Liam Grace-Flood Photo
Anti-mask protesters crowd outside the BOE Monday night.
While most Connecticut schools drop mask mandates, New Haven’s and Hamden’s boards of education Monday night voted to keep their policies in place.
Gov. Ned Lamont as of Monday lifted a Covid-19-prompted statewide requirement that demanded everyone don masks while inside all schools and childcare centers, instead granting local leaders the power to determine whether or not to continue enforcing mask wearing in public schools. He reported Monday that 85 to 90 percent of school districts followed by dropping their mandates.
Hamden’s Board of Education decided in a 5 to 3 vote Monday night to choose the potential “harm in wearing a mask,” including injured social and academic development, over the “harm in not wearing a mask,” meaning the risk of disease transmission.
The New Haven board voted unanimously 5 – 0 to keep the mandate in place after a presentation from city Health Director Martiza Bond recommending the continuation to ensure “situational awareness.” She spoke of low Covid-19 vaccination rates among students as a concern. Board member Darnell Goldson expressed concern about the lack of plan for how to get back to “normality” and decide when to lift the mandate.
Strong Feelings On Both Sides In Hamden
Hamden’s meeting took place via Zoom while 20 anti-mask protesters chanted the words “freedom” and “mask choice” outside of Hamden’s Board of Education for over two hours.
The board heard from lots of people: 100-plus individuals who wrote in to the Board of Education arguing in favor of or against the mask mandate, 300 Monday night Zoom attendees, Mayor Lauren Garrett, Hamden schools Lead Nurse Marsha Guglielmino, and eight present members of Hamden’s Board of Education. They contributed anecdotal, scientific, and policy-oriented hypotheticals that further complicated the question of covid-related harm reduction.
Superintendent Jody Goeler began the meeting by reading out relevant numbers: On Feb. 24, Hamden’s case rate over the previous two-week period was 12.7 covid-positive people out of 100,000. Hamden and New Haven County are currently in a period of low transmission. Hamden as a whole has a vaccination rate of 70 percent, and 96 percent of school staff across the district are vaccinated.
However, among Hamden’s youth populations, only 37 percent of children aged five to 11 are fully vaccinated, as are just 55 percent of 12 through 17-year-olds.
Given the continued uncertainty around the future of Covid-19 and its variants, Goeler noted that basing a decision around masking on numbers alone is impossible. Rather, he said, whether or not to mask students has “more to do with any community’s risk tolerance.”
Superintendent for Human Resources and Administration Gary Highsmith unpacked data collected from roughly 700 of Hamden schools’ 1,100 employees concerning staff feelings around that risk.
A survey administered by Hamden schools found that more than 57 percent of employees agreed that the mask mandate should continue past the end of the state requirement. Fifty four percent said they would feel uncomfortable coming into work if the mask requirement was lifted. And 87 percent said that they would believe in reinstating a mask mandate if Covid-19 cases began to “peak” again.
Highsmith said that that last question determined that “this isn’t a staff that’s anti-mask, and they’re certainly not anti-vax.” But the fact that more than half of employees expressed discomfort with being exposed to unmasked colleagues and students gave him concern that ending the mask mandate could contribute to extant staff shortages.
A final question inquired as to when school employees believed the district should rescind the mask mandate. About 37 percent voted Feb. 28 — and 42 percent the end of the school year. Around 20 percent chose either April or May first.
Special BOE meeting attendees Monday night.
The two most vocal BOE members in favor of dropping the mask mandate were Gary Walsh and Austin Cesare, Republican educators in neighboring school districts.
Walsh pointed out the inconsistencies around mask wearing, like how students are exposed to one another everyday while eating in their schools’ cafeterias, as reasons to give up on the mitigation strategy.
Cesare continued that he believes children “lose their communication skills, lose their ability to have conversations and discussion, and miss social cues” due to masks.
“We were mask optional today in my classroom,” Cesare said. At one point during the lesson, he said, the group learned that it was one of their peers’ birthdays. “The smiling faces … wishing the kid a happy birthday … That’s something we haven’t seen in two years,” Cesare lamented.
Cesare argued that because the majority of Connecticut municipalities have chosen to drop the mandate, he expected Hamden to face new challenges in enforcing mask wearing. “We’re gonna have a lot of kids who say, no, we’re not wearing them,” he anticipated.
“What will be the consequences?” he asked. “Are you gonna suspend everybody? What’s the policy… What’s the purpose of a mandate if you’re not gonna have a penalty?”
Reporters interview children about their stance on masking while crowd members are heard yelling: "I'm not wearing a mask no matter what!"
David Lee Asberry, on the other hand, questioned: “How are we gonna deal with the students who want the masks on? How are we gonna deal with the teachers who really, really want the masks on? It goes both ways.”
Board of Education President Melissa Kaplan, meanwhile, spoke out in favor of sticking to masking in schools on the basis that “schools must be a safe space for everyone,” including “our immunocompromised.”
She commented that children under 5 years old are still unapproved for vaccination; that the above surveys indicated that the majority of teachers wanted additional protections against disease; that an imminent spring break will no doubt lead families to travel to areas with higher infection rates; that students of color would be disproportionately exposed to the spread of Covid-19 by lack of masks; and that isolation in the form of closed classrooms — and time away from mental health supports, shelter, and food access — is a greater threat to student well-being than masks, and one that is made more likely by the absence of masking.
Mayor Garrett also spoke at the meeting, backing BOE President Kaplan.
She said that while she had rescinded Hamden’s mask mandate, “if our infection rate goes up again, all I have to do is sign an executive order.”
With the BOE, on the other hand, “it’s a little more slow moving,” she stated. There’s the scheduling of a special meeting, collective discussion, another vote to be had.
Marsha Guglielmino, Hamden’s lead nurse, has been tracking Covid numbers across the district for the past two years. She pitched in with her opinion, saying, “I feel it’s a little too early to make this decision — we don’t have much information.”
“We don’t know where we’re going,” she said. “Right now we’re kind of where we were last October around Halloween. And then things got worse… and things got really bad.”
LIZ GRACE PHOTO
Ultimately, the BOE decided that more time — and therefore more information — will be key in choosing the right time to rethink masking. The vote was split along party lines: Three Republicans against five Democrats.
After the vote was finalized, the Hamden Republican Town Committee distributed a press release “condemning” the decision.
“It is clear that tonight’s decision was a political one, and not one made in the best interest of Hamden students and their parents,” the RTC wrote. “The only group of people in Hamden that are now mandated to wear a mask is that which is least as risk.”
Goeler agreed to give the BOE weekly updates on vaccine and case trends through the rest of the school year. The BOE will meet next on March 8, and expressed intent to reevaluate before April 1 as to whether or not to keep kids masked.
View From New Haven
At New Haven’s board meeting, Health Director Bond reported that 46 percent of students aged 5 – 17, or 10,421 students, have received a first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. Thirty eight percent of students have received their second dose (8,691 individuals).
Bond compared New Haven’s vaccination rates to those in neighboring cities like North Haven, Hamden, and Woodbridge. The city’s rates fall just below West Haven’s total rates for individuals ages 5 – 17. (View Bond’s presentation here.)
“With the vaccination rates being so low, it is concerning when we have the largest district in Connecticut,” Bond said.
A total of 4,774 (39 percent) student in New Haven Public Schools are considered high risk with compromising medical conditions like asthma, diabetes, and food allergies.
The district plans to continue to work closely with the health department to monitor the efforts and surveil new Covid-19 variants of concern like BA.2, which as of Feb 24 has caused 32 cases throughout the state.
Additional mitigation strategies will remain in place in schools such as the use of cohorts, testing, and enhanced ventilation.
Board student representative Anthony Fiore said he thinks it is a good idea to continue the mask mandate after students and staff have just returned from winter break.
“From what I’ve seen, students are OK with masks. Actually when there were rumors that we weren’t going to have mask mandates in schools again, it was my experience that students were almost afraid to not have them. They almost didn’t feel safe,” he said.
He suggested that the district push schools to offer more outdoor lessons as Spring approaches.
“Right now is just not the time to not wear a mask,” fellow student rep Ma’Shai Roman added.
Superintendent Iline Tracey asked if the mandate should have a time limit.
“If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from the pandemic, it’s that we don’t know what’s going to happen two weeks from now,” Mayor Justin Elicker responded. “My suggestion is we don’t try to restrict ourselves by any particular time limit.”
Board member Darnell Goldson sent an email to the board raising concerns about the new vote lacking a “definition or description of what it would take to end the mask mandate.”
Goldson’s email follows:
Dr. Tracey,
I just reviewed the presentation from the mayor and the health director. I’m a little concerned and confused by the last slide, which states “Recommend continuing with mask mandate to unforeseeable future…”
I have many concerns with the information provided and the lack of a plan for how this district gets back to normality. My first concern is that there doesn’t seem to be a definition or description of what it would take to end the mask mandate. Does getting 70, 80 or 90 percent of the students vaccinated with second shots or boosters get us to that point? if 40% of the students are high risk, how and to what number must that be lowered to make it safe?
Suggesting that our people will wear mask until the “unforseebale future” is unacceptable and certainly is not fair to the people of this district, and certainly is not leadership.
Providing us with goals and a plan to reach those goals is the leadership we need. I would like to see recommendations from health professionals, including whatever the Governor used to eliminate his mask mandate, as well as the CDC’s conclusions, and whomever Ms. Bond consulted with to finalize her recommendation.
I have not concluded where I stand as to supporting or not supporting a continued mask mandate, but without more information this presentation does not help me make that decision.
Darnell Goldson
NHPS Board Member