New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Lamont: End of school mask mandate could be near
Gov. Ned Lamont can see the end of school mask mandates and other COVID-mitigating strategies in sight. But, he said Monday, we’ve been here before.
“The end isn’t calendar-related, it’s infection-related,” Lamont said during a gathering at Bridgeport’s Blackham School. “I thought we were near the end in November.
But if the (positivity rate) trend keeps up, I think we could be nearing the end.”
Lamont spent about an hour touring the school and speaking with Superintendent Michael Testani, Principal Marcie Julian and numerous classroom teachers. The visit came just days after the school distributed self-test kits to all students and KN-95 masks to staff members.
“We distributed 1,085 test kits, two tests per kit,” Julian said. “Our staff was waiting for the masks. The teachers are feeling more safe with the new masks.”
Lamont touted the COVID-19 safety measures, including mask mandates and the air purifiers running in the school’s classrooms, with driving down the virus’s positivity rate. Currently at 11 percent, Lamont said, the rate is much higher than it was in November, but half what it was two weeks ago.
Testani said he appreciated any state help Lamont could provide.
“We all know we face challenges here in Bridgeport,” he said. For example, hiring and retaining teachers is an ongoing problem, he said.
“We do have plenty of vacancies,” he said. “We have the greatest kids in the world, but unfortunately, we face many challenges.”
For example, compared to neighboring suburban districts, Bridgeport’s financial constraints mean teachers end up leaving for betterpaying jobs in the suburbs, Testani said.
“Forty percent of our staff is in their first six years,” he said.
Teachers reaching six years on the job typically are at an age where they are considering buying a home and starting a family, and tax credits and mortgage assistance could be tools to encourage they to stay in the city rather than seek jobs in other districts where the pay scale could be “easily five figures” higher, said Eric Marshall, the Connecticut Education Association’s Bridgeport representative.
COVID magnifies the problem, Marshall said.
“In an urban district, that just created such a strain with things like social distancing, and when we went full-remote in March of 2020, we had kids that don’t have (internet) service. They don’t have problems like that in Westport or Darien,” he said.
Between pay, working conditions and newer facilities, it was no wonder teachers tend to head for the suburbs after a few years, Marshall said.
Kate Dias, the CEA president, thanked Lamont for the allocations of funds and equipment for Bridgeport schools, and said his visit was a chance to double down on supporting education in the city.
“Bridgeport is an exciting, vibrant community that deserves to be celebrated,” she said.
For his part, Lamont agreed the state should look at ways to create incentives for teachers to remain in urban school districts. He acknowledged the class sizes at Blackham — at around 28 — were too high, but added that the city school was an illustration that students could safely attend schools in person.
“The classrooms are crowded, but I love that they’re filled with kids,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to give people confidence that we can keep schools open safely.”
Still, he and Testani both expressed a desire to return to the pre-pandemic schools where students could go unmasked. Lamont said he would be amenable to allowing communities to set their own mask policies if the positivity trends continued to decline.
“The (COVID data) will tell us something pretty soon,” he said. “By early to mid-February, we ought to have a good idea where we stand.”