The meeting on masks in Johnston schools has been postponed again.
“Due to an error on the posted agenda for 2/28/22, and in keeping with the time constraints for posting a public meeting, we needed to reschedule the Monday 2/28 meeting to Tuesday, 3/1/22,” according to Angela A. Brasil, Confidential Administrative Assistant to the Superintendents and Johnston School Committee Secretary.
The new meeting time will be 5:30 p.m., March 1, in the Nicholas A. Ferri Middle School Library, both in-person and virtually.
The Johnston School Committee had originally planned to vote Thursday night (Feb. 17) on a school-wide mask mandate, but that meeting was postponed to Monday, Feb. 28. The committee then changed the date one more time, to Tuesday, March 1.
The special meeting of the committee was announced following Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee’s lifting of the statewide school mask mandate, which leaves the decision up to local school boards, allowing them to make masks optional after March 4.
The committee has now re-advertised the meeting, and an updated agenda can be found at the Rhode Island Secretary of State’s website.
“I believe the committee will decide between mandatory masks in school or as other districts have done, strongly recommend but not mandate masks,” Johnston Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Bernard DiLullo Jr. said Tuesday.
McKee’s administration has instructed school districts to make masking decisions at the local level, citing a steady improvement in COVID-19 case and hospitalization data across Rhode Island.
“Thanks to Rhode Islanders stepping up to do the right thing, together we’ve made considerable progress against COVID-19 and the winter surge,” McKee said while announcing the change in policy. “Based on our decreasing case and hospitalization numbers, our team at the Department of Health feels confident in our plan to safely shift masking guidance for both schools and public settings as we move into an endemic management phase of the virus.”
McKee’s office said the decision to shift policies was made “in collaboration with the Department of Health and based on current COVID-19 data.”
“Since peaking at approximately 6,700 cases a day in early January, Rhode Island’s case numbers have decreased by more than 94 percent,” according to a press release from McKee’s office. “Since peaking at 598 hospitalizations in mid-January, Rhode Island’s number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has decreased by approximately 52 percent. (Hospitalization trends tend to lag behind case trends.) During the week of Jan. 2, there were 9,931 K-12 cases in Rhode Island, compared to 1,547 K-12 cases the week of Jan. 30.”
It will now be up to “cities, towns, and school committees” to implement their own masking policies using updated RIDOH and Department of Education recommendations.
Masking will now be just one of several mitigation measures, like testing, social distancing and symptom screening.
“With cases rapidly declining and continued efforts to improve vaccination rates across the state, were optimistic about the direction were heading,” said Education Commissioner Anglica Infante-Green. “Over the next month, we’ll be working closely with districts to help them review the data, connect with the Department of Health, and create guidance that works for their school communities.”
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