“Lessons learned: Masking up in schools” (Item, Aug. 20) exposed the contentious opposition local municipal officials are facing from some parents over requirements for students and school employees to wear masks when the academic year resumes in three weeks.
Swampscott’s School Committee meets on Aug. 25 to discuss a school mask requirement. Angry parents during a Wednesday meeting decreed that medical decisions concerning their children are solely their prerogative.
Oh well — so much for the assumption that mature adults grasp the concept of collective responsibility when it comes to combating global threats like COVID-19. We’re not surprised by this resistance: It was leveled quite bluntly by mask opponents reacting to our editorial calls for concerted mask-wearing efforts and vaccination participation.
Dogged insistence on individuality does not square with COVID-19’s reality.
Medical decisions are solely a parental choice if a parent has a completely outfitted hospital in their cellar. Education is solely a parental choice for parents who home-school.
We obey traffic signals, wear seatbelts and stay off our phones when we are driving because we recognize the collective responsibility we share in order to ensure we can all get around safely.
That sense of collective responsibility applies to requiring masks to be worn in schools until COVID-19 is eradicated. Let us state emphatically that masks are a necessity in schools until everyone who can get vaccinated gets vaccinated.
In cases where the youngest students cannot get the vaccine, masks are a safety measure with their effectiveness increased to the degree that older students as well as all school staff are vaccinated.
This simple logic and the importance of returning students ‒ masks not withstanding ‒ to in-person learning has failed to snuff out vitriolic debates over mask mandates implemented or under debate in local communities.
Lynn’s School Committee stood behind Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Tutwiler on Thursday in support of a school mask mandate.
But Swampscott and Lynnfield parents are at war with town officials over mask mandates with one irate parent calling Lynnfield officials ‒ including Board of Health member Kelly Migliero who lost her father to COVID-19 ‒ “child abusers” during a packed Wednesday night meeting.
Lynnfield Fire Chief Glenn Davis underscored the dangerous late-summer rise is COVID-19 case numbers in the town, with Lynnfield’s 14-day average daily incidence rate at 20.9 compared to the 12.2 state average this week.
Town officials wisely established a mask mandate, effective Aug. 23, and backed it up with a $200 fine.
Vaccines are the ultimate weapon in the war against the virus. In the meantime, mask requirements ensure students don’t have to repeat the frustration and isolation of 2020’s remote learning year.
