I'm in MA, in a densely populated, small suburb. I have a Jr and an incoming Freshman in HS and we start next week. I don't think it will be a mess and there seems to be a plan, and it would be tough to be worse than last year, so I'm cautiously optimistic.
As other MA posters have mentioned, MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Ed has issued a mask mandate in k-12 until 10/1, and then districts can re-assess based on vaccination rates (and maybe community spread, I would imagine). According to the Boston Globe (via MA DOH), 92% of kids 16-19 and 85% of kids 12-15 in my town are vaccinated (including my kids). That seems high to me and it's not on the town website, which has a slightly lower overall rate for the town, but that number is not broken down by age so I'm not sure. Either way, it's fairly high. Hopefully the high vaccination rates with the older kids will help protect kids and staff that are unable to get vaccinated.
Last year, the school website had a covid dashboard. We had a lot of outbreaks and school disruption, so I'm hoping they have that again as it was helpful in keeping tabs on things. A lot of outbreaks were worsened by people not complying with mitigation strategies - mostly not quarantining, although some people refused to cooperate with contact tracing as well. I imagine the school with continue with contact tracing efforts, but they haven't communicated anything regarding that. At the end of last year, students could choose to submit their vaccination information so that they could avoid quarantine if there was a close contact identified (unless symptomatic). I'm hoping that continues, although that may depend on how things go with this variant and community spread. I am bewildered when I read about districts that don't have any basic mitigation policies in place and I really feel for teachers and families.
A few weeks back, the district had said masks would be optional for high school students. I am disheartened that conditions have changed to warrant the change in policy, but I understand it and I think it makes sense to start more restrictive and then re-assess. I don't seem to have the crushing anxiety that I had last year, more of a simmering resentment, but trying to work through that as I find it counterproductive. Hoping things go as smoothly as possible for everybody