With the end of many statewide mask mandates, it’s up to local districts whether they will keep the requirement. Communities anticipate political and emotional fights ahead.David Fleishman, the superintendent of schools in Newton, Mass., an affluent Boston suburb, said he recently received a message from a parent who pushed for ending mask mandates in classrooms.But first, he said, the individual felt the need to assure him, “I am not a Trump supporter.”While Newton, like much of Massachusetts, is mostly liberal and Democratic, Mr. Fleishman said that when it comes to masks, “there’s this tension.”The battle over mask mandates may be moving to liberal-leaning communities that had been largely in agreement on the need for masking — and bound by statewide mask requirements.Now that Massachusetts will lift its school mask mandate on Feb. 28, joining other liberal states like New Jersey and Connecticut, it will be up to individual school districts like Newton, and nearby Boston, to decide whether and how quickly they want to rescind their own mask rules.They will do so under a barrage of conflicting public health guidance, with Ivy League, government and medical experts offering competing advice.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics continue to call for school masking, and some polls show that the public is broadly supportive of the practice.Districts must decide whether to end mask mandates at schools like Countryside Elementary School, where Ms. Szwarcewicz teaches.Tony Luong for The New York TimesBut a well-organized chorus of public health and child development experts, alongside parent activists, say that masking can hurt children academically and socially, and are calling for the return to a semblance of normalcy.Newton and Boston, about 10 miles apart, give an idea of how two politically liberal and cautious districts are approaching the choice — and how and why they may come to different decisions. The debate will involve science, but also politics, race and class, as well as a swell of emotions.Some see masking as a potent health tool and a symbol of progressive values. Others have come to see face coverings as an unfortunate social barrier between their children and the world. And many people are somewhere in between.In Newton, 65 percent of elementary school students, 79 percent of middle schoolers and 88 percent of high schoolers are vaccinated, according to the district. The district is 61 percent white, and 14 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.Some prominent leaders in the community say they are ready to relax restrictions.In Boston, where vaccination rates are somewhat lower — significantly so for Black and Latino children, who make up most of the district — the public school district says it has no plan to end its mask mandate.Teachers’ unions have been among the strongest supporters of masking, pushing in recent weeks for their members and students to have access to medical-grade masks.Tony Luong for The New York TimesNeither do some of the city’s charter schools.David Steefel-Moore, director of operations for the MATCH charter school network, said he had heard “no negative blowback” on masking from parents, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latino. “We have the other side of that: ‘My child told me there is a kid in their class with the mask down around their neck. What are you doing about that?’”For students in Boston who may be living with a grandparent or family member with underlying health issues, the end of mandatory masking could put children and teenagers in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between their family’s sense of safety and fitting in at school, said Gayl Crump Swaby, a Boston Public Schools parent and professor of counseling who specializes in issues of trauma for families of color.“They should not have to be making these kinds of decisions; they are young,” she said.Some parents might even prefer online schooling to classrooms with unmasked peers and teachers, she added.In Newton, one of the most prominent voices in the masking debate is Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, and a parent of students in the district. He serves on the district’s medical advisory group, and has become an outspoken advocate for unmasking children as Omicron recedes.The group will meet this month to formulate a recommendation on masking for the elected school committee, which will make the final decision.Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, is a Newton parent and supports ending the district’s school mask mandate: “If not now, when?”Elise Amendola/Associated PressDr. Jha does not believe that his own children have been seriously harmed from masking, and does not believe that the pandemic is over.But he wants to unmask soon, he says, in part to offer some social and academic normalcy, given that he thinks future coronavirus surges in the United States are likely to require masking again — potentially in the South over the summer and in the North this fall and next winter.He argued that with new therapeutics to treat Covid-19, there is little upside this spring to masking in regions, like the Boston area, with relatively high vaccination rates and plummeting infections.“If not now, when?” he asked. “Because I don’t foresee a time in the next couple of years that will necessarily be that much better.”Vulnerable teachers and students, he said, could stay safe by wearing high-quality masks even when those around them are not covered. Throughout the pandemic, he pointed out, virus transmission inside schools has been limited, including in some places where masks have not been required.Dr. Jha’s advice, however, is not necessarily reassuring to educators who have seen guidelines change frequently over the past two years.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 3Some mask mandates ending.

During the Delta surge, British schools emphasized other safety measures: quarantining and regular testing for the virus.From late spring into early summer, Britain’s elementary and secondary schools were open during an alarming wave of Delta infections.And they handled the Delta spike in ways that might surprise American parents, educators and lawmakers: Masking was a limited part of the strategy. In fact, for the most part, elementary school students and their teachers did not wear them in classrooms at all.Instead, the British government focused on other safety measures, widespread quarantining and rapid testing.“The U.K. has always, from the beginning, emphasized they do not see a place for face coverings for children if it’s avoidable,” said Dr. Shamez Ladhani, a pediatric infectious-disease specialist at St. George’s Hospital in London and an author of several government studies on the virus and schools.The potential harms exceed the potential benefits, he said, because seeing faces is “important for the social development and interaction between people.”The British school system is different than the American one. But with school systems all over the United States debating whether to require masking, Britain’s experience during the Delta surge does show what happened in a country that relied on another safety measure — quarantining — rather than face coverings for young children.Unlike the United States, all public and private schools in England are expected to follow the national government’s virus mandates, and there is a single set of guidelines. (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are responsible for their own schools, but the rules have been similar.)The Delta variant tested the guidelines. Starting in June, case numbers quickly increased before peaking in mid-July, which roughly mirrors the last few months of the school calendar. For the 13 million people in England under the age of 20, daily virus cases rose from about 600 in mid-May to 12,000 in mid-July, according to government data. Test positivity rates were highest among children and young adults — ages 5 to 24 — but they were also the least likely to be vaccinated.It is difficult to pinpoint exactly how much spread occurred on campuses. But throughout the pandemic, government studies showed that infection rates in schools did not exceed those in the community at large, Dr. Ladhani said. In schools that experienced multiple virus cases, he added, there were often “multiple introductions” — meaning that infections were likely acquired outside the building.There is debate about whether the end of the school year in mid-July contributed to the nation’s drop in virus cases, but some researchers point out that the decline began before schools closed.To counter the Delta variant during the last academic year, the government provided free rapid tests to families and asked them to test their children at home twice per week, though compliance was spotty. Students were kept in groups within the school building and sent home for 10-day quarantines if a virus case was confirmed within the bubble. More than 90 percent of school staff members had received at least one vaccine dose by the end of June, according to a government sample survey of English schools, a similar vaccination rate to American teachers in the Northeast and West, but higher than in the South.Under the government guidelines, masks in classrooms were required only for discrete periods in secondary schools, the equivalent of middle and high school, and were never required for elementary-age children.Students waiting for coronavirus vaccines in London. More than 90 percent of school staff members in Britain had received at least one vaccine dose by the end of June.Daniel Leal-Olivas/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAnd there was less partisan divide; both the Conservative and Labour Parties have generally believed that face coverings hinder young children’s ability to communicate, socialize and learn.In England, schools followed government recommendations last academic year and aggressively quarantined students and staff who came into contact with the virus.But quarantines were disruptive for students and parents and led, in mid-July, to more than 1 million children being forced out of schools, or 14 percent of the public school population. During the same period, about 7 percent of teachers were sent home.Rudo Manokore-Addy, the mother of a 7-year-old and 3-year-old in London, described herself as more cautious when it came to the virus than the typical British parent. In the spring of 2020, she encouraged her daughters to wear cloth masks outside the house. At times last summer and this past winter, she kept both girls home from school to observe the schools’ virus policies before sending her children back.Last spring, during the Delta surge, she and her husband gladly kept their children in school, unmasked.“I was quite relaxed,” she said. “At the end, we just resolved to kind of go with it. We were confident the school had practices in place.”In the United States, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends universal masking inside school buildings, and the C.D.C. has advised that breaches in mask use were likely responsible for some spread of Covid-19 in American schools.This recommendation has been divisive, with nine states attempting to ban school mask orders, according to the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank. But with low vaccination rates in many communities and limited access to regular virus testing across the country, masking may be one of the easiest safety measures for American schools to put into place. In addition, the C.D.C. has said that students who come into contact with the virus in schools do not need to quarantine if both individuals wore well-fitting masks.The American conversation on masks is “so polarized,” said Alasdair Munro, a pediatric infectious-disease researcher at the University Hospital Southampton. “It seems to either be viewed as an essential, nonnegotiable imperative or a very harmful infringement upon individual liberty.”Others in Britain would welcome masking. Dr. Deepti Gurdasani, an epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, has spoken widely for stricter safety precautions in schools. She called the British government’s opposition to masking among children “ideological,” and said she looked with envy at the New York City school system’s policies around universal masking and the placement of two air purifiers in each classroom.But there has also been quarantining in the United States, with some schools that have reopened for the new academic year temporarily closing classrooms over the past several weeks.Research from Britain suggests that rapid testing might be an alternative. In a study conducted as the Delta variant spread, secondary schools and colleges in England were randomly assigned to quarantine or test.One set of schools quarantined students and staff members who came into contact with positive Covid-19 cases. The other allowed those contacts to continue coming into the building, but with the requirement that they take a rapid virus test each day for one week; only those who tested positive would be sent home.Though the daily testing regimen was challenging for some schools to carry out, the results were reassuring: In both the quarantine and test groups, less than 2 percent of the contacts tested positive for Covid-19.Health workers at a virus testing site in London in May, before the Delta variant began surging throughout the country.Adrian Dennis/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFurther reassuring evidence comes from testing antibodies of school staff members; positivity rates were the same or lower than adults in the community, suggesting that schools were not “hubs of infection,” according to Public Health England, a government agency.Today, after long periods of shuttered classrooms, there is now a broad consensus in Britain that policies that keep children out of school are “extremely harmful in the long term,” Dr. Munro said.The national Department for Education also announced last week that in the coming school year, no one under the age of 18 would be forced to quarantine after contact with a positive virus case, regardless of vaccination status. (In Britain, vaccines are approved for individuals 16 and over.)Masks will not be required for any students or school staff, though they will be recommended in “enclosed and crowded spaces where you may come into contact with people you don’t normally meet,” such as public transit to and from school.Some critics believe that the British government has been too quick to loosen safety measures inside schools.Dr. Gurdasani said the lack of precautions this fall would increase the number of children infected and suffering the effects of long Covid.“I am not advocating for school closures,” she said. “But I don’t want a generation of children disabled in the coming years.”Robin Bevan, president of the National Education Union and a secondary school principal in Southend, east of London, said he found it curious that Britons regularly masked in supermarkets, but not in schools.“All we are left with is opening the windows and washing hands,” he said. “That is the government position.”School leaders have the latitude to continue to keep children in defined bubbles or pods to reduce transmission — a practice Mr. Bevan said he would like to keep.Many parents say they are keeping calm.“It felt like in the U.K., there was such political commitment to reopening,” said Bethan Roberts, 40, who felt confident returning her three children to in-person learning last spring and keeping them there during the Delta surge.“It didn’t feel very controversial here,” she added. “And there were lots of exhausted parents who were just, like, ‘We can’t do this anymore.’”Alicia Parlapiano