WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Mount Greylock Regional School District will not be ending its face-covering requirement for staff and students until at least a couple of weeks after the commonwealth mandate ends on Feb. 28, Superintendent Jason McCandless announced on Thursday night.

 

McCandless told the School Committee at its February meeting that he wants to see at least a couple of weeks worth of data after students return from the February vacation before taking the step of relaxing face-covering rules in school buildings.

 

“At this point, we are not considering lifting the mask requirement until we have data stretching out at least, at a minimum, two or three weeks following a return from winter break,” McCandless said.

 

“I have to say as a school leader in the commonwealth, I was rather surprised [by Gov. Charlie Baker’s announcement this week]. … I was assuming that he would be maybe taking a page out of the New Jersey governor’s playbook and say, ‘We’re back from break on the 28th. We’re going to make the mask restrictions go away two weeks from that point so we could see what the aftermath of break looks like.’ I was a bit taken aback that that was not the case.”

 

To back up his point, McCandless showed the committee data indicating the preK-12 district hit its recent high point of cases, with 50 student cases and 12 adult cases, following the December break.

 

Since then, the district’s COVID-19 case count has declined, with 21 positive cases among students and three adult cases for the week ending Feb. 9.

 

McCandless did say that the district will be taking a number of steps to help return to a sense of normalcy starting Feb. 28, but removing face-coverings will have to wait a little bit longer.

 

He implied that lifting the mask requirement without knowing the case rate and other conditions could lead to a situation where students are masked, then unmasked and then masked again. He likened that to the uncertainty students and families experienced last year when they were unsure whether school would be in-person or remote.

 

“We are not lifting our mask requirements as of Monday, Feb. 28,” McCandless said. “It does not strike me as the right thing to do. We need time to work with local health officials. We want to hear from the families we serve, we want to hear from the staff we work with, we want to hear from our students who have thoughts on this.”

 

“We will not be looking at unmasking for at least two or three weeks, and, in honesty, I’m not sure that that is the absolute highest priority for a lessening of requirements that we have in the Mount Greylock Regional schools, but we do see other opportunities to open up a little further and return to some normalcy, even if we continue to keep masking.”

 

The good news for the district’s families is that, as of Feb. 28, a number of COVID-related restrictions will be lifted:

 

♦ Athletes will be allowed to compete unmasked; but will remain masked while on the bench.

 

♦ Musicians, actors and dancers will be allowed to perform unmasked.

 

♦  capacity limits will be removed for performances and games; though face-coverings will be required for audience members.

 

♦ Group project and work restrictions will be lifted at the district’s schools.

 

“We’re going back to letting kids do group and project group, we’re letting students sit in the ways that individual teachers choose to set up their classrooms and relaxing our distance requirements in classrooms,” McCandless said. “That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I think for a lot of teachers and a lot of students, because of the way that they like to do their work best, it’s a pretty big deal.”

 

McCandless used the opportunity to renew his pleas to families to get their children vaccinated if they are eligible.

 

And, perhaps as importantly, families need to share their child’s vaccination status with the district.

 

McCandless noted that the district suspects some student vaccinations are not showing up in the Massachusetts Department of Public Health database because the students in question were vaccinated in nearby Vermont or New York.

 

One anomaly in the district’s data appeared to support that point. In Williamstown, the Mass DPH numbers indicate that more than 95 percent of Williamstown residents aged 12-15 are fully vaccinated (two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine) but just 47 percent of the town’s 15-19 population is fully vaccinated.

 

And the reporting to the district by families appears to lag even those DPH numbers.

 

At Williamstown Elementary School, for example, just 43 percent of the pupils have been reported and documented by families as being vaccinated. But the commonwealth’s numbers show that 77 percent of the population aged 5-11 is fully vaccinated.

 

“We can move to more and more of a normal school life for our kids and our employees,” McCandless said. “We can do this. Vaccinations and reporting to schools about vaccinations so we can have a good handle on the data we’re using to make these decisions is vital.”