Excepting a protest against mask mandates, a high school near Chicago closed and shifted to remote instruction Friday, according to reports.
With COVID-related closures now a thing of the past, Hampshire High School in District 300 made the move “due to safety concerns and social media threats to disrupt the educational environment.”
Schools in Illinois find themselves in limbo after a judge struck down the state’s mask mandate and Gov. J.B. Pritzker immediately appealed the ruling.
And in Connecticut, which plans to lift its school mask requirement on Feb. 28, superintendents such as Cheshire Public Schools’ Jeffrey Solan say they have been flooded with questions about what they plan to do when the mandate ends in a few weeks, according to the Associated Press.
Solan told the Associated Press that, based on this week’s COVID numbers, he would continue to mandate masks in his district. “Unfortunately, this is an issue where you are not going to make everybody happy,” he told the AP. “We can’t allow those individual passions to decide the debate.”
District leaders across the country, even in states that have been the strictest about face coverings, face a similarly uncertain future as COVID cases plunge and communities press for a return normal while the CDC and some parents say it’s still too early to drop mask requirements.
With Massachusetts planning to lift its school mandate on Feb. 28, the state’s largest district, Boston Public Schools, will continue to require face coverings. Mayor Michelle Wu is keeping the mandate in place because many children are not vaccinated, The Boston Globe reported.
States such as Delaware, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island—which have had mask mandates in place the longest—are also about to pass the decision on to local school leaders.
“The virus still poses a risk of serious illness, particularly among those who are not up to date on their vaccinations,” Delaware Gov. Jay Carney said in announcing the end of the mandate. “But we have the tools to keep ourselves and each other safe.”
But pushback is growing in those and other states where mask mandates had long received the strongest support from parents. Consider this headline from The New York Times: “Why Liberal Suburbs Face a New Round of School Mask Battles.”
Mask tracker: 7 states are dropping school mandates in the coming weeks
A superintendent in the Boston area recently received an email from a parent urging him to drop the district’s mask requirement. In the message, the parent added the qualification, “I am not a Trump supporter,” the Times reported.
Even Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and a parent of students in the same district, is ready to see mask mandates lifted to give students a sense of normalcy, according to the Times.
Washington state school superintendent Chris Reykdal is also calling for an end to mask mandates, The Seattle Times reported. But as of Friday, other state officials were not quite ready to change their policies. Gov. Jay Inslee said on Twitter that he may drop some of the state’s indoor mask mandates within the coming week.
