Let Local Districts Make Mask Choices, Brick Schools Urge Murphy

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township School District is calling on Gov. Phil Murphy to drop the mask mandate for students and staff and return authority to the local school districts as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ease.

In an open letter to Murphy signed by Superintendent Thomas Farrell and Stephanie Wohlrab, president of the Brick Township Board of Education, the district urged Murphy to cede authority to the local districts.

"Brick Schools has operated in compliance with all state mandates. However, Brick Schools now believes that we are at the point when the state masks mandate at schools should be responsibly re-evaluated and left up to local decision-making," the letter to Murphy said.

"I cannot speak to what will work for other districts – We are Brick," Wohlrab said. “But school districts in New Jersey are operated by locally elected school boards and superintendents working together with district stakeholders. It is time to once again let us do what we were elected to do, with our highly trained, professional staff in place – run our districts with the authority to make decisions in the best interest of our community."

The letter comes a day after Murphy reiterated that he anticipates students and staff could start the 2021-22 school year with the mask mandate still in place, with the possible exception of high school students, who have recently become able to get vaccinated.

"My guess is we're likely to be masked, for the simple reason that only a couple weeks ago were we able to get 12- to 15-year-olds vaccinated," Murphy said in reply to a reporter's question about letters from two school districts — the Central Regional Schools and the Toms River Regional School District — urging him to drop the mask mandate. Read more: Masks In NJ Schools: Here's Who May Be Wearing Them In The Fall

The 8,000-student district started school in September on a hybrid schedule and has steadily returned students to the classroom. It did so with few issues and limited instances of closing buildings over the course of the school year. Brick Township High School was closed for two weeks around Thanksgiving after an outbreak that appeared to originate at a Sweet Sixteen party, but there have been few other significant issues. The district is slated to return to full school days five days a week beginning June 1; students currently attend five days a week on a shortened schedule.

"At all times, the district proceeded forward with an eye on the data from the CDC, NJDOH, OCHD, and NJDOE to ensure the health and safety of all involved while facilitating the best education possible for our students," Farrell said.

"This evidence-based process, aligned to the data from the NJ COVID-19 NJ Risk Matrix, provides us the confidence that in Brick Township, our students will be best-served by the state providing us with the ability to, as a district, responsibly evaluate and implement mask-wearing protocols for staff and students," he said.

The letter notes that most of the Brick school district's staff has received COVID-19 vaccinations, and the district has tightly adhered to the various protocols for social distancing, sanitizing and masks.

"While mask mandates have been lifted in most forums, NJ students and staff are still required to continue mask wearing in schools," the letter said. "Limiting the ability of school districts to make data-driven, fact-based decisions that serve the best interests of their learning community goes against everything public education stands for."

"It is time to bring our school districts back to a greater degree of normalcy," the letter said.

"We have forgone much during this pandemic and we cannot surrender the social and emotional health of our children one day longer," Wohlrab said.

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