Nora Vencill has noticed a peculiar dynamic develop in her ninth grade English class at Poolesville High School in Montgomery County.

“One side of the room has people fully masked and on the other side of the room, it’s mostly people who are unmasked,” she said.

Montgomery County Public Schools, like many school systems across the country and the D.C. region, lifted its mask requirement on campuses last month. The decision to do so matches recently updated guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says universal masking in schools is not necessary when community COVID-19 levels are low or moderate.

The shift arrived as a welcome change for some families, who worried face masks interfered with their children’s learning and comfort levels at school. They feel the availability of vaccines for people 5 and older, and the relatively low risk for severe illness among young children who contract COVID-19, is enough to return schools to normalcy.

But not everyone has embraced the change.

Some students and families still fear bringing the virus home to immunocompromised family members, or would like to continue mitigation efforts to avoid getting sick themselves. And while more cautious students say they try to respect others’ choices, they worry the decision to lift mandates was premature.

The choice to mask or not can vary by school, classroom or between individual students. At one elementary school in the District, parents say most children are happily moving through the hallways, bare faced. At another elementary school, five miles away, an 8-year-old says she and most of her classmates are continuing to mask.

Vencill, who continues to double mask at Poolesville, said she tries to transition between classes as quickly as possible, careful to avoid clusters of maskless students. She worries lifting the mandate too soon will cause an increase in COVID cases.

“My whole thought process around mask mandates is that there’s no harm in having them but there is harm in not having them,” she said.

Arjun Rao, a ninth-grade student at Poolesville who organized a walkout earlier this year to call for more COVID safety protocols, said the decision by the county school board to lift the mandate has not created as many issues as he initially feared.

Still Rao, who continues to mask, said many students have established informal expectations in their social groups. For example, Rao said students who participate in drama have agreed to mask around each other, with some exceptions for when the teenagers are acting on stage.

“It’s not an official thing but it’s an expectation,” Rao explained.

At Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, CJ MacDonald said signs are plastered to walls that declare, “Mask on or off, it’s just me. Respect my decision.” The fifteen-year-old estimated about half the students at Walter Johnson are still masking.

“I do understand respecting people’s decisions but having students uncomfortable with it can get weird,” they said. “With some people at my school who I know are around a lot of people who aren’t vaccinated, I’m like ‘hey, when we’re around each other can you please put on your mask.’”

MacDonald contracted COVID-19 in January, shortly after returning to school from winter break. Their sense of taste disappeared for about a month.

In the District, Neveah Bright, an 11th grade student at Calvin Coolidge Senior High School in Takoma, said most students have continued to wear masks even though D.C. Public Schools made face coverings optional last month.

The 16-year-old said some of her peers feel masks are important tools for sustaining in-person learning.

“They feel that taking the mask mandate away can cause a spike in COVID cases and they don’t want to be in the same predicament of not being in school again,” said Bright, who sits on a committee that advises the State Board of Education.

To others the decision by D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee to lift the school system’s masking requirement in mid-March was a necessary change.

Mourad Moursi said he saw his older child, a fourth grade student at Powell Elementary School in Petworth, started to develop a “phobia” with germs. He said she grew anxious about removing her mask even outdoors, where coronavirus transmission is far less likely.

“That was something that really got me worried,” Moursi said. “This idea that she’s going to develop this phobia around germs that she never had before and the fact that she was hiding behind her masks in some social situations.”

Moursi, who is among a group of parents who pushed the city to lift its mask requirement in schools, said his daughter gradually became more comfortable with removing her mask after she saw some of her classmates and teachers do it.

At Janney Elementary School in Tenleytown, parent Tamar Levenberg said most children are going without masks. Levenberg started pushing city officials to lift its mask mandate in schools once they were no longer required in settings such as grocery stores.

Levenberg’s younger son, a kindergartener at Janney, had a speech delay. The masks made school more challenging, she said, because her son wasn’t able to see other people’s facial expressions and decipher non-verbal cues.

“For him, having trouble with articulation, not being able to see the way that people formed sounds really impacted his frustration level and him feeling like he wasn’t being understood,” the mother said.

Another parent at Janney, Elizabeth Mitchell, said “the majority of the school is unmasked and thrilled to be so.” Mitchell’s family is not in the majority – the mother said her two children have decided to stay masked because they often visit their grandparents.

The children’s grandfather is immunocompromised, Mitchell said, which is why she has opted to continue masking when she picks her children up from school. But she said she’s had other parents approach her twice and question her choice to do so.

Mitchell worries her children will face bullying for masking. She said she has felt increasingly isolated in the school community.

“I feel like there was a lot of sympathy for my situation last year – having a parent with cancer who I had to take care of,” she said. “It just feels like this collective good that we all entered the pandemic with has slowly waned.”

Not all schools in the D.C. region have gone mask optional. Some charter schools in the District have maintained mandates, including KIPP D.C., the city’s largest charter operator.

In a survey of 350 staff members and more than 450 families, 53% of staff and 79% of families urged KIPP D.C. to keep the requirement, according to an email sent to the school community.

“We understand this also means a large number of staff and families feel masks should be optional,” the message said. “We will continue to monitor COVID data, schools in the District where masks are now optional, and input we are hearing from our community.”

Some parents are frustrated that not all students have the option of removing their masks.

Paul Fraioli, the parent of a kindergartener at Washington Yu Ying Public Charter School, said the school recently announced it will go mask optional on April 25.

Fraioli worries masking has interfered with his son’s ability to learn Chinese at Yu Ying, which is a dual language immersion school. And he said he worries the prolonged use of masks is producing unnecessary anxiety for children.

“Throughout the pandemic, there’s been a refrain from some people that kids are resilient and that kids are adaptable,” he said. “I tend to view that sentiment skeptically.”

Public school students in Prince George’s County are also continuing to mask. Monica Goldson, the county school system’s CEO, told families she would follow previous guidance from the Maryland State Department of Education and remove the district’s mask mandate once 80% of residents are fully vaccinated.

In an interview, Goldson said she factored vaccination rates among young children into her decision to keep masks. Fewer than 40% of children between 5 and 11-years-old in Prince George’s have received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to Goldson.

Goldson, who plans to reexamine the decision to keep the requirement in early April, said she is also keeping close watch of how the BA.2 strain of the Omicron variant will affect the region.

She said many parents and staff have urged her to maintain the mandate.

“We want to keep kids in schools daily,” she said. “Students are moving on like masks are part of their clothing. They’re not stopping from the learning process, it’s not hindering their ability to learn.”