Here we go again

 song to accompany yesterday's release of new state guidance for schools:

Note especially "...there's no way to win"

As I noted to Scott O'Connell when I spoke to him on Thursday, it was "not very reassuring" to be waiting on the state again, having been let down so many times before.

And so it wasn't perhaps all that surprising that in marked contrast to both the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Massachusetts Departments of Public Health and Elementary and Secondary Education instead gave us this, which doesn't mandate anything, recommends masks for K-6, says those students who are over 6th grade don't need masks, while continuing to emphasize that every single child needs to be in the buildings.

But you know: you do you. No mandates.

As the current trope online goes: tell me you've never created and implemented local education policy without telling me you've never created and implemented local education policy.

No child under 12 (unless they're in the handful that are in trials) is vaccinated. Thus every single elementary school is full of unvaccinated people; they are by definition unvaccinated gatherings. That's why the Committee on Public Health heard from doctor after doctor on Monday saying that mandating masks in schools was "a no brainer."
Why even for secondary students? Well, first, because being vaccinated/unvaccinated is invisible, so, no, you really can't create one policy for those who are and one policy for those who are not (have you ever run a classroom? no?). Secondly, while it happens less often, those who are vaccinated can spread the illness. It's particularly ironic that the CDC cited the outbreak in Provincetown in making this argument, something which the Baker administration is ignoring. 

This of course means that some are going to blow off masks entirely. And it goes right back to making this a district by district war, which, if you've been paying any attention to school committees, is the last thing we need right now. 

As I said to Max Larkin, the position this puts many families in is untenable: 

Tracy O’Connell Novick, a member of the school committee in Worcester, said she feels “let down” by the latest state intervention.

“Think of the choices families have to make right now, in particular for families with children that have any kind of vulnerability” to the virus, Novick said. With masks optional but fully in-person learning mandatory, per state policy, “what kind of choices do they have?”