Baldwin County School Superintendent Eddie Tyler announced today that the school system will not require masks for students when school resumes Tuesday after the holiday break. 

Several school districts across Alabama have implemented mask mandates or switched to virtual learning for the first week of school since the Alabama Department of Public Health has reported a surge in cases statewide. 

Currently every county in Alabama is reporting a high transmission rate. The state has an overall positivity rate of 36.4 %, the highest reported during the pandemic so far. 

In Baldwin County the positivity rate on Monday, Jan. 3, was 35.1 percent, also the highest recorded throughout the pandemic. By the third day of the new year, 206 individuals had tested positive for COVID-19 in the county while there were 3,685 new cases in Alabama in the first three days of 2022. 

Children ages 5 and above are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, however, to date only 3.6 % of children ages 5 – 11 have been fully vaccinated in Alabama. Only Mississippi has a lower vaccination rate. Of children ages 12 – 15 only 30 % of those in Alabama have been vaccinated, the lowest rate in the nation.  

In an email letter to parents on Monday, Tyler suggested that parents who are worried about the virus should send their children in masks or consider the vaccine. 

“If you are concerned about the well-being of your children and our return to school without masks, you could have your child wear a mask to school and/or look into the children's vaccination program. Adults have had a year to get vaccinated and the children's vaccination became available at the end of the summer. There are plenty of free vaccination sites available,” he wrote.  

Tyler said in the letter that the schools would continue to monitor the number of cases in classrooms.  

“We will continue to monitor our COVID numbers on a campus-by-campus basis as we have been. If we see an outbreak, a reason to close any classes or make other changes to our policies, we will do so and notify you. Our goal remains to keep our schools open and operating,” he wrote.