GUILDERLAND — If the governor lifts the mask mandate for schools after the February break, the Guilderland district is planning to “highly recommend” but not require masks, Superintendent Marie Wiles said.

At Tuesday’s school board meeting, Wiles said she had conferenced with area superintendents and the health commissioners for Albany, Schenectady, Schoharie, and Saratoga counties.

The health commissioners, Wiles said, believe “it is not likely that the state Department of Health will say, ‘OK, counties, now your job is to figure out what the rule will be in your county,’ which means that school districts will be left to figure out what to do in our school districts when the time comes that the mask mandate is lifted.”

In talking to Guilderland’s school administrators and to the district’s Recovery Task Force, Wiles said they felt that, when there is no longer a mandate from “a higher authority,” Guilderland would change its requirement to this: “We highly recommend masks but we don’t require them.”

Board President Seema Rivera said she fully supports changing Guilderland’s mask policy to being recommended but not mandated once the state mandate is lifted.

In the meantime, she urged, “People need to be patient.”

The Feb. 15 meeting had started with reading two letters from parents frustrated with children wearing masks in school.

“Can you please use your authority to do what is right and needed for our children and lift the mask mandate in school?” asked Stephanie Smith.

Melissa Dover, while acknowledging Guilderland couldn’t end mask-wearing with the state requirement in place, wrote, “I ask you as the board to consider all sides of this and the people who are afraid to speak out and the people who are truly suffering with anxiety and depression from these masks. Consider letting masks AND vaccines be a choice when it comes down to it.”

Wiles said that building administrators were “loud and clear” that they didn’t want to have staff spending time and energy on enforcement of mask-wearing if “a higher authority” lifts the mandate. Learning opportunities; social-emotional well being; and work on diversity, equity, and inclusion might all be lost, Wiles said, if staff had to focus on enforcement of a mask requirement.

Instead, she said, the district can look at other mitigation strategies to “encourage safe co-existence,” like improving ventilation or providing additional masks for those who choose to wear them.

Board member Rebecca Butterfield said, “I would hate for this to become a worsening distraction than it already is at this point.” She said making mask-wearing a recommendation rather than a requirement was a reasonable compromise.

“But I do think it’s important for us to point out … that almost a million Americans have died in two years from this virus,” said Butterfield. “A thousand children have died in America from this virus. A thousand children do not die in two years from a cold so equating it with just a cold and we all should get over it I think is a fallacy.”

At the end of Andrew Cuomo’s tenure as governor, then-Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had left it up to individual school districts to decide on mask-wearing rules. A large crowd then, on Aug. 10, attended a Guilderland School Board meeting, which became so contentious over mask-wearing rules, the meeting was briefly adjourned.

Then, on Kathy Hochul’s first day as governor, she said her top priority was to keep schools open. She reinstated the statewide mask mandate for schools and also required vaccination for all school staff with an option to test out weekly for those who did not get vaccinated.

The push to do away with school masks grew stronger after Hochul lifted her mask-or-vax requirements for businesses on Feb. 10, citing the decreasing number of cases of COVID-19 and of resulting hospitalizations and deaths as the Omicron surge subsided.

Hochul said she would reevaluate school masking in early March after students return from their February break and take COVID-19 tests.

She also said the state will continue with its appeal of the Nassau County Supreme Court decision that struck down the mask mandate as unconstitutional since the legislature hadn’t been involved. Hochul said it is important to demonstrate that the state’s health department has the power to protect New Yorkers.

Wiles, at Guilderland’s Feb. 15 meeting, noted the list of public-health metrics Hochul said she will consult, including COVID cases per 100,000 of population, hospital admission rates, percent positivity, vaccination rates, and pediatric hospitalizations as well as global trends.

“She has not provided any benchmarks to say what number on any of those data points will be the number that is the determining factor or what combination of numbers,” said Wiles.

Wiles also noted that, if the in-school state mask mandate is lifted, students will still have to wear masks on school buses since that is a federal requirement.

The district has twice sent out a survey, trying to get data on the number of fully vaccinated students. The district has gotten replies for 2,700 students and, of those, 90 percent are fully vaccinated, Wiles reported.

“However,” she went on, “we haven’t heard from 2,800 families and we really would like to.”

Board member Barbara Fraterrigo said she had heard from parents who asked why the district needed that data. “They thought it was sort of a personal thing,” she said of revealing vaccination status.

Wiles said the information is needed “to help us see where to go next” in determining mitigation strategies for the district’s seven school buildings. She also noted the governor said vaccination rates would play into her mask decision.

The information is not private, noted school board member Nathan Sabourin as it is available through the state but, he said, it is “easier and quicker” to get it from parents.

Butterfield, a pediatrician, said, “Nurses routinely look up vaccination records.”

Wiles said that staff hired for the COVID testing center Guilderland set up initially to test staff members who were not vaccinated but then opened to the school community, may be used to look up vaccination records.

“There’s still plenty of work for nurses to do right now,” she concluded.