Salem School Committee Approves Full Indoor Mask Requirement

SALEM, MA — The Salem School Committee voted unanimously on Monday to accept recommendations calling for all students and staff to wear mask coverings inside public school buildings to start the school year regardless of coronavirus vaccination status.

The mask mandate is part of a five-point school opening plan Superintendent Steve Zrike outlined last week that also includes extensive surveillance testing, physical distancing during food and mask breaks and tests to ensure proper ventilation in classrooms.

"We have members of our community we need to protect whether they are vulnerable or whether they need to be vaccinated," Zrike said.

The vote came hours after the city released a proposal — pending Board of Health approval on Tuesday — to institute a mask mandate in all public buildings and businesses as of Aug. 23. That proposal also states that all city and school employees must receive a coronavirus vaccine or be subject to twice-weekly testing.

The proposal encourages all private businesses in the city to adopt the same vaccine-or-test standard with their employees as well.

"That's something we need to talk about with our employee unions," Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll, who is also the president of the School Committee, said during Monday's special meeting. "But we really feel like it's a necessary component to keeping everybody safe and avoiding disruptions on the city side. Having a crew go out (for quarantine or sickness) in public services, or police, or fire or any personnel during one of our busiest (fall tourist) seasons is really problematic for us.

"We're also asking folks in our local small business operators — folks that are in our tourism and hospitality space — to mirror that policy as private employers requiring their employees to either be vaccinated or get tested twice a week. They have the same concerns about disruption."

Zrike added that while he believed all students must be given access to in-person education regardless of vaccination status, he said that as a way to "incentive and/or require people to get vaccinated" he will examine making vaccinations or twice-weekly testing a prerequisite for taking part in extracurricular activities like sports, band and theater for age groups that are eligible for the vaccine.

There have been no indications the state or the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association plans to institute any type of rule modifications, mask or vaccine mandates around school sports this fall.

Salem released statistics on Monday saying that while 77 percent of all city residents had received at least one vaccine dose and 67.5 percent are fully vaccinated, that number drops to 55 percent for those ages 12 to 15, 43 percent for those 16 through 19, and 49 percent for those between 20 and 29.

"That's not a good feeling going into our high tourist season and the return to school," Driscoll said while noting that hospitalizations have not risen significantly in recent weeks amid the emergence of the delta variant.

While the majority of public comments read into the record supported the mask and mitigation policy, two people who identified themselves as parents said they would withdraw their students from the district if a mask mandate was imposed, with one parent stating she felt masks were more harmful than preventative.

"I can guarantee you that masks do not do harm to our students," School Committee member Dr. Kristin Pangallo said in response. "That is absolutely not true. I want everyone to know that. I cannot let that stand just as somebody whose children need the masks to be kept safe.

"And they need not only themselves to wear the masks, but they need everyone else around them to wear masks too."

Zrike said there are no current plans for a remote option for families who do not feel comfortable sending students back to the classroom this year because there was no demand for it when Salem would have had to have applied for a remote academy waiver — such as the one planned in Peabody — in the spring.

But he added that any families with students who have health conditions that may make in-person school prohibitive during the delta surge should contact his office to talk about alternatives.

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(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.)

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