NORTHAMPTON — The Northampton School Committee now has a new mask policy largely in line with rest of the state, capping off months of contentious debate among committee members and residents on how the school should react to another potential outbreak of COVID-19.
The recommended guidelines of the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) are followed by most Massachusetts school districts, with some notable exceptions being in heavily urbanized districts in Cambridge and Boston. Those guidelines do not recommend a universal masking policy, a practice Northampton has used in the past to quell outbreaks in schools, instead only saying that individuals wishing to mask may do so.
Previously, the school had been following its own mask guidelines based on federal CDC recommendations, drawing the ire of some residents. The committee was presented with a petition with more than 200 signatures demanding the district adopt the recommendations from DESE.
Josh Silver, a member of the city’s Ad Hoc COVID Advisory Committee who presented the petition, praised the committee for voting on the adoption, in a statement given to the Gazette.
“The hundreds of Northampton Residents demanding that Northampton Schools should be following state COVID guidelines view this as a very positive development in the collective effort to make sound policy that keeps our children safe and supports a high quality educational system,” he said.
The final vote for the committee to adopt the DESE guidelines at its meeting last wee was 8-2, with committee members Meg Robbins and Michael Stein representing the two dissenting votes.
During the meeting, Stein stated his opposition to the guidelines stemmed in part from the possibility that universal masking requirement would not be able to be implemented as a solution to a future outbreak, as it had been during the pandemic.
“We’ve heard a lot tonight about how reasonable this position is, and how reasonable it is to adopt DESE,” he said. “But we haven’t heard what’s really driving this petition and this motion which is to prevent us from ever, ever using universal masking to deal with a crisis like we faced in the spring.”
One major differentiation from the standard DESE guidelines however was an amendment that gives the mayor, the school superintendent, or the Public Health Department the ability to override the DESE and reinstate a mask policy if they felt it was in the best interest of public health. The amendment was made by committee member Holly Ghazey.
School Committee at-large member Gwen Agna said that previous methods of monitoring the spread of COVID-19, such as pool testing, were no longer available, but the district would measure other types of data such as wastewater amounts to monitor for potential future outbreaks of the virus.
“I think it’s really important to note that the school nurse and health offices have been really on top of what’s going on in schools,” said Agna. “If there becomes more school spread, we can’t control community spread as much, but they are monitoring it. There are students who go home and get tested and report they have COVID, and those kids will wear masks, and there’s a great sense of community about that.”
