PORTSMOUTH — The Portsmouth School Committee has called a special meeting on Monday, Feb. 14, to discuss the potential lifting of its school-wide indoor mask mandate.

The meeting will be held virtually and begin at 5:30 p.m. Monday. It will be live-streamed at https://www.youtube.com/c/PortsmouthRILiveStream, according to the posted agenda.

The move to call a special meeting comes after last week’s COVID-19 briefing by Gov. Daniel McKee, during which he announced his statewide executive order on indoor masking in public settings — previously effective through Feb. 15 — would be lifted today, Feb. 11, and for public schools the order would be lifted on March 4.

After March 4, decisions about masking in schools will be shifted to the individual local districts, McKee said. The governor’s order empowers schools, businesses, and venues of assembly to implement the health and safety measures best suited to the needs of their communities.

The lifting of the mask mandate does not apply to school buses, which follows a separate, federal mandate.

“Based on our decreasing case and hospitalization numbers, our team at the Department of Health feels confident in our plan to safely shift masking guidance for both schools and public settings as we move into an endemic management phase of the virus,” the governor said.

Since peaking at approximately 6,700 cases a day in early January, Rhode Island’s case numbers have decreased by more than 94 percent, Gov. McKee said, adding the state currently has the eighth-lowest positivity rate in the country.

The day before the governor’s briefing, school officials discussed the possible course of action to take if McKee lifted the mandate. Without hinting which way they would go on the mask mandate, officials said they were prepared to revisit their COVID-19 policies for students and staff as soon as possible.

At that School Committee meeting Tuesday, three parents urged the school board to immediately end the mask mandate for students if the governor listed his order.

“I told my kids, when they get back from school break and if this hasn’t ended, I think I’m going to pull them from school because we can’t take it anymore,” said Sofia Sinclair, a parent. “I hope you have answers for us tonight, because the kids are tired.

(Winter vacation is the week of Feb. 21, with students returning to classes on Feb. 28.)

Superintendent Thomas Kenworthy reported Tuesday that to date there had been been a total of 635 positive COVID-19 cases since the opening of the school year. (On Jan. 19, he reported a total of 380 cases as of the previous week.) 

These figures, which include the final backlog of case reporting attributed to the holiday break and Omicron surge, break down as follows: 228 at the high school, 121 at the middle school, 169 at Hathaway, and 114 at Melville, he said. The reporting of PK-12 cases is now initiated at the school level before being verified by RIDOH, Kenworthy reminded the committee.

The school board’s next two regular meetings are scheduled for March 8 and March 22.