State to bar remote schooling next year

Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday issued an executive order that will effectively bar students from attending virtual classrooms next year. The move will essentially enact the governor’s promise of five days of in-person schooling in the 2021-2022 school year.

“We are facing a much different world than one year ago when we had to begin planning for this school year. We know much more about this virus and how it spreads,” he said. “We have much more on-the-ground experience in fighting it, and we have a robust vaccination program that now reaches adolescents as young as 12.”

The order will also remove an option that allows parents to opt their children into fulltime remote learning programs.

None of the changes affect the state’s summer school programs.

The state’s outdoor mask mandate lifted Monday, though Murphy stood by New Jersey’s indoor mask mandate despite guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that said vaccinated persons could be safely unmasked in most situations, including ones involving crowds.

“The majority of New Jerseyans are still unvaccinated, and we are not checking anyone’s vaccine status at the door when you go to a supermarket or to a hardware store, for instance,” Murphy said. “I don’t know how we can expect workers to tell who is vaccinated and who isn’t, and it is unfair to put the burden on business owners and frontline employees to police every patron.”

New Jersey and Hawaii are the only two states to keep their indoor mask mandates in place without setting a date for when they’ll be lifted.

The governor’s stance has not noticeably shifted since he announced the state would keep its indoor mask rules in place on Friday, though his comments at Monday’s briefing drew a fresh round of Republican criticism.

“With the CDC clearly stating that masks serve no public health purpose, Pennsylvania, New York and many other states have already lifted restrictions or announced plans to do so this week,” State Sen. Michael Testa (R-Vineland) said. “Instead of following the science here in New Jersey, we have a governor who continues to restrict personal freedoms to cater to the irrational fears of a timid liberal constituency.”