EDITORIAL

Schools should be empowered on mask wearing

Posted 2/8/22

The decision that Governor Dan McKee is now forced to make has been one coming for a long time.

When Gov. McKee instituted the statewide mask requirement for large venues, and a mandate to require …

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EDITORIAL

Schools should be empowered on mask wearing

Posted

The decision that Governor Dan McKee is now forced to make has been one coming for a long time.

When Gov. McKee instituted the statewide mask requirement for large venues, and a mandate to require mask wearing or proof of vaccination for smaller businesses, we saw it then as a wise decision to help prevent further spread of the Omicron variant that had caused a dramatic spike in cases over the holidays and into the New Year.

Now that the surge has valleyed, it is once again time for the governor to make a difficult but necessary decision on masks.

As we have learned throughout the nearly two years of living in this pandemic, there is no one-size-fits-all policy for preventing the spread of Covid that will be effective 100 percent of the time. Policy must shift with the data.

This, unfortunately, runs counter to how effective government is usually administered — where a reactive approach to policymaking is actually the savvy and sensible thing to do.

So long as new cases of Covid remain low, there should not be a need for widespread masking mandates or proof of vaccination to frequent small businesses, entertainment venues and restaurants. Of course, these establishments should also be empowered to enact whatever mask-wearing policy they deem appropriate for their own buildings, such is the American way.

The larger decision Gov. McKee will have to tackle is what to do with schools, which have been mandated to wear masks since the return to in-person learning last autumn.

The debate over whether or not mandating masks in schools has been detrimental to the overall health and well-being of students has been exhaustive, and those entrenched on either side of the debate are highly unlikely to change their given stances at this point.

But times have changed since the original mandate went into place. Vaccinations are now widely available for all school-aged children, and a vast majority of educators have already done their responsible civic duty in receiving their own vaccines and boosters.

Schools have also had ample time to get better acquainted with how to perform routine testing and quarantining to prevent outbreaks, and data has shown that no significant outbreaks have come as the result of kids being together during the school day. Of course, proponents of mask wearing will argue that the mask mandate has been a significant contributor to that outcome.

However, as we prepare to enter the third year of living in a Covid-stricken world, we feel it necessary to begin asking the difficult question — is Covid something that we just have to start getting used to as being a part of our lives? How long can we force kids out of their normal routines and block their face-to-face interactions where they can read one another’s expressions?

Just as small business owners should retain the right on whether or not to enforce a mask mandate, at this point, so do we believe that individual school districts should retain that right. Citizens elect school committee members, who hire superintendents to make these kinds of difficult decisions. It seems it is time to let them make those choices for their districts, and adapt those decisions should certain consequences be realized.

It is difficult to make a convincing argument on one side or the other.

Foregoing mask wearing when it has proven to be effective at preventing Covid spread seems foolish and like an unnecessary risk, but continuing to enforce a strict mask mandate when schools do not seem to be a particularly active place where Covid spreads also seems to be stubbornly rigid and ignorant of the actual data.

Perhaps it is time to lift a universal mandate and leave it up to each district to decide what is best for them, while ensuring that should infections start to rise, that mandate could be instituted once again without hesitation

schools, masks

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