Marblehead Schools Make Mask-Optional Leap This Week

MARBLEHEAD, MA — For the first time in nearly two years on Monday, students and staff at three Marblehead schools had the choice of whether to mask up or not while inside those school buildings.

The Marblehead School Committee on Thursday night endorsed Superintendent John Buckey's recommendation that the high school, middle school and Village School will all now be mask-optional having received a waiver from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's mandate, which states that masks remain mandatory in schools at least through Feb. 28 unless the school population has at least an 80 percent coronavirus vaccination rate among students and staff.

Buckey said Brown Elementary and Glover Elementary are both at about 65 percent for students and must keep the masks on until reaching 80 percent or DESE allows the order to expire in three weeks. The three newly mask-optional schools are all well over 80 percent vaccinated.

While the town of Marblehead has a mask order for all indoor public spaces, Buckey said he received confirmation from the Board of Health that the schools do not fall under that order during the learning day. Masks must still be worn when participating in and attending indoor athletic events at the schools.

"Mask-optional does not mean mask-prohibitive," he told the Committee. "We will still strongly encourage mask-wearing. Our leaders will model mask-wearing. There will be students and staff who will elect to continue (to wear masks)."

Buckey told Patch he went to all three schools on Monday and estimated that about 90 percent of staff and 60 percent of students were still wearing masks at Marblehead Middle School and the Village School. He said about 40 percent of high school students and 80 percent of high school staff remained masked on Monday.

"I am impressed with how well the administration, faculty and staff attended to the social-emotional impact the change might have," Buckey told Patch. "Similar to what I heard was the impact in other communities was what we saw here in Marblehead — the fear of the unknown and 'what ifs' seem to have been worse than what we actually realized.

"It was a good day."

Buckey said the recommendation to end masking where possible was made based on the town's high vaccination rates, a change in DESE guidelines that made masking strongly encouraged for unvaccinated students but not an enforcement requirement for the schools, and declining cases from the recent coronavirus surge.

He recommended all schools return to full masking for the one week following February vacation as an added precaution.

He said administrators will continue to wear masks, at least in the short term, as a way to help the transition and support those who still choose to wear them.

"This has been a while in coming," said School Committee Chair Sarah Gold in backing Buckey's recommendation. "I would go as far as to say that it should not be a surprise to most.

"I am really excited to take this step forward. It's a huge step toward normalcy. For most of us, that's what we need right now."

Buckey said the new state student and staff testing protocol plays into the mask policy as well in that families must be diligent about using the at-home tests and reporting any positive results for the optional-masking policy to remain effective.

"We are really moving from schools policing testing to families managing it," he said. "This is where we have to count on families to support in-school education and do the right thing."

When asked what would happen if Brown and Glover were added to the mask-optional ranks without hitting the vaccination threshold and securing a state waiver, he said the DESE guidelines state that any school in session in violation of the state's order will not have that day of learning count toward the 180 days required for a full school year.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)