COVID-19 case counts continue to dwindle in local schools, a month into students' return from winter break.

Case counts in three elementary school districts -- Las Lomitas (seven cases), Portola Valley (two) and Woodside (four) -- fell into the single digits last week, on par with infection rates during the fall semester. Cases began to spike when students returned from the holiday break in January.

Beth Polito, superintendent of the 1,100-student Las Lomitas district, said it feels "great" to see the drop in infections.

"And we have even enjoyed days without any positive cases," she said in an email on Tuesday, Feb. 8.

There were 14 cases in the 2,700-student Menlo Park City School District, which saw 88 at its peak this year.

The roughly 10,200-student Sequoia Union High School District saw 121 cases last week. The previous week, there were 237 cases. The district started off the semester with a staggering 710 in January. There have been a total of 2,115 cases this school year.

The Ravenswood City School District reported 31 cases last week, about half the number of cases it saw the week prior.

There were just eight cases at Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton, which has 1,195 students in preschool through 12th grade.

Upcoming state COVID guideline changes

Although California is lifting its mask mandate in indoor public settings on Feb. 15 as cases continue to fall, it's unclear if this change will apply to schools. Updates on the school masking policy are expected in the coming weeks, according to a Feb. 7 press release from the California Department of Public Health.

While districts can't control state health department guidelines, school administrators are able to decide on the outdoor mask mandate, said Woodside Elementary Superintendent Steve Frank in a Feb. 4 note to families. The TK-8 grade district, which has roughly 360 students, has had fewer than six cases per week since the week of Jan. 24.

"We fully anticipate that things will look much different one month from now," he said.

The district plans to drop the outdoor mask mandate around March 7, the week after students return from February break, he said. Administrators plan to hand out rapid tests to all students and staff before the break so they can test before returning to campus on Feb. 28.

Frank said he hopes to have parent volunteers back on campus in the next one or two months.

The district's student vaccination rate stands at 68%, a few percentage points above the rest of the county, he noted. Children under 5 are still not eligible for the COVID-19 vaccines, but an FDA advisory panel is set to vote on whether the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks for the age group next week.

"We are not certain as to how vaccine mandates will play out in schools in the future, but I encourage everyone to get vaccinated, boosted, and turn in proof of vaccination to the school as soon as possible," he advised families.