Get your brackets ready for ‘Mask Madness’
Are you ready for March Madness?
Scratch that — let’s just rebrand it as “Mask Madness.”
Yes, the fever to abandon masks in schools is being staged with all the melodrama of NCAA basketball tournaments. Gov. Ned Lamont (aka, the ref ) has blown the whistle so towns have the power to make masks optional starting Tuesday, March 1.
Maybe the Legislature can even score some extra coin by legalizing betting on the outcomes.
Akin to Wofford College making the cut for the Big Dance, the smaller towns couldn’t wait to get in this game. Lamont tossed the proverbial ball in the air on Monday, Feb. 7. Parents in Oxford, population 12,706, got a note from the superintendent two mornings later that the town’s Board of Education voted the night before to let parents decide on masks starting March 1.
Darien, New Canaan, Greenwich, Fairfield, Ridgefield ... all made masks optional as of March 1.
Other towns have been more strategic. Norwalk distributed a survey to parents with a Feb. 22 deadline. After all, it’s always good to get the fans involved, and city officials probably learned to maintain a safe distance given hostile public meetings in neighboring towns. State Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, said he left a New Canaan forum feeling “demoralized” about the way parents treated one another.
“Boo at us, not at each other,” Haskell implored parents.
Sadly, heckling is the American way.
The Win should not go to the loudest voices in the stands. There’s one petition from The Mask Choice for Norwalk group vs. another asking that the decision be based on science. Emotion vs. strategy.
In Stamford, a group of more than 70 parents and educators sent a letter to Superintendent Tamu Lucero and Board of Education members suggesting that dropping protocols would be premature before the thaw.
They felt their voices were muffled by residents who want the masks gone, including the 100 people who rallied at the Stamford Government Center. That no one covered their mouths in that crowd made signs and statements redundant.
“Some of them made it sound like this is what Stamford wants,” said Ramya Shaw, one of the parents who sent the petition seeking to maintain the mandate.
In some towns, anti-maskers expressed frustration at seeing the Super Bowl crowd back to business as usual (they clearly aren’t watching the Olympics, which may explain why ratings are down for the Games).
In this tournament bracket, Connecticut’s powerhouses are playing cautiously. Waterbury Public Schools outlined a game plan that masks may be considered optional if the threshold of at least two of three criteria are met:
1) At least 80 percent of students would be vaccinated (currently at about 34 percent).
2) A positivity rate in the city of at or below 10 percent (which is now at 7.5 percent).
3) Reduce the target rate of new cases per 100,000 people to 15 (now at about double that).
To torture the sports metaphor even more, that’s like having a free-throw percentage of 33.33 percent.
New Haven didn’t even make the decision conditional. City officials just decided to stay masked up.
“Science says it’s the right thing to do,” Mayor Justin Elicker reasons.
Hartford is sticking to the science as well, requiring masks until at least April 1. Bridgeport is holding off until month’s end to allow time to form a task force to consider the issue. And Danbury awaits further state and federal guidance.
Stamford is an outlier. The city is poised to pivot to a mask-optional policy on March 15 (a foreboding date given it marks the Ides of March in 2022). That allows city officials time to see how things are going in neighboring communities. Even so, Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons says masks are highly recommended, while Dr. Henry Yoon, an adviser, says “if it was purely clinical, we would say you need to wear masks.”
Motorcycle helmets are recommended too, but without a law many riders choose not to protect themselves.
If COVID-19 makes a comeback, Lamont can revive the mandate. But face it, that genie put on too many pandemic pounds to squeeze back in the bottle. In the meantime, I picture Lamont gazing upon the indecision in his fiefdom and chortling: “They called me ‘King Ned,’ now they can’t make up their minds!”
Jennifer Forman, who also signed the Stamford petition seeking to extend the mandate, pointed to the elephant — and donkey — in the room: Many parents are merely taking sides based on politics. So yes, the jerseys are decidedly red or blue.
At risk of straddling the fence like Stamford I can appreciate the view on both sides. My 10-year-old son’s sensory issues are so profound that he’d rather eat broccoli than brush his teeth. Yet when the bus didn’t show up one day and I was driving him to school, I noticed several miles on that he kept his face covered.
“It’s just us, you don’t need to wear the mask,” I said.
“That’s OK, I’m used to it,” he replied.
I also can’t deny my own 10-yearold self would be gagging on his Batman mask by now.
“Getting things back to normal — we all want that,” said Forman, who has two children, ages 7 and 11, in Stamford schools. “We need to care about people other than ourselves.”
She’s saying what everyone should.
Got that bracket ready? Good. Now rip it up. Two years is enough time to realize we’re all on the same team.