School groups urge Gov. Phil Murphy to extend N.J. school mask mandate past Jan. 11

With time running out, education groups are urging Gov. Phil Murphy to extend a mandate set to expire next week requiring New Jersey’s children to wear masks in school.

Murphy has asked the state Legislature to extend his authority to keep the mask requirement, set to expire Jan. 11. On Monday, he said he wanted to keep the mandate for the foreseeable future due to a spike in the spread of the highly contagious omicron variant.

Across the region, some schools, including 92 in Philadelphia, this week switched to virtual learning mostly because of staffing shortages caused by the COVID-19 surge. Some plan to remain remote for several days or until at least Jan. 18, depending on the number of cases.

In a letter to Murphy, outgoing State Sen. President Steve Sweeney, (D., Gloucester) and Assembly Leader Craig Coughlin, (D., Middlesex), as well as the New Jersey Leadership for Educational Excellence, a coalition of the state’s major education organizations, said it supports a statewide mask requirement as “an effective, preventive measure necessary to slow the spread of COVID-19 within our schools.“

Barring a mandate, the coalition said there should be a statewide approach to masking, rather than leaving the decision to New Jersey’s more than 600 school districts. The coalition includes the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, and the New Jersey School Boards Association.

“While local control has many benefits in our state, the negative energy, divisiveness and distraction caused by this issue should not be underestimated,” the coalition said in a letter Tuesday.

In Pennsylvania, the state Supreme Court struck down a school mask mandate imposed by the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, affirming a lower court ruling that said state health officials lacked the authority to set the blanket requirement for students across the state.

» READ MORE: Pa. Supreme Court strikes down school mask mandate imposed by Wolf administration

Murphy this week appealed to state lawmakers to grant a 90-day extension to some powers that allow him to impose mandates during the pandemic. The governor has said he has no plans to order all schools to return to remote learning as he did in March 2020.

“This is what is necessary now to keep our schools safe,” Murphy said.

The mask requirement, issued under an executive order, mandates that New Jersey’s more than 1 million students and staff at private, parochial, charter and renaissance schools wear a mask inside school buildings, regardless of vaccination status.

A federal judge upheld the mask mandate after a challenge by a group of parents who said it was unnecessary and unfair. Some states including Utah have passed laws that prohibit school districts from requiring masks.

It is unknown whether lawmakers in the Democratically controlled statehouse will back the mask extension sought by Murphy. The legislation session ends Jan. 10.

“We have received the request from the Governor’s office to extend the emergency powers and it is under review,” Richard McGrath, a spokesman for Sweeney, said in a statement Wednesday. Sweeney, who lost a bid for reelection in November, leaves office Jan. 11.

School officials have made in-person learning a priority, but many districts hastily switched to remote instruction when schools reopened this week after the holiday recess. They reported absences among students and staff who tested positive for the coronavirus or needed to quarantine because of exposure.

In Deptford in Gloucester County, the district opened for three days, but said it plans to go remote effective Thursday largely because of a shortage of bus drivers to transport students. The virtual learning for middle and high school students will last until Jan. 18, the district told parents.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit filed in federal court in Newark this week on behalf of hundreds of thousands of special education students seeks a temporary restraining order preventing schools from going virtual. There are more than 237,000 students with Individual Education Plans, or IEPs, in the state, according to the lawsuit filed by New York civil rights attorney Patrick Donohue.

Switching to remote learning violates the civil rights of students who are entitled to in-person special services, said Donohue. The lawsuit includes students from Camden, Audubon and Lower Cape May, he said.