With masks on, off, schools seek a norm

NEW YORK >> When schools fully reopened, the delta variant drove many worries: Would crowded classrooms run up infection rates? Would outbreaks keep many schools closed? Could there be a normal academic year the first since the pandemic began?

The news so far has been reassuring. The vast majority of the nation’s 50 million public school students have been in classrooms, full time and mostly uninterrupted, this fall whether students are masked or unmasked, teachers vaccinated or not. In fact, infection rates declined 35% nationally through the month of September as many schools opened their doors.

Students in Miami were excited to be back in class, said Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “Things are fairly normal in Miami,” he said, “despite the headlines.”

Still, it has not always been pretty. Parents protested at school board meetings over mask mandates or the lack of them. Families had to scramble because of stay-at-home orders. And virus-infected students and teachers prompted worries.

Yet in the sometimes chaotic reopening, there has been dramatic progress. Virus-driven school closures declined steeply from the end of August to late September, from about 240 a week to about 25 a week, according to a survey by Burbio, a company that has monitored district responses to the pandemic. Many districts have relaxed quarantining guidelines. And three-quarters of the nation’s 200 largest school districts began October with a mask mandate.

More progress may be made, given that Pfizer and BioNTech asked federal regulators Thursday to authorize emergency use of their vaccine for children ages 5-11.

Now schools face the question of what comes next. In conservative areas like Wyoming, with fewer safety measures, some schools want to figure out how to encourage more people to get vaccinated. In parts of Georgia that have started requiring masks in schools, there is debate over how much it will help. And in liberal districts like Boston, where infection rates are low, some parents are beginning to question how long masking will be necessary.

These debates reflect a larger societal question: How should we live with COVID-19, since it appears to be here to stay?

“What’s causing all the confusion, the infighting, the disagreement it’s really a lack of goal setting,” said Joseph Allen, a Harvard University expert on maintaining health inside buildings, including schools.

“Zero COVID in schools? Well, that may not be possible.”

Homecoming dances have been canceled. So have athletic events.

But Wyoming, a deeply conservative state, has taken a mostly hands-off approach to schools this fall, despite having one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation. Nearly every county is experiencing an extremely high risk of infection. The state has recommended masks, and in the absence of masks, quarantining unvaccinated students exposed to the virus. But local school boards are calling the shots. And a majority have chosen not to mask.

In Natrona County, where masks are optional, 693 students about 5% were kept home between Sept. 11 and Sept. 24.

And in Sweetwater County School District 1, another mask-optional district, 4% of students and 5% of employees have tested positive for the virus since the beginning of the school year, though case counts declined last week.

Although Sweetwater does not perform in-school testing, the infection rate is relatively high compared to some heavily vaccinated regions with regular surveillance testing, which have shown school positivity rates under 1% this fall.