Some students said they were excited to finally shed their masks, but others felt unsafe and wanted to continue wearing them.
New York City officials this week eliminated the mask mandate for public school students that had been in place since fall 2020, an aggressive step toward normalcy two years after the coronavirus began battering the city.
Some expressed joy at the chance to remove their masks, but not all the students and parents interviewed this week were comfortable with the change. Here’s what some students and parents had to say.
‘I feel happy and comfortable again.’
In Tottenville, Staten Island, a neighborhood with many white, politically conservative residents, 76 percent of adults are fully vaccinated. But in the neighborhood’s main public elementary school, P.S. 1, only 10 percent of students are, according to city data.
Julius Campbell, 12, walked toward the nearby Independent School 34 on Monday — where nearly 32 percent of students are fully vaccinated — wearing his mask beneath his chin. He said he would wait to get inside before making up his mind about whether to keep it on or take it off.
“I feel happy and comfortable again,” Julius said, adding that he planned to mask up if “some kids cough around me and seem sick.”
Across the five boroughs, Staten Island has the lowest student vaccination rate at 47 percent, the data shows. Manhattan has the highest student vaccination rate at 72 percent.
Oscar Jaffe, 14, a freshman at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, said wearing a mask had made it harder for him to participate in class and form friendships. He was one of the few students at his school who chose not to wear a mask on Monday.
“It was hard for people to hear me sometimes,” Oscar said. “Remembering faces was also much more difficult, and remembering names — putting a name to a face — I kind of forgot a lot of names fairly quickly.”
Oscar said he wasn’t worried about how other students at Stuyvesant, where 93 percent of students are fully vaccinated, would react to his decision. “I’m looking forward to letting people see what I actually look like,” he added.
‘I just feel unsafe without the mandate.’
The majority of students passing through the red gates to attend Nelson Mandela High School and Boys and Girls High School, both in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, were still masked on Monday.
“I feel like they need to bring it back because, like, I don’t really want to get infected by Covid or anything,” said Jordan Pickett, a 10th grader at Nelson Mandela High School, where about 40 percent of students are fully vaccinated.
Jordan, 16, said he hadn’t gotten the shot yet because he was waiting for his mother to take him, and she’d been busy with work.
“I just feel unsafe without the mandate,” he said.
Citywide, 52 percent of K-12 public school students are fully vaccinated, according to the data, and 59 percent of students have received at least one dose. But there is wide variation in vaccination rates among neighborhoods.
District 23 in Brooklyn, which includes Brownsville and part of East New York, is one of the poorest in the city and has the lowest vaccination rate in the school system. Only 38 percent of students have received at least one dose of a vaccine.
But in District 2 — which covers some of the wealthiest parts of Manhattan, including the Upper East Side and TriBeCa — 80 percent of students have received at least one dose, the highest rate in New York.
Most children became eligible for vaccines last year, though no vaccine has yet been authorized for those younger than 5.
‘It mostly depends on what everyone else around me is going to do.’
As Cathleen Xi, 14, rushed over the TriBeCa Bridge on Monday morning to head into Stuyvesant, she was wearing a mask.
But she wasn’t sure she would keep it on all day: Her strategy was to “follow the crowd,” she said.
“I have talked about it with a lot of friends, and most of us are planning to keep it on. Luckily a lot of my school is vaccinated,” said Eden Di Lella, 15, a sophomore at Stuyvesant who planned to continue wearing a mask.
She said some friends planned to take their masks off in certain situations, though, such as during P.E. or chorus.
Tijana Ciroc, a 17-year-old senior at Boys and Girls High School, said she was ultimately glad that students had the choice to decide whether to wear a mask. Over 45 percent of students at the school are fully vaccinated.
“I feel like it is good that we have the option now to choose whether we want to wear it or not,” said Ms. Ciroc. “I feel like if some people still want to wear it, they can. If you don’t, since the cases are dropping and it is safer, you can feel free to do that.”
‘Keep it on.’
It was news to Asmaa Khalil, the mother of a fourth grader, that the city’s mask mandate for schoolchildren 5 and older had been lifted.
“I didn’t know that,” a surprised-sounding Ms. Khalil, 27, said outside P.S. 41, an elementary school in Brownsville, on Monday morning. Just over 26 percent of students there are fully vaccinated.
One thing hadn’t changed, though: Ms. Khalil was dropping off her son, Atef Ahmed, 9, with instructions to keep wearing his mask in school.
“I would rather not wear the mask,” said Atef, who is vaccinated. “In gym, when you run, it feels like you can’t breathe.”
“Keep it on,” Ms. Khalil said as she sent Atef inside. “I love you.”
Kareem Middleton, 33, was up bright and early to send his son, Jalen, off to his third grade classroom at P.S. 284 nearby. Mr. Middleton, who is vaccinated, said he told his son, who is not, to keep wearing the face covering.
Just 10.7 percent of students at the school are fully vaccinated, and Mr. Middleton said he wanted to wait and see how the vaccine affected him before letting his son receive the shots.
He said he didn’t think any of the mandates, including the one that required people to show proof of vaccination to enter restaurants and certain other indoor venues, should have been lifted.
“I always felt like the mask mandate should always stay in effect because I don’t feel like coronavirus is totally dead,” he said. “I just felt like it is mutating more.”
‘I just let them go with the flow.’
As soon as Marco Ferrito, 7, saw his peers streaming into P.S. 1 in Tottenville maskless, he decided he would join them.
“I made sure he had it with him anyway, and I told him, ‘If you change your mind you got it in your bag,’” said his father, Michael Ferrito, who called Marco back to give him a goodbye hug before the boy sprinted into school.
Nancy Dormevil, whose two children attend Cynthia Jenkins Elementary School in Springfield Gardens, Queens, said she hadn’t talked with them about the elimination of the mask mandate. Just 11.2 percent of students at the school are fully vaccinated.
“I personally haven’t had that conversation with them,” Ms. Dormevil said. “I just let them go with the flow.”
Her son is under 5 and for now must keep his mask on at school, but as for her daughter, she said: “If she feels like she wants to keep it on, then she keeps it on.”
‘I would like to keep my family safe.’
Some students said they would continue wearing their masks in hopes of protecting vulnerable family members.
Natalie Cuevas, 14, a student at Stuyvesant, planned to stay masked in part to help protect her parents and grandmother from contracting Covid-19, she said.
“Even though Covid is dying down, it’s still here,” Natalie said.
Sharon Otterman, Sean Piccoli and Precious Fondren contributed reporting.
