By GREGORY ZELLER //
If you thought the new school year – after a cluster$#%& of canceled SATs, “distance learning” and other COVID accommodations – would be like the good old days, think again.
In-person classes may be back, but following a universal mask mandate – all statewide staff and students, in all New York State school buildings, regardless of vaccination status – enacted on her first day in office, Gov. Kathy Hochul has announced several new measures designed to slow the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant, including a new weekly testing requirement for all unvaccinated school staffers.
With a $585 million, federally funded student COVID-testing program kicking in with the new school year – and Albany seriously considering the possibility of requiring vaccines for staffers in all state-regulated facilities – Hochul announced the new staff-testing mandate Tuesday, surrounded by a who’s-who of statewide medical experts at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
And she did it in customarily blunt fashion.
Kathy Hochul: Calling the shots.
“We can no longer hemorrhage the education of our children,” the governor said. “It has to stop, and it has to stop this fall … and that’s why we’re making our schools safe.”
Hochul acknowledged that universal mask mandates, required testing for unvaccinated public school (and charter school) staffers and the multimillion-dollar COVID-19 Testing in Schools Program – to be conducted in partnership with the New York City Department of Education and with local health departments and BOCES outside of NYC – “may seem controversial to many of you.”
But she’s quite OK with that. The freshly minted governor insisted that “kids are resilient,” even referencing her 4-year-old daughter “throwing a meltdown over having to put little sneakers on to go to preschool” before learning to live with the imposition of footwear.
As for adults who feel this is an affront to their personal freedoms, the governor suggested they dig deep and find a little resiliency, too – and ultimately, she doesn’t particularly care what they think about it.
“I’m willing to make tough decisions any day, anywhere, if I think they’ll protect the people of the state,” Hochul said. “This is not a problem for me.
“We’ll take bold, dramatic action to protect individuals in the state, but particularly our children as we start school,” the governor added. “This war is not over, and the Delta variant is a serious threat, especially for people who are still unvaccinated.
“We all need to remain vigilant to protect each other – and that means coming in to get your shot and booster shot, wearing masks in indoor spaces and exercising basic safety measures that we are all familiar with by now.”
