Adams, Hochul pressed to lift school mask mandates following New Jersey decision
Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul faced mounting pressure Monday to lift mask mandates for students and teachers — as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy detailed a de-masking plan for next month and Hizzoner boasted that less than 1 percent of pupils were testing positive for COVID-19.
Murphy said he’ll rescind his controversial, statewide order on March 7, calling it “a huge step back to normalcy for our kids,” The Associated Press reported.
Murphy said he made the decision due to the rapidly declining number of cases of the highly contagious Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
Individual school districts will still be able to impose their own rules, he said.
Later Monday, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said the Nutmeg State’s mask mandates for schools will be lifted on Feb. 28.
“I think today with boosters, given vaccines, given the N95 masks, you are in a better position to keep yourself safe, your child is in a better place to keep themselves safe,” Lamont said, according to the CT Insider.
The move came hours after Republican gubernatorial challenger Bob Stefanowski publicly called on Lamont “to immediately remove the mandate,” the site said.
The mask mandate had been set to expire on Feb. 22 and Lamont’s decision allows local districts to impose their own rules, according to reports.
Adams also announced Monday that the rate of infections among city students was approaching zero.
“The daily positivity rate in schools is now less than 1 percent,” Adams said at a press conference.
“We kept saying the safest place for our children is in a school building.”
Parent Natalya Murakhver, who’s among a group of activists opposed to the New York City Department of Education’s mask mandate, said it was time for officials to act.
“I think that’s great,” Murakhver said of Adams’ positivity rate announcement. “But what is the action? While schools are the safest place to be, kids are suffering a terrible cost.”
Murakhver added: “Everywhere we look, we see politicians and celebrities out without masks, enjoying life.”
“They’ve gone back to normal. Why don’t we do that for kids?”
The city has said that the mask requirement helped contain the spread of COVID-19 in the nation’s largest school system, and the DOE said Monday that it’s bound by state law.
Late last month, a Long Island judge ruled against Hochul’s statewide mask mandate, saying it amounted to “a law that was promulgated and enacted unlawfully by an Executive branch state agency, and therefore void and unenforceable as a matter of law.”
But the decision was automatically stayed when the state Department of Health filed an appeal, meaning that “schools must continue to follow the mask rule,” officials said at the time.
The DOE said Monday that it is bound by state law when it comes to school masking.
New York’s statewide masking mandate for schools is set to expire on Feb. 21 and state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R-Lockport) said it was time for Hochul to “stop the insanity, end the mandates and let New Yorkers return to normal.”
“As states and entire nations drop pandemic-era restrictions, New York Governor Kathy Hochul is fighting tooth and nail to keep her unconstitutional mask mandate in place,” Ortt said in a prepared statement.
“At the same time, these politicians and bureaucrats in New York and around the nation hypocritically flout their own rules, appearing maskless in photo ops with children who are forced to mask up in school all day.”
Hochul said Monday that it was “premature” to say whether she’d to follow Murphy’s lead when asked about his announcement during an unrelated news conference in Ulster County.
“We’re hoping to get to that. I’ve said that for weeks: That is our goal,” she said.
“But I’m going to continue looking at the metrics and…I am optimistic that we’re trending in that direction. But I still need the time and I’m assessing.”
After Hochul said she wanted to see “more children vaccinated,” she was asked if there was a particular threshold that needed to be crossed.
“I’d like to see it higher than 34 percent, which is what we’re looking at now for the 5- to 11-year-olds,” she said.
“I think — I know we can do better than that. And again, their older siblings: We’re at about 80 percent for the 12-to-17-year-olds. Let’s get those younger kids vaccinated.”
City Hall didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
During an afternoon news conference, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about Murphy’s announcement and a similar one for the state of Delaware, and responded that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “is still recommending universal masking in schools and that still remains our recommendation.”
“The guidance is very clear, which is that we recommend masking in schools,” Psaki said.
“That is the recommendation from the CDC. It is also true that at some point when the science and data warrants, of course, our hope is that that’s no longer the recommendation, and they are continually assessing that, but the guidance is very clear.”
City school attendance rates have stabilized as COVID-19 infections have dropped.
After dipping to 67 percent after the winter break, attendance climbed to 88 percent early last week before sliding to 83 percent on Friday, according to DOE numbers.
