Monday is a big day for Massachusetts public schools. Students are back from their February break, and the state is no longer requiring masks in schools.
But those two events coming on the same day gave some Massachusetts school districts pause. Every school district is making its own decision whether to make masks required or optional. While many districts are lifting the mandate Monday morning, and others are leaving them in place indefinitely, districts like Framingham, Revere, Lowell, Lynn and Medford found a third option: keeping the mandate in place for another week, or two, to give students and staff more protection if there’s a spike after the break.
Framingham’s school mandate is set to lapse on March 7, the same day the citywide mask mandate will expire. Christine Mulroney, the Framingham Teachers’ Association president, called it an “extra layer of safety.”
“We're returning from a week visiting with with family and potentially vacationing, and that would be staff and students, and that gives everyone an opportunity to test and quarantine, should they need to,” she told GBH News Sunday.
But Mulroney added the Baker administration’s decision to drop the statewide school mandate was understandable based on the low case numbers.
“As an association, I think we were glad the superintendent made the decision — along with the city — to wait a week,” she said.
The thinking was much the same in Revere, where the mask mandate will stay in place for two more weeks. Revere Superintendent Dianne Kelly said the decision came after the district saw a spike after the December holidays, leading officials to believe the same could happen in February.
“Because Covid rates in Revere have (and continue to) trend higher than the rest of the state throughout the pandemic, we wanted to leverage our weekly pooled testing to ensure there is no spike after the vacation as we encountered after the December break,” Kelly told GBH News over email Sunday. “Assuming we don’t see a spike, masks will become optional on March 14th.”
But students in Boston, Cambridge, Lawrence and Springfield will have their masks on indefinitely. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told GBH News in mid-February that it hasn’t been decided if the mandate will lift before the end of the school year, pointing to Boston school buildings’ poor ventilation system.
“Our mask mandate will stay on beyond the state's lifting that they've prescribed at the end of the month,” Wu said. “This is reflecting that the condition in our schools is different than across just the general public and across other school districts.”
Meanwhile, students and staff will no longer have to mask in schools starting Monday in cities and towns such as Franklin, Beverly, Dedham and Gloucester.
