When Harvard schools reopen Sept. 1, all students, staff, and visitors will be required to wear masks while they are inside school buildings as protection against COVID-19. The School Committee unanimously approved the masking policy at a special meeting Aug. 12. The schools will also continue other protective practices—handwashing, extra room ventilation, distancing, and the weekly COVID testing program set up last year.
The mask policy applies to all grades, from pre-K to 12. The only time people can unmask indoors is for a quick drink of water or while having lunch in a well-ventilated room where everyone is spaced several feet apart. Outdoors, however, masking will be optional both for students and adults. And an exemption to the mask requirement is possible—although not guaranteed—if someone has a doctor’s note explaining the reason.
The schools’ policy is in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the American Academy of Pediatrics, both of which urge universal indoor masking for everyone in school, whether vaccinated or not. No students at Hildreth Elementary School are vaccinated, because no vaccine has yet been approved for children under 12. However, more than 90% of 12- to 19-year-olds in Harvard have been fully or partly vaccinated, according to School Committee Chair SusanMary Redinger, based on state data published in the Boston Globe and adjusted to exclude the state prison population.
Nationally, 12 states require masks in all K-12 public schools, and seven states bar schools from requiring masks, according to the data-tracking firm Burbio. Massachusetts neither requires nor bans masking mandates in schools. Instead, it leaves the masking decision up to local school boards. However, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Department of Public Health both “strongly recommend” indoor masking for grades K-6 and for older students and staff who are unvaccinated.
Everyone is also required to wear a mask while on the school bus, because of the CDC’s national requirement for masking on public transportation.
Strong opinions, expressed with civility
Public interest in the masking issue was clearly high. More than 50 people signed on to Zoom for the off-cycle Aug. 12 School Committee meeting focused on that single issue. And even the 9:30 a.m. Aug. 3 Policy Subcommittee meeting, where the mask policy was developed, drew an active group of public commenters. Each meeting allowed a half-hour of public comment before committee members began working through the details of the policy.
Emails galore
At the Aug. 12 meeting, committee Chair Redinger acknowledged the “many, many emails” the committee had received. “We heard you. I know this is a hot topic,” she said, adding that committee members had read every email. In a later email to the Press, Redinger said 22 of 26 emails sent to the School Committee as a board favored masking, with four opposed. No count was available for emails sent to individual members.
While opinions at the meetings ran the gamut from strong support for masking to adamant opposition, no voices were raised. Speaking of those who had attended the subcommittee meeting, Rachel Kopay emphasized that all the comments “came from a place of care for our children. … I don’t want us to tear each other apart,” she said.
Keli Callaghan, who spoke at both meetings, opposed the mask requirement, saying the decision should be left to each family. “It’s a shame … we are choosing the small, small, miniscule chance that something terrible would happen over the education and health and well-being of a number of children,” she said, emphasizing hardships she thought masks created for students with disabilities. At the subcommittee meeting she stated she and her husband were holding places for their children at an out-of-state private school where masks are not required.
Another parent, John Cogan, took the opposite stance, saying he would want to withdraw his children if the Harvard schools did not require masks. “The delta variant [of the coronavirus] is extremely contagious and much more dangerous. … We need to protect ourselves now—not wait for the outbreak and then impose restrictions to protect our children,” he said.
Michael Dirstine acknowledged the debate was unlikely to change anyone’s mind about masking, but he stated his belief that “requiring children to wear masks at school is going to have zero impact on the overall health of our community. … We can choose to live in fear …. [but] the risk to our children is, to all intents and purposes, zero.”
Saying she thought the schools had done an excellent job of keeping students safe, Thalia Charles was the last to speak. She supported masking. “Viruses don’t care what we think or feel,” she said. “That’s not living in fear. That’s just epidemiology.”
It’s just epidemiology
Over the course of the two meetings, about twice as many parents supported masking as opposed it. However, the number of commenters was too small to serve as a valid sample of local opinion.
This fall’s policy on masking and related measures is the ninth revision the committee has made over the past year, as new information has emerged about COVID-19 and as state and federal recommendations have evolved. Pointing to those changes, Redinger promised that the committee would continue to update the policy based on vaccination rates, trends in COVID-19 cases, and recommendations from health care organizations.
