Request to drop masks in schools
Greene County officials send letter to Gov. Hochul
Greene County officials sent a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul Thursday demanding she drop masking requirements in schools by Friday, Feb. 25.
The letter, sent by the Greene County Legislature and endorsed by County Administrator Shaun Groden, also demands the mandate requiring unvaccinated teachers to be frequently tested be dropped.
Hochul ordered universal masking in schools last August, when the delta variant was circulating, and has kept the mandate as other states in the Northeast have dropped theirs. On Tuesday, Hochul confirmed she would reconsider the policy on March 4 and possibly drop it later that week.
In the letter, the legislature asks the mandate be dropped by Friday, before schools go on winter break.
The mandate “has gone on for far too long and has interfered and severely affects the lives of our youngest and most innocent residents, our children,” according to the letter. “We firmly believe that mask-wearing for this length of time can cause serious physical, psychological and developmental harm which outweigh any remaining benefits to mask-wearing.”
Masks also hinder learning and social interactions at schools, according to the letter.
The letter goes on to say the legislature firmly believes that “widespread mask-wearing is an overreaction influenced by the constant barrage of publicity regarding COVID-19 in the press,” and that the decision should be in the hands of local authorities.
Groden said the letter stemmed from his Wednesday meeting with school superintendents. The superintendents asked Groden to send the letter, pointing out children would be in maskoptional settings for the break anyway, Groden said, only to come back to the mask mandate.
Groden said may parents were protesting the continued mask requirements.
“It’s getting to the point where many school board meetings have a lot of parents that are angry,” he said. “There’s people who are standing in the parking lots, saying ‘take the masks off ’ and that kind of stuff, so that’s what kind of started it,” he said of the letter’s origins.
In the Greene County community of Greeneville on Monday, about 30 students staged a walkout to protest the mask mandate, leading to an emotional and fraught school board meeting that night. On Tuesday, the district went remote for the rest of the week, with the superintendent saying the students protesting the masks were wandering the halls and being disruptive.
The letter to Hochul didn’t make arguments as to why the testing mandate for unvaccinated teachers should also be dropped, but Greene County Legislature Vice Chair Matthew Luvera said the requirements were “a burden on the school districts.”
Greene County’s active caseload of COVID-19 cases peaked Jan. 11 at 1,375 active cases with 41 residents hospitalized. As of Friday, there were 38 positive cases in the county, with four people hospitalized.