The Dumas School District School Board voted to stop the use of masks in the district in their March 2022 Board meeting.
Effective immediately, students and staff will no longer be required to wear masks indoors. The Board voted to stop the use of masks and will implement a sliding scale on when masks will be optional or required to wear based on the data from the Arkansas Health Department and Arkansas Children's Hospital. The cases will be based on cases from 10,000 to 100,000 whether there is a low risk, Moderate risk or a high risk category.
“For the last few weeks, Dumas has been in a low category. In the sliding scale for (Dumas) is 1- 20 per 10,000 case. If we have to re-institute the mask policy, it is based on the data from the Arkansas Health Department,” Gragg said. “It is a relief for the district, but we still have to make sure to do those things to curtail the spread of Covid.”
The Dumas Mask Advisory Levels are Green – low risk is 0-20 cases per 10,000/ACHI data and masks are optional, but recommended for all students and staff while indoors. Yellow-Moderate Risk is 21-49 cases with masks being optional ,but highly recommended while indoors. Red-High Risk is 50-100+ with masks being required. Optional is if 10 % of the student population test positive for COVID, masks will be required. When it returned to below 5% masks would be optional again. 10% of the Dumas School District population is 100 students, but there is doubt that they will reach that number.
