 1.03 million people since the pandemic began in 2020, including 14,790 in Maryland.

The only place in the country where students will be required to get vaccinated against the coronavirus as a condition of enrollment this fall is the District of Columbia. The requirement applies to “all students who are of an age for which there is a COVID-19 vaccination fully approved by the FDA.”

California considered similar requirements, but backed away from a COVID-19 vaccine mandate last spring.

Legislatures in 20 states ban local school districts from requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

They are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

While Maryland had a statewide school mask mandate for much of the previous school year, that is not the case this year.

On Aug. 26, 2021, the Maryland State Board of Education approved a statewide school mask mandate. On Sept. 14, 2021, a joint legislative committee in the Maryland General Assembly voted to approve a statewide mask mandate proposed by the State Board of Education.

As vaccines began to roll out, on Dec. 7, 2021, the state board approved an emergency regulation that allowed students to go without masks if the COVID-19 community spread in their county was moderate or if vaccination rates were above 80 percent in the school or surrounding community.

On Feb. 11, 2022, Gov. Larry Hogan asked the Maryland State Board of Education to rescind the statewide school mask mandate and on Feb. 25, the mandate was lifted. Local school districts can now set their own masking policies; Prince George's County just reinstated a mask mandate on Aug. 15.

Only about 30 percent of U.S. children ages 5-11 are fully vaccinated, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. About 60 percent of 12- to 17-year-olds are fully vaccinated.

Overall, about 223 million people — or about 67 percent of the eligible U.S. population — have been fully vaccinated nationwide, including 107.5 million people who have gotten their booster shots, according to the CDC. In Maryland, 77.1 percent of residents are fully vaccinated, and 54.1 percent have received one booster shot.

Will Students Mask?

The CDC relaxed its mask guidance in February, telling K-12 schools they could tie their local policies to the community rates of COVID-19 illnesses and hospital capacity, rather than the total number of COVID-19 cases.

Accordingly, schools are easing protocols to slow COVID-19 transmission, even as the BA.5 variant — the most contagious to date — quickly spreads across the country.

For example, only seven of the nation’s largest 500 school districts planned to require students and staff wear masks, according to the tracking company Burbio. That compares with 369 large school districts requiring masks in October 2021.

In Maryland, state officials have left the decision about masking to prevent the spread of COVID-19 up to each local jurisdiction and its respective school board.

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education decided to make face coverings and at-home tests for schools with outbreaks optional. The school systems in the city of Baltimore, Harford County, and Howard County also made masks optional by March 2021.

Masking became optional in Montgomery County Public Schools and on buses, the Board of Education decided in a unanimous vote on March 8.

Baltimore County switched to masks as optional on March 14, 2022.

Prince George's County made masks optional rather than required as of July 1, 2022.

Related: CDC Eases COVID Restrictions: What Remains In Maryland

In part, the decline in mask requirements in big school districts is due to political pressure. In Georgia for example, Clayton County Public Schools can’t require students to wear masks because of a state ban, but it does require adults and visitors to wear face coverings.

“The goal is to be in person, face-to-face, as close to normal as possible,” Morcease Beasley, the district’s superintendent, told EducationWeek, an independent news organization that covers education and school issues. “Staff are being very supportive, visitors are being very supportive, and many students, while it’s not required of them, are wearing them as well.”

Pre-COVID Anti-Vax Tide

A tide of vaccine skepticism was sweeping the country before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, threatening to wipe out progress to eliminate measles, mumps and other childhood diseases decades after they were all but eradicated in the United States.

The bitterly polarizing issue pits public health officials and others in the medical profession — and a growing number of state lawmakers — against so-called “anti-vaxxers,” who often cite religious freedom, personal objections and government overreach in their decisions to delay vaccinations or not immunize their children at all.

Much of the current opposition to vaccines can be traced to a 1988 article published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet in which former British doctor Andrew Wakefield falsely linked the MMR vaccine to autism.

His co-authors and the journal all redacted it, and Wakefield lost his medical license over his claims. Though the claim has been debunked over and over, it still pops up on social media as fact, worsening fears of vaccine safety.

Which Vaccines Are Required

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have laws on the books requiring that students be vaccinated against early childhood diseases, but most of them — 44, as of May — allow religious exemptions as well.

Additionally, 15 allow for philosophical exemptions for children whose parents object to immunizations because of personal, moral or other beliefs. Many states align their vaccine requirements with recommendations from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

State laws vary greatly in what they require. All states but Alabama require students to be vaccinated against hepatitis B. About a half dozen states or locations — Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York City, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — require students to get an annual flu shot.

In general, kindergarteners ages 4-6 must be vaccinated against chickenpox; diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTaP vaccine); measles, mumps and rubella (MMR vaccine); and polio. By middle and high school, students should be vaccinated against meningococcal disease, human papillomavirus (HPV vaccine) and Serogroup B meningococcal infection.

Maryland requires the above vaccinations, along with varicella, chickenpox, and hepatitis B2, according to Britannica’s ProCon.org.

Exemptions are allowed in Maryland for religious reasons, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

A child whose parent or guardian objects to immunization on the ground that it conflicts with the parent’s or guardian’s bona fide religious beliefs and practices may not be required to present a physician’s certification of immunization in order to be admitted to school, state law says.