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Date: 8/24/2021
HATFIELD – During the Hatfield Select Board’s Aug. 17 meeting, the board met with the Board of Health to discuss masks in schools and municipal buildings.
To start the discussion, Board of Health Chair Robert Osley said the board instituted the mask mandate for schools so children would be protected from COVID-19 and the delta variant.
“We had our last Board of Health meeting on [Aug. 12], and we discussed the various levels of mask mandates and we decided we would not make any decisions on general mask mandates as far as town businesses and other buildings. We discussed levels of risk for the employees here in town hall, but we did not make a decision,” he said. “We did feel because school is starting in less than a week that it was important enough to make a decision on school masking and safety.”
Because of the uncertainty with students returning to classrooms, Board of Health member Elizabeth Kugler said the board wanted to protect unvaccinated students.
“I think we looked at the science of things because this new variant is running more towards kids. We are coming off a summer and going into a situation when they are unvaccinated, and their main protection is a mask. Kids have been running around all summer, but they have not been in a classroom five days a week from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., so we do not really know what to expect but felt it necessary to protect the kids,” she said.
Select Board member Brian Moriarty said the School Committee should have been allowed to make the final decision about a mask mandate in schools.
“For me, I think the Board of Health certainly has an important piece of this puzzle, but I think we need to hear from the School Committee whether it is for or against, people need to know what the School Committee is voting for,” he said.
Moriarty said it was odd that the Board of Health instituted the mandate with zero COVID-19 cases in town as of the meeting.
“There have been no COVID cases in Hatfield this past week. If we are following the science, the science says to wear a mask in a high infection zone. I would have felt more comfortable if something drove it a little bit more like five cases before school started, and rather than make it mandatory make it voluntary,” he said.
Select Board Chair Diana Szynal said she was concerned with the mask mandate because the Board of Health took a more passive role during most of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“For the first 18 months of this the Board of Health has taken a backseat, even despite being asked at times to have a more active role. All of the sudden now we have this decision, my concern is that this was an effort to usurp the School Committee because the School Committee was going to make a different decision,” she said.
By not tracking the current COVID-19 metrics daily, Szynal said it seemed odd to mandate masks in schools.
“I do not see how we can not be communicating with our townspeople about these things and not monitoring MAVEN every day. So, it is not even important enough to monitor MAVEN everyday and we are going to mask our children. That is inconsistent and the decision of the board is inconsistent with what has been happening for the past 18 months,” she said. “If you are not going to report to townspeople what is happening with COVID it seems odd to institute mandates on small children.”
Kugler said she would rather take the initiative when it came to protecting students rather than reacting to a disaster.
“I do not like playing with fire with other people’s kids, all it is going to take is one kid getting infected and dying. I would rather be proactive about it than reactive about it and reevaluate everything in a month. A mask is not going to kill a kid, but COVID will,” she said.
While he did not speak about the school recommendation, Hatfield Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Bob Flaherty said masks should be recommended for vaccinated people in municipal buildings and required for unvaccinated people.
“As the person who is the EMD and directly dealing with COVID patients in town, we do not mandate it, the CDC is recommending masks if you are in a high transmission area, not mandating. We have had three cases in the past 65 days, those are the numbers, that is the science, so we should recommend it for those that are vaccinated, but make it mandatory for those that are not,” he said.
Former COVID-19 coordinator Kerry Flaherty said she never made a decision without first consulting with the Select Board.
“I never ever made a decision without making sure the people in charge of me were informed before that decision was made. I was the one who studied and understood COVID[-19] through and through because it was thrown into my lap 18 months ago,” she said.
Szynal added that she wanted the Board of Health to revisit its mask mandate at another meeting.
“I would encourage you to revisit the decision and base it on the actual numbers of what is happening here, and the actual risks involved with masking our kids in school,” she said.
Ultimately, neither board came to a decision about masking in municipal buildings or schools and the Board of Health agreed to review its decision at a future meeting.
The Select Board next meets on Aug. 31.
Editor's note: Since this meeting, state Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley was given by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education authority to issue a mask mandate for grades K-12 through at least Oct. 1.