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With a new school year about a month away, school boards across the region have been adopting safety plans.
Most say no masks will be required in class. Vaccinations are encouraged but not mandatory.
Social distancing and hygiene protocol to be observed. But -- and this is a big "but" -- any new advice coming from higher government authorities should not be taken lightly or be automatically opposed.
And so things have no taken a turn with a COVID variant raging in some parts of the U.S.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday recommended that everyone in K-12 schools wear a mask to school.
Of course the agency must put the safety and well-being of our children at the forefront.
A lack of masking early on, and now a lack of vaccinations against COVID-19, are prohibiting us from from wiping away this deadly virus.
People who refuse to get vaccinated are preventing us from getting out of this pandemic.
This is a fight that ALL of us must wage, not some of us.
This should not be a political issue.
It is yet another reality check. We are not out of the woods when it comes to COVID-19.
The biggest threat now is coming from the a variant of the virus. The increasing number of people catching the variant is not fake; it is real.
The victims are primarily younger than the majority of the 600,000+ people who died from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
We have a powerful tool to combat this virus -- vaccines -- but reluctance by too many to get vaccinated is getting in the way of achieving herd immunity.
Now it has become a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Rather than getting caught up with protesting masks in school, the focus should be on keeping children healthy in school and on stopping the spread of the coronavirus, however we may and in line with shifts in the spread.
The latter is best accomplished by getting vaccinated.
And for the former, let's place faith in those to whom we entrust the education of our children.
It is unfortunate that districts have been put in the position of having to strike a balance between coronavirus politics and what should be done for the greater good.
If that means wearing a mask at some point in the future because the situation has become dire, is that really too much to ask?
Yes, school boards have more decisions to make.