Falls Church City Public Schools joined a lawsuit with six other school districts to revoke Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order that allowed parents to opt students out of wearing masks in schools, claiming it violates the Virginia constitution. The lawsuit, filed in an Arlington County Circuit Court, alleges that the Executive Order violates Article 8, Section 7 of the Virginia Constitution, which delegates education policy to local school boards.

The Fairfax County School Board led the lawsuit along with Falls Church, Alexandria, Arlington County, Richmond, Fairfax County, Hampton, and Prince William County. 

The School Board implemented Policy JA at its meeting last week, which required all students to wear face coverings until February 14, 2022 or until COVID-19 rate transmissions fall into the moderate range. For the past couple of weeks, community transmissions have been high. 

Superintendent Peter Noonan outlined the impact of this policy during his weekly newsletter on January 21. Starting on January 26, parents are able to fill out an opt-out masking form found on the COVID tab of the FCCPS website. Students will not be considered opted out until after the February 14 date, and when their form has been completed online, printed, and delivered to the school by a parent or guardian. 

If families make the decision to opt-out their students, guidelines will change. Even after submitting the opt-out form, all students will be required to wear a mask on the school bus due to a federal mask mandate on public transit.

The three-to-six-feet school exemption for close contacts will also not apply to students who opted out of mask wearing. If an unmasked student is within six feet of another student, both are considered close contacts and would need to quarantine after a positive test, per CDC rules. 

Lastly, students are currently required to quarantine for five days upon testing positive for COVID-19. On days five through 10, students are allowed to return to school if they are fever-free and their symptoms are improving. However, students must wear masks through day 10, and must remain virtual if they refuse to wear a mask. 

Noonan ended his update with a message to the FCCPS community. 

“I believe we have a responsibility to each other to ‘hang together’ for a while longer to ‘get over the hump’ of Omicron,” Noonan concluded his newsletter. “We’ve come this far together; while it has been challenging at times, we are together, and that is what matters most. Please consider waiting until we are in a better place with transmission rates [to opt out of masking] even if it is past February 14. That will be the time to consider unmasking and…it is coming.”