Hundreds of students at Oak Ridge High School in El Dorado Hills, California, walked out of classes Tuesday to protest the delay in lifting mask mandates at schools across the state.
''This was a homegrown thing between the parents and then the kids working together to get everyone on board,'' Jennifer Yoder, the mother of an Oak Ridge student, told Fox News. ''It just kept growing and growing. And then they eventually just got up and left those classrooms and ran outside and started their protest.''
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, had been expected to lift the mandate Monday. But the state's health and human services secretary, Dr. Mark Ghaly, said there would be a two-week delay.
According to Yoder, several parents of students at Oak Ridge sent them to school without a mask, and the students were subsequently dismissed from class.
The Twitter account Reopen California Schools posted a video of the protest to its feed, saying ''Dr. Ghaly & @GavinNewsom have started one serious #MaskRevolt in California.''
The school board sent a letter to parents Tuesday afternoon to inform them that it would no longer punish students who do not wear a mask, despite the mandate still being in effect.
''The enforcement of masking will be done by educating students and asking them to mask but no further actions of exclusion from class will be taken,'' the letter read. ''Moving forward, students will not be physically removed from the classroom or receive a discipline consequence to prevent further exclusionary learning loss.''
After seeing photos of Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti without masks at the NFC Championship Game, about 300 Chino Hills High School students decided to protest the school mask mandate last week, Fox 11 reported, and Newsweek reported that a group of students in Illinois also staged an unmasked walkout.
School districts across California have responded to the delay in lifting the school mask mandate in a variety of ways.
The Corona Norco Unified School District in Riverside County has set up areas outside where students can study without a mask, the Washington Examiner reports, while other schools, such as the Roseville Joint Union High School District near Sacramento, the state capital, decided to make masks optional, despite state orders.
El Dorado Hills is an unincorporated area of El Dorado County, about 22 miles east of Sacramento.
The walkout came after Newsom announced that most indoor venues could drop the mask mandate, though stores could continue to require masks if they choose. The end of the mask mandate applies to vaccinated residents only, with the unvaccinated still expected to wear masks.
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