NJ To Drop School Mask Mandate Next Month

NEW JERSEY — Gov. Phil Murphy will drop New Jersey's school mask mandate, effective March 7.

Murphy will get into further detail at a news briefing beginning 1 p.m. Monday. The New York Times first reported the state dropping its school mask mandate.

"Balancing public health with getting back to some semblance of normalcy is not easy," Murphy said on social media. "But we can responsibly take this step due to declining COVID numbers and growth in vaccinations."

The New Jersey Education Association pushed last month for the state to maintain its school mask mandate amid the omicron variant's surge. The NJEA — the state's largest teacher's union — expressed encouragement about the "rapid decline of COVID transmission in New Jersey."

But the NJEA urged state officials to continue following data and listening to public-health experts, even if that means re-imposing the mask mandate after March 7. The group also encouraged Murphy to allow local districts to continue with their own mask requirements.

"As of today, that data is trending strongly in the right direction, and we look forward to additional public health guidance supporting the move away from mandatory masking in schools," said a statement from NJEA leadership.

As recently as Wednesday, Murphy reiterated that he anticipated dropping the mask mandate before the school year ended. But he didn't put a date on when, citing an increase of in-school transmission of COVID-19 in recent weeks.

"Over the past two weeks, as some schools moved back to all in-person instruction, we have also seen an increase in the rates of in-school transmission," Murphy said at Wednesday's coronavirus news briefing. "We continue to take a multi-layered approach to safety to minimize the spread while everyone is in their school building."

At the same time, overall cases among students and school staff decreased in the past month. State officials reported 24.97 student cases and 58.55 employee cases per 1,000 people from Dec. 27 to Jan. 2. Those figures reduced from Jan. 17-23 to 10.32 student cases and 12.5 staff cases per 1,000 people. The figures include infections transmitted in and out of school.

It's not yet clear what prompted Murphy since then to put a date on the end of the mask mandate.

Opposition and Support For School Masking

A group of pediatricians argued that mask mandates and other COVID-19 safety protocols in schools may not behoove students in a report called Children, COVID, and the Urgency of Normal released Jan. 27. Read more: Group Of Doctors Asks Schools To Return To 'Normal' Amid COVID

Co-author Kristen Walsh, a pediatrician based in Mendham, told NorthJersey.com this week, "It's a paradox that our most highly vaccinated states currently have the most stringent rules in place for children."

Walsh noted that the rates of illness for the new omicron variant are declining.

Doctors did not at first know the effects of the variant, first seen in the United States three months ago.

However, variants such as Delta are still around. In New Jersey in January, hospitals said they saw their highest rates of kids hospitalized with COVID since the pandemic began, and four kids have died of COVID since Christmas.

The state has urged parents to talk to their own pediatrician about the right safety measures for their child.

While the push to end mask mandates in schools has strengthened in recent weeks, several polls have found a majority of Americans backing school mask requirements. Most recently, a New York Times poll from January found 68 percent of Americans backed requiring student masking to control the omicron variant's spread. A poll from December found 28 percent of surveyed adults supporting in-person schooling without masking during the COVID spike, according to The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University.

But a petition backed by New Jersey State Senate Republicans called for Murphy to scale back pandemic protocols, including mask mandates in schools. The #GiveItBack petition has nearly 4,000 signatures as of 12:30 p.m. Monday.

“Parents want their rights to make masking decisions for their kids restored today, not next month,” State Sen. Kristin Corrado, a Republican, said in a news release. “Governor Murphy should Give It Back now. There’s no excuse to wait any longer.”

With reporting from Caren Lissner/Patch Staff