Masks Are Now Optional In These Bucks County School Districts

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — Wearing a mask is no longer required in several Bucks County school districts, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court opted to return control of mask requirements to individual school districts Friday.

Masks are now optional in Central Bucks, Council Rock, Bensalem, Neshaminy, Palisades, and Pennridge school districts, in accordance with their health and safety plans.

Per an order by the Centers for Disease Control requiring mask-wearing on public transportation, face coverings will still be mandated on school buses in these districts.

All school districts will also still keep dashboards of their positive COVID-19 cases updated weekly.

Pennsylvania's Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam had issued a statewide mask mandate at the start of school this year; the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court then ruled the mask order illegal in November, with the appeals process leading it to the state's supreme court.

Lawyers for the state argued during that hearing that the mandate functions as a "modified quarantine," a measure the state can impose to limit the spread of a communicable disease.

But Republicans countered that Beam did not follow the proper procedural steps in issuing the mandate, and that a public health emergency was no longer in place when the order was issued, rendering it illegal.

Still, the order had remained in effect until the supreme court's ruling Friday.

"As always, please monitor your child for any flu-like symptoms and do not send your child to school if they are not feeling well," Central Bucks Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh wrote in a message to families.

These changes come as Bucks County's percent positivity rate last week was 10.7 percent according to the Bucks County Department of Health. That number has been steadily on the rise over the past two weeks.

The county remains an area of high transmission, according to CDC designations.

Residents should contact their school district for the most up-to-date information on its COVID-19 policies.

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