The Los Rios Community College District announced that they were moving forward with plans to return to campus on Feb. 22 through email and social media on Tuesday.
Many of the returning classes were originally scheduled as in-person classes before the current shutdown.
The email from the district explained the reasoning for the move to online.
“We temporarily moved most in-person classes and services online with the goal of preventing the spread of the virus on our campuses and minimizing the potential staffing impacts that many organizations were experiencing as a result of widespread community illness,” according to the email.
This announcement comes as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rapidly declining after the recent spike due to the Omicron variant.
The state’s COVID-19 dashboard website states that the current Sacramento county seven day average positive test rate is 36 per 100,000 people. This is down from 221 per 100,000 people at the height of the Omicron surge.
The district’s announcement also emphasized the need to “continue to be nimble in the face of evolving public health conditions.”
Student services that were originally planned to be in person will also return.
The district also included in the announcement that there would be a continued mask mandate on campus despite California lifting the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated people on Wednesday.
“We will maintain the district-wide mask requirement already in place in the interest of clarity and given the many different applicable standards,” according to the email.
The district said that they would reassess the mask mandate in the coming weeks “based on further evolving guidance and public health information.”