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Gov. Spencer Cox announced last week that public K-12 schools will not be required to have a mask mandate during their final week of school.
Whether people are in support of mask mandates or not, one thing many of them can now agree on is that
the decision to end the school mask mandate early was a bad one.
Gov. Spencer Cox announced last week that public K-12 schools will not be required to have a mask requirement during their final week of school. He said the decision was a compromise between people who wanted the mandate removed immediately and those in favor of keeping it. It was also made because COVID-19 cases in schools have been declining, he said.
KUER
K-12 schools in Utah will not be required to have a mask mandate in place during the last week of the academic year. This story and more in Thursday evening s news brief.
Thursday evening, May 13, 2021
State
Red Rock Wilderness Battle Continues With Trolling Legislation
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, and Rep. John Curtis, R-UT, introduced legislation Thursday to designate 289,000 acres of land in Illinois as federally protected wilderness. It’s an attempt to troll Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, who introduced America’s Red Rock Wilderness Act Monday that would designate 8.4 million acres in Utah as federally-protected wilderness areas. Out-of-state politicians shouldn’t make decisions about Utah’s public lands, Romney and Curtis said. An aide for Durbin told KUER the senator supports conserving lands in Illinois.
Deseret News
Gov. Spencer Cox spoke at the weekly COVID-19 briefing Thursday where he announced the end of Utah’s school mask mandate.
Schools in Utah will not be required to have a mask mandate in place during the last week of the academic year, Gov. Spencer Cox announced Thursday.
But if they choose, individual schools can still institute their own mandates. Cox said lifting the requirement is the right thing to do.
“We ve had cases dropping in many, many of our school districts,” Cox said. “We have many schools where there have been no positive cases now for several weeks and we ve been able to vaccinate teachers.”
COVID-19 Numbers
The Utah Department of Health reported no deaths but 185 new COVID-19 cases Monday. The state’s test positivity rate is now at 3.7% up slightly since this time last week. Officials also said 122 people are currently hospitalized with the disease. Vaccination efforts continue, with more than 1.7 million doses administered so far in Utah.
Caroline Ballard
Utah Treasurer Resigns
Utah’s state treasurer announced Monday that he will resign at the end of the month. David Damschen has served as treasurer since 2016, and was re-elected for a second full term this past November. He is leaving to head the Utah Housing Corporation, which provides financing for affordable housing. Gov. Spencer Cox will appoint an interim state treasurer to serve until the next general election in 2022.