The Weston Board of Health voted yesterday to keep the indoor mask mandate in place for all Weston K-12 schools through at least November 5. An email to the school community from District Superintendent Midge Connolly supported the decision. You can read that information here. Editorial comment to the schools administration: the quick and throrough write-up of the decision and its reasons was much appreciated. The Owl had places to be and trees to film during yesterday’s BOH meeting time.

The main reason for the decision is the delay in the state CIC testing program. Without the proper training and access, the program is non-functional. Dear Charlie Baker, you and I went to the same graduate school but you missed Sunil Chopra’s operations class, methinks. Too bad; it was really good.

Another reason for the delay in lifting the mask order (at least for the mostly-vaccinated high school and middle school kids) is that the high school students have dropped off the testing bandwagon. As of last week, according to Dr Connolly’s communication, only around 10% of the high school students were testing–I don’t know if the teachers were higher than that (we are testing teachers too, right?) It would be interesting to know why the students are not testing–whether it is not clear where and when to test or if they forgot in the middle of “Opportunities to Achieve” week and progress reports, or what is going on. I expect we’ll get that number to move up quickly–Dr. Connolly has put a data point at 60% testing but I would say 80% would be better. 99% would be best. Be best.

In other related news, Waltham has put an indoor mask mandate in place now through November 1, effective October 4.

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