WICHITA — Kansas’ largest school district will not require students and staff to wear masks indoors despite the threat posed by COVID-19’s more contagious delta variant.

The Wichita school board instead decided to strongly recommend that students and staff wear masks whether or not they’ve been vaccinated against COVID-19 while requiring visitors to wear masks inside, The Wichita Eagle reports. The district’s students are returning to classes this week for the fall semester.

The Wichita school board’s vote Monday night was 4-3 to strongly recommend masks indoors for students and staff.

Kansas has seen its numbers of new COVID-19 cases per day rise steadily over the past seven weeks as the delta variant has become more widespread. The state has confirmed more than 2,200 delta variant cases, the vast majority since July 1.

At least 11 school districts are requiring at least some of their students and employees to wear masks indoors, including Topeka, Lawrence and Olathe.

On Monday, the Blue Valley district followed other Johnson County districts and decided to extend its previous mask mandate to include grades K-12.

But the Wichita district, with about 47,000 students enrolled last school year, has nearly 10% of the state’s K-12 students.