COVID-19
Little Rock School District adopts new mask guidance
By 
Editor-in-Chief
Little Rock, Arkansas – One of the final districts in the country to drop its mask mandate for staff and students is the Little Rock School District.
Instead, the board voted to follow CDC guidance on whether or not to require masks. Masking will be optional or required depending on what color Pulaski County is in on a weekly basis.
According to the Little Rock School District, every Thursday, school administrators will look at the map. If the country is in the green zone masks are optional. Yellow indicates optional but strongly recommended masking. If it hits orange, then the district will require masks for that week.
Currently, Pulaski County is yellow, so effective immediately, masks are optional but strongly required for staff and students.
“On Thursday we’ll see if the color changes, then we’ll notify the public, so let’s say that next week, the numbers dropped again and we went to green, we would just be sharing that the direction is masks optional. It’s no longer strongly recommended, it’s mask optional,” said Superintendent Michael Poore.
Poore insists that families will be notified, and there will be an expectation to follow the guidance, adding it’s, “Just like we have right now. We have an expectation, and if people don’t follow it, we handle that.”
The board also voted to suspend contact tracing and quarantining for staff and students who may have been exposed to Covid-19.
