Many Rockville Centre parents pleased that masks can come off in schools

Gov. Kathy Hochul an-nounced on Sunday that the state directive requiring children in schools and child care facilities to wear masks would end on Wednesday, after the Herald went to press.

Hochul likened the Covid-19 pandemic to a “war that has been unfolding for the last two years, where our country has been under siege by this unseen assailant — one that has taken thousands of lives of Americans and New Yorkers.”

In defense of the mask mandate, Hochul said that when she was sworn into office six months ago, her priority was to get children back to school, but that wearing masks was the best guarantee that they would be safe, especially since a pediatric vaccine was not available until November.

“We’re going to talk about where we came from in these last six months,” Hochul said at a news conference on Sunday, “and you see the spikes and the infection rates that really validated the rationale and the logic behind ensuring that we had those masks in place through those spikes — especially the Omicron variant.”

Rockville Centre Board of Education President John O’Shea said he was pleased with Hochul’s decision. “My personal opinion is that it’s healthy for our kids to finally see the smiles and facial expressions of their teachers and their peers,” O’Shea said, “and I think that we will be cautious as we move forward to make sure we follow all the protocols coming down from the state of New York. We will be very respectful, and make sure that everybody is comfortable if they want to wear a mask or if they don’t want to wear a mask.”

District spokesman Matthew Cobb said that Acting Superintendent Robert Bartels would not comment on the decision.

The lifting of the mandate was met mostly with approval from Rockville Centre residents. Responding to a Herald inquiry on Facebook, however, Jen Galvin said she still had some concerns going forward.

“It’s hard to celebrate the mandate being lifted when [its] lawfulness was questionable at best and there are still regulations in place allowing all of the mandate madness to be reinstated at the drop of a hat,” Galvin wrote. “Children and teens have paid a very high price for far longer then necessary due to our leadership.”

Bill Carberry questioned why it took so long to lift the mandates. “She should have done it a long time ago,” he wrote of Hochul. “She is a half term governor.”

Maura Ressegger wrote that she believed Hochul was forced to act, and didn’t truly support unmasking children. “She didn’t have a choice now that the CDC told us they weren’t needed,” Ressegger said. “If it was up to her, the kids would be masked until November when she gets voted out.”

Using a series of large diagrams, Hochul illustrated her use of positivity rates, hospitalizations, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, and consultations with “the educational community, whose voices needed to be heard — our commissioner of education, our parents, our PTAs, our school superintendents, our school administrators and our school unions,” in the process of deciding whether to continue requiring masks.

From a high seven-day state average of 14,167 pediatric Covid cases as of Jan. 10, with 38 children hospitalized, the numbers had dropped steadily for 48 days. The most recent seven-day average of pediatric cases was 226, and seven children were hospitalized.

Hochul said the current numbers reflect “our lowest point in pediatric cases since July of 2021, and that was before the school year started. … We are in a much, much better place.”

The improved statistics were confirmed late Friday by a CDC report that broke down the number of Covid cases in New York by county.

“They’ve come up with a calculation on what constitutes a low, medium or high community risk level,” Hochul said, “and 70 percent of our population now lives in an area considered low to medium risk.” The CDC recommendation is that, for those communities, there’s no need for children to be required to wear masks indoors, including those in day care.

“So, given the decline in our infection rates, our hospitalizations, our strong vaccination rates and the CDC guidance,” Hochul said, “my friends, the day has come.”

She said that communities designated higher risk had the option to enact more restrictive measures, but the state would not enforce a mask requirement in those areas.

In response to Hochul’s announcement, County Executive Bruce Blakeman said, “While I believe the governor’s decision to end her unconstitutional mandate is too little too late, I am happy that parents will soon have the power to decide what is best for their kids, and our students will finally be able to return to normal and see the smiling faces of their friends again.”