Photo Credit: scottsdale.org
As availability of Covid-19 vaccines has increased for children, schools around the country are shifting policies. Scottsdale Unified is joining them, as long with the Kyrene School District is announcing that masks will be optional after winter break. The district says that they will still strongly recommend that students wear masks while on campus, but teachers will no longer be expected to enforce it.
While this is likely a significant relief for many parents and teachers, it does not come without concerns. This comes at a time when infections and hospitalizations remain near their highest levels since the winter peak near the start of the year. This also comes as the new “omicron variant” is starting to proliferate around parts of the world, although the physical effects of that seem to be relatively muted.
The decision was announced to parents via email, offering up widespread vaccine access as a reason. Winter break will finish on Friday January 1st, with students scheduled to come back on January 4th. This allows a significant runway period for the delta variant to hopefully taper down and infection rates to drop in Arizona.
That said, the impact of Covid on children has been demonstrably lower on children than adults, and while spread from children to teachers and parents was not to be underestimated, with the proliferation of vaccines that is mostly nullified amongst those wise enough to get vaccinated. What is less often spoken about is the impact on masks as it pertains to a child’s social and emotional development, with studies being done that show that that impact is often negative.
This is a difficult and nuanced situation, balancing the disparate needs of public health during a pandemic, a desire to return back to normal, and the social and emotional needs of children. And while we’re not out of this pandemic yet, we shouldn’t underappreciate the need for children to interact, to see their faces and their lips, and to regain normalcy. We have relatively few excuses at this point, with vaccines and boosters as widespread as they are. So while cautious in our support, we believe that hindsight will show this to be reasonable.