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ELDRED, NY — On Friday, August 24, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she would direct the NYS Department of Health to institute a universal mask mandate in schools across the state.

That mandate will change little for Eldred Central School District, which instituted a mask mandate of its own several weeks earlier.

A Thursday, August 12, letter from superintendent John Morgano to parents and guardians laid out the school’s policy for COVID-19 mitigation coming into the new school year.

Masks are required of anyone in school buildings, vaccinated or unvaccinated. The school will continue to follow CDC guidelines of three feet of social distancing whenever possible, and will take the temperatures of everyone entering school buildings.

In remarks to the River Reporter, Morgano said that the school’s requirements looked to put safety first, while prioritizing in-person education as a very close second.

With mask and temperature requirements in place, the school did not have to ask parents or students personal questions about travel or vaccination status, said Morgano. That was preferable, because the veracity of answers to those questions couldn’t be confirmed.

And while the school was preparing for education with three feet of social distancing, “If [authorities] insist on six feet, we have experience.” In that instance, he said, the school would switch to having A and B days for instruction, with half of the student body coming in on alternating weeks.

The precautions put in place were there to keep students safe, something which Morgano cited as a number one priority. They were also in place to ensure that students would not have to attend any kind of remote or hybrid learning.

“I’m not doing television learning,” said Morgano. “[The students] got nothing out of that.”

Teachers had given it 100 percent when the district had to move to remote learning the previous year, he said. But students learned much better when they were in person.