HORSEHEADS, N.Y. (WETM) — Superintendents from Greater Southern Tier BOCES have sent a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul regarding the state’s mask mandate for public schools.

Inside this letter, they have laid out a “Pathway to Normalcy” as they are calling it, where schools can develop a plan to return to pre-pandemic levels.

The largest issues the letter discusses revolve around the public and school mask mandates and vaccination requirements.

GST BOCES makes the argument that the students and their families will soon be able to choose to wear a mask inside businesses throughout New York starting Thursday, so they argue why should it be mandatory to have a mask rule during school.

From this, they ask the governor to, “consider any masking rule changes going forward to be applicable to all (the public and school settings).”

More issues were addressed regarding after-school activities and vaccine mandates in how they say it isn’t logical to have such mandates when the same activities can be done outside of the school setting without having to follow state requirements.

The letter further states the following closing statement,

we need our elected leaders and the Health Department to immediately create and publish a necessary path forward to normalcy as soon as possible that allows public choice going forward. We request this plan as soon as possible to avoid the constant whiplash that is starting to occur regularly from communications and/or decisions from the state level and court systems.

GST BOCES to Governor Kathy Hochul