The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will require all districts and schools to hold in-person, full-time, five days a week classes in schools across the commonwealth for the 2021-22 school year, the agency announced. All DESE health and safety requirements will be lifted, including all physical distancing requirements.The state education agency cited the declining number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths as vaccination rates increase. DESE said teachers, high school students and middle school students will not need to wear masks when inside school buildings in the fall. A decision about masks for elementary students will be made in this summer, officials said. Children under the age of 12 are not eligible for any of the COVID-19 vaccinations at this time. Districts will also no longer be able to offer remote learning as a standard learning model, the memo to school districts across the state said. "Pathways that existed prior to the pandemic for offering virtual learning to individual students in limited cases will remain available to districts and schools," DESE said in the memo. "DESE encourages schools to maintain ventilation upgrades from this past year as feasible, continue hand hygiene practices, and extend policies that encourage students and staff to continue to stay home when sick," the memo to school districts said. Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Union, said that the state shouldn’t be setting guidance for the fall now and that, ultimately, decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis on the local level."It’s May, we have three or four months till the start of September," she said. "We have to watch — the variables change, there are seasonal variables, rates of vaccine, new variants."The union said until elementary students are eligible to be vaccinated, masks for that age group should be required in schools in the fall. The group is also calling on the state to make rapid testing available to school districts for as long as COVID-19 continues to pose a health risk.