On Wednesday President Joe Biden said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would most likely advise that K-12 schools mandate masks in September for students under 12 years old who are not yet eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine. At the same time, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that all children over age 2 wear masks when returning to school this year, even if they are vaccinated.  Dr. Anthony Fauci says that he would recommend masks in areas of the country with low vaccination rates.

So where are New Jersey schools amid all this conflicting advice?

Yesterday Gov. Phil Murphy said that he was sticking with a “no masks mandate” policy when schools open in September, regardless of vaccination status or student age. According to the Star-Ledger, he said yesterday,

We are where we are. But this is something we watch every single day.  The good thing about masking: Unlike an HVAC system or building a new school building, you can get the benefit of the entirety of the summer of data and look at that. I don’t want to go backward — that’s the last thing I want to do — but we’ll do what we have to do.

Individual school districts can set their own mask rules as long as the Governor doesn’t make masks mandatory in schools, as he did last year.  Murphy has said a mask mandate could be instituted quickly if Covid transmission rates continue to rise. The current rate is 1.4, which means that each infected person is spreading the virus to more than one additional person.