Amid the recent surge of COVID cases in the country, specifically the omicron variant, it is unsafe to hold students in schools that do not mandate any social distancing and allow masks to be taken off. 

A month ago, MCPS announced that if a school reached a student infection rate of 5 percent, the school would be reviewed by MCPS and the Department of Health and Human Services to go virtual for two weeks. County officials are scared now -- one day after winter break, 11 schools were above the 5% rate, and two days later, 126 schools were. 

Not expecting this extreme upsurge, the county is scrambling now, trying to force us to stay in school, even though they know it is unsafe. Their justification? A social media interaction between the county and Mike Ricci, a spokesman for Governor Larry Hogan. Ricci said, “The 5% is not a metric for the suspension of in-person learning or a conversation about it, and should not be used that way by any school system.”

Larry Hogan: the governor who announced that Maryland is in a “state of emergency,” with COVID hospitalizations increasing by 500% due to omicron. We need to resist this hypocrisy and keep students and MCPS staff members safe, not to mention possibly immunocompromised family members.