OK. The rest of the story from fallout yesterday afternoon.
The wife wrote a strongly worded letter advocating for full mask use and made better arguments than I did.
However, while she was working up the letter, one of the staff (vaccinated and no symptoms) tested positive for Covid, which caused the delayed start of school to Monday instead of today and a revision of the mask policy which is now everyone on campus. All exposed faculty and staff are being tested to see the extent of the spread, positive case is being quarantined and held out for prescribed amount of time, weekend test results will determine path going forward on Monday.
So we were strangely fortunate to have a scare this early that hopefully will be dealt with so we can have in person class going forward.
However, this is a small "progressive" school in central Austin with a staff that is 100% vaccinated and I daresay a student body that is close to that where eligible. I would be hard pressed to find a more ideal setting to deal with Covid effectively unless it were some kind of isolated community of Mennonites or something, and we still have issues. As others have said, regardless of mask and vaccination policy, any school of any size is going to be dealing with an absolute shit show for at least the next month.
Good luck out there.