NORTHAMPTON — Masks will be optional for most students, faculty, staff and visitors at Northampton public schools starting Monday.
The School Committee voted 7-3 Thursday night to lift the districtwide mask mandate, a reversal of last week’s vote to continue the mandate on the advice of the city’s Health Department and Board of Health.
“It’s a nuanced message,” Superintendent John Provost said of the optional masking policy, adopted after health officials released a new set of recommendations, including that some people should still wear them. The mandate could return based on COVID-19 transmission rates.
The district needs to notify the school community and take other administrative steps including translating documents into Spanish, making March 28 the “earliest feasible implementation date” for optional masking, Provost said.
Before the vote, committee member Kaia Goleman of Ward 7 read a letter that Public Health Director Merridith O’Leary wrote on Wednesday.
The letter affirms that city health officials would support optional masking if the district takes certain precautions, including improving air ventilation and following contact tracing, monitoring and masking guidelines for people who have been exposed or tested positive for COVID-19 and have left quarantine.
“Masks are recommended for individuals who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, individuals who are immunocompromised or have other conditions placing them at increased risk for severe illness, and individuals who live with those who are at increased risk for severe illness,” the letter reads.
The letter also provided certain metrics that would make a new mask mandate necessary: a “high” level of community transmission of the coronavirus in Hampshire County for two consecutive weeks, or a determination by the Superintendent’s Health Advisory Committee that there is an increased risk of disease based on higher in-school transmission rates.
During the public comment period, the virtual meeting was “Zoom bombed,” in the words of Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, the School Committee chair. While a member of the public was speaking, the message “Aroon Perez has started screen sharing” took over the screen, followed by about 15 seconds of pornography.
Sciarra apologized, thanked member Emily Serafy-Cox for removing the video from the screen and said the committee would be ready to act quickly if it happened again. Later in the meeting, Sciarra said the committee would disable further video sharing by members of the public in response to another attempted Zoom bombing.
Emily Boddy, an optional masking activist and co-founder of the new organization MaskChoice Pioneer Valley, said before the vote that the mandate should be lifted “without delay.” She listed some of the surrounding communities that have lifted their school mask mandates, including Easthampton and Hadley, and said Northampton was one of the few communities in the state that had not done the same.
MaskChoice held its inaugural event on Wednesday morning in the form of a protest against the district mask mandate on the steps of City Hall.
Breanne Schwartz, a speech pathologist who said she has 17 years of experience working with children and families, said masks decrease the volume and change the frequency of human speech while hiding visual communication cues.
“We don’t realize how important these cues are until they’re missing,” Schwartz said. “Mask wearing has gone on for so long that it has become a hindrance at best and an imposed learning disability at worst.”
Natalie Tur, the parent of a second grader, said the committee had “overrepresented” those with compromised immune systems when it voted March 17 to keep the mandate. She said people with other needs including social challenges would have benefited from removing the mandate.
“It is time we reprioritize our good intentions,” Tur said. “It is no longer fair to hold the children of Northampton solely responsible for the safety of the entire community.”
Otis Rogers, the parent of a Leeds Elementary School student, encouraged masking “a little longer” for the benefit of “high-risk” families like his own.
“The mask mandate has been lifted almost everywhere in our lives now, and we can choose not to go to the grocery store, we can choose not to go to the convenience store, we can choose not to go to a party with our friends,” Rogers said, “but we cannot choose to leave our kid home. There is no virtual option.”