A Teaching Moment

Like those proverbial frogs in a pan of water, slowly warming to a boil, we sometimes forget just how long we’ve been feeling the heat of the pandemic. A full two years after those first alarming reports out of Wuhan, China, nerves are frayed and patience is wearing thin. It’s the middle of winter, but there’s a tantalizing thought of a possible springtime exit from the weird world we’ve all been living in — and it makes the present even more stressful.

Hope bloomed last week with Governor Kathy Hochul lifting a statewide mask mandate on businesses. The next step will be lifting the mandate in schools, but that could still be a few weeks away.

Which is a frustrating thought for many parents — and the frustration is showing. A Sag Harbor School Board meeting last week, held virtually, became a marathon session when some parents, often with heavy emotion, pleaded with district officials to agree to lift the mask mandate locally as soon as possible. Superintendent Jeff Nichols held fast, saying the decision would be made only when he was confident a variety of factors showed it was safe to do so.

This is the right answer, even if parents are angry when they hear it. The simple fact is that a pandemic is not a simple problem, and there is no simple solution. And no school official should put the health of staff and students at risk.

But, of course, the amount of risk is open to debate. At roughly the same time, the Southampton School District decided it would lift its local mask mandate as soon as the governor announced that the statewide rule was lifted.

Reasonable people can disagree on such matters. In fact, it’s essential that reasonable people can disagree, and do so with respect and restraint. For that to happen, both sides must acknowledge that the opposing view isn’t ridiculous, and this is a difficult call for every district.

Those urging restraint want to keep the mask mandate in schools in effect until there are clearer signals that our efforts to battle COVID-19 — with vaccines, distancing and masks — have made enough progress. Several times, we’ve rushed back to “normalcy” too soon, and the virus has rebounded. We don’t want to make that mistake again.

But parents who argue for lifting the mask mandate can point to a surprising lack of solid evidence, via medical studies, that the school mandates have been key in the battle against COVID. And there’s clear evidence that masks, especially among the youngest students, are not conducive to healthy development.

Among adults, the two sides don’t need to agree. They simply need to agree to be adults.

Sag Harbor parents who attack Nichols for his position, or School Board members for their beliefs, are missing the big picture. It’s notable that Nichols, after a contentious virtual meeting, made a point of visiting with some of those same parents the next day at a Parent Teacher Organization meeting — something he didn’t have to do, but a gesture that helped to salve some of the wounds created the night before. That is leadership, and it should give residents even more confidence in him.

Parents should remember that children don’t learn everything within the confines of school classrooms — lessons are being learned every day, and the way their parents handle disagreements will dictate how they treat conflict in the future. The pandemic is a teaching moment in so many ways, and we all can learn from it.

As districts enter this difficult period — knock on wood, the beginning of a return to normalcy — they owe parents both the opportunity to respectfully share their opinions, and to make sure those parents understand exactly how the decision will be made. As Nichols pointed out, it’s dangerous to pick one parameter — say, positive test rates in the district — and use it as the sole deciding factor. There are too many variables, and variants, to allow for simplistic thinking.

School officials owe parents clarity in their thinking and their explanations, and parents owe school officials respect, even if they don’t like the message they’re hearing.