Some U.S. governors are taking broad steps to discontinue school masking, saying the pandemic precaution is outweighed by widespread vaccination, lower transmission and the need for unimpeded instruction.
Governor Ned Lamont late Monday recommended that Connecticut end its mask mandate for schools and daycares on Feb. 28. New Jersey, where more than 1-in-9 residents is a public-school student, will end its order next month for 1.3 million in kindergarten through high school. Similar moves may come soon in New York and California.
“We’re not going to manage COVID to zero,” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said Monday. “We have to learn how to live with COVID as we move from a pandemic to the endemic phase of this virus. We are finally nearing this inflection point.”
Masks in schools have been among the most politically charged COVID policy issues as officials attempt to balance public health with growing cries for normalcy. Parents, teachers and politicians have debated whether masks cause more harm than good for children and whether mandates overstep government authority.
New Jersey’s school-mask mandate will lift March 7. In Connecticut, mayors and school superintendents will be able to make decisions on masks themselves to reflect local conditions, Lamont said in a news conference. “We’re in a very different place than we were six months ago,” said Lamont, a Democrat.
Delaware Governor John Carney Jr., another Democrat, will end an indoor mask mandate on Friday and one in schools at the end of March.
In California, which is easing COVID rules as omicron tapers, officials will consider revising broad school mask rules in the coming week, the Department of Public Health said late Monday.
“Vaccines for children under 5 are around the corner, and access to COVID-19 treatments is improving,” Tomás J. Aragón, the state public health officer, said in a news release. “With things moving in the right direction, we are making responsible modifications.”
Challenges from mask foes are spawning legal rulings that have some districts puzzling over how to conduct lessons. In Virginia, the state’s highest court on Monday backed Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s order to allow parents to ignore classroom mask mandates.
In Illinois, a Feb. 4 ruling by a Sangamon County judge bolstered anti-masking parents and led Governor J.B. Pritzker to criticize what he called a confusing order.
The “ruling is out of step with the vast majority of legal analyses in Illinois and across the nation,” Pritzker said at a Monday news conference, where he outlined steps to appeal. Districts such as Chicago with masking as part of labor agreements should continue the practice, he said.
With the pandemic in its second year in the U.S., masking children strikes nerves like few other measures. School-board meetings have erupted with parents arguing that masks infringe upon First Amendment rights, quash communication, stunt social development and otherwise interfere with lessons.
Mask backers, meanwhile, point to risk among young children who aren’t yet eligible for shots and data showing that masks reduce transmission. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal indoor masking for all students ages 2 and up and all staff, teachers and visitors to schools, regardless of vaccination status.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the White House continued to advise school districts to abide by federal health guidelines, even as the Democratic governors changed their policies.
“We recommend masking in schools,” Psaki said.
Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” just two weeks ago that it was too soon to lift school mandates. This past weekend, his message had changed.
“A lot of kids haven’t known a normal school day for two years,” Gottlieb said. “We need to try to lean forward aggressively to try to restore that.”
As of Feb. 2, COVID cases in the U.S. were down 53% from their peak on Jan. 15, according to the CDC. In the week ended Feb. 5, new hospital admissions for COVID were 40% below their record high.
Fifteen states, including California, New York and Illinois, have broad school mask mandates, while eight, including Republican-led Texas and Florida, forbid them, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy, a Washington-based nonpartisan policy group. As the nation’s overall transmission rate wanes, even health experts remain divided on whether it’s time to trash masks in schools.
“Scientifically speaking, without question, transmission is still high right now,” said Anna Bershteyn, an assistant professor of population health at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
Less than a third of children 5-11 are vaccinated with at least one dose, according to data from the Mayo Clinic. “For virtually anywhere right now, this moment is not a time to relax those layers,” Bershteyn said.
In recent weeks, some places have tightened mask restrictions or recommitted to them. Los Angeles, with 600,000 students enrolled in the largest U.S. district, last month banned cloth masks in favor of those with a nose wire, even outdoors, and medical-grade coverings for teachers. Seattle Public Schools, with 56,000 students, are still requiring masks for all students, staff and visitors.
More than 11.4 million child COVID cases have been reported cumulatively. January saw the highest level of infection among children throughout the pandemic, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Some health experts say it’s time to ease masks in schools. In Massachusetts, where face-covering rules are in place through Feb. 28, three Boston doctors were criticized after they wrote a Washington Post opinion piece on leaving masks behind.
Ed Lifshitz, a physician and medical director of the New Jersey health department, said it was “a reasonable assumption that cases will continue to decline, at least for the near future,” but cautioned about continued risk.
“The virus will not have disappeared,” Lifshitz said in Trenton. “It will still be around. People still need to take reasonable protections.”
Still, New Jersey State Senator Michael Testa, a Republican from Atlantic County, said he wanted scientific evidence to support the March 7 maskless date.
“Why isn’t the school mask mandate ending today?” Testa said.
