Education - US

When schools fully reopened, the Delta variant drove many worries: Would crowded classrooms run up infection rates? Would outbreaks keep many schools closed? Could there be a normal academic year — the first since the pandemic began?

The news so far has been reassuring: A vast majority of the nation’s 50 million public school students have been in classrooms, full-time and mostly uninterrupted, this fall — whether students are masked or unmasked, teachers vaccinated or not. In fact, infection rates declined 35 percent nationally through the month of September, as many schools opened their doors.

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Court keeps South Carolina school mask mandate ban on hold South Carolina districts can continue to require face coverings to protect against the coronavirus in the state's schools under an appellate court's decision this week. On Tuesday, the 4th U.S. AP NEWS

... the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied state Attorney General Alan Wilson’s request that South Carolina’s law prohibiting school mask mandates be allowed to take effect while a lawsuit over the COVID-19 pandemic measure goes forward. ...