Submitted by Jonathan Perloe, RTM District 8
To the editor,
A constituent contacted RTM District 8 members, asking us to vote in favor of Item 8 on this month’s Representative Town Meeting agenda. The proposal, which was added to the agenda by petition, calls for the Town to pass an ordinance that private and public schools in Greenwich shall not require students to wear masks, nor shall the Town of Greenwich enforce state or federal orders, regulations or statutes requiring such coverings for healthy children. Current state law requires all children to be masked in school.
I responded to the constituent with the following:
Thanks for contacting me concerning the proposed ordinance before the RTM to allow parents to decide if their children should wear masks in school. I appreciate the impact that mask-wearing has on learning; my daughter is an elementary school teacher and I hear about it from her regularly.
However, Gov. Lamont’s Executive Order 14A requires all students to be masked. It was ratified by the CT General Assembly, making it state law. According to our Town Charter, and to state statute 7-148, the RTM is not allowed to pass ordinances or laws that violate state law. Assistant Town Attorney Aamina Ahmad stated the proposal is not in legal order. For that reason alone, I will not vote in favor of the proposed ordinance. It is not up to the RTM to decide which laws it does and does not favor, or to second-guess the legislature.
If the choice about whether or not to mask had no consequences beyond the parents’ own children, we might be having a different discussion. But it’s simply not true.
The protection afforded to both the wearer of masks, and others, is not an “abstract concept” as you suggest. This Forbes article references a range of studies that conclude that wearing masks prevents the spread of the SARS CoV-2 virus. Forbes is generally not considered a left-leaning publication.
Further, your assertion that children do not spread COVID-19 is not accurate. Studies report that in some cases, transmission by children can be as high as among adults. Since more than seven million children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, and since most children live with adults, that’s a lot of added risk to parents and other adult family members, not to mention educators. New pediatric cases have exceeded 100,000 per week for the past 17 weeks, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
While it is true that children are much less likely to be hospitalized or have fatal cases of COVID-19, I don’t agree with you that “children as a rule aren’t getting sick.” More than 750 children and teens have died from COVID-19, thousands have been hospitalized. According to the CDC, one in four pediatric hospitalizations require intensive care. With the rapid spread of the Delta variant over the summer (when most kids weren’t in school), hospitalization rates among children increased ten-fold.
While you reference potential health concerns from children wearing masks, according to the Mayo Clinic, “studies have unequivocally shown that there are no negative health effects on children from wearing a mask.”
Despite the relatively low rate of serious illness among children, I believe the benefits of mask-wearing, despite the impact on learning, outweigh the costs. As a Mayo Clinic Children’s Center physician stated, “We still don’t know the impacts on developing organs, bodies, organ systems in kids or whether there might be other long-term impacts that have not come to light yet. When you look at all those things, it becomes important to do whatever we can to try and prevent kids from getting this infection.”
On matters of public health, I follow the science. Regardless of the illegality of the proposed ordinance, I would not vote to let parents put other children, their families and our teachers at risk of contracting COVID-19. I’m willing to make some sacrifices for the common good, and from what I hear, so are kids. Better we model civic-minded behavior than selfish, “it’s all about me” mindsets.