Students in one California school district are protesting the state’s mask mandate, creating a situation in which administrators are scrambling to accommodate them, and parents are riled up over concerns about the conditions in which their children are being placed.
Hundreds of defiant students throughout the Oakdale Joint Unified School District are refusing to wear face coverings, as required, which Superintendent Dave Kline says is leading to them being placed in alternative learning settings separated from everyone else.
“They’re very upset with the mask mandate. They want to see that going away,” Kline said, according the Modbee.
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Students who show up to school maskless are offered one at the office, and upon refusal, a face shield is suggested, according to Kline. If, after going through a list of accommodations, the student still refuses, they will be provided with an “alternative setting.”
Kline said students at elementary schools are being placed in cafeterias, and high school students are being relegated to a gym with supervision to get through the day.
One 8-year-old elementary school boy was instructed to “go outside in 43-degree weather” after showing up without a mask Tuesday, the boy’s mother, Jennifer Poth, told KCRA. Kline said that was a “mistake” and that he talked to the child’s parents and took responsibility.
Masks are required to be worn in indoor public spaces by everyone ages 2 and up until at least Feb. 15, according to the California COVID-19 website. Health officials say wearing a face mask helps stop the spread of COVID-19.
Some parents were left in an uproar as videos and photographs surfaced across social media appearing to show maskless students at Oakdale High School gathered into a gym, with the doors appearing to be barricaded by folding tables. Claims that the heat had been turned off also surfaced.
“There’s been reports that there’s about 200 students at Oakdale High that are refusing masks. I’m not sure how many were in there at that particular time,” Brandi Hill, who says she is a parent of two students at Oakdale High School, told the Washington Examiner on Friday regarding the incident. “They’re segregating all the kids who are protesting, and they’re keeping them in the gyms, away from all the regular classes and the students who are agreeing to be masked. So they’ve been segregated in there all day long.”
Hill said Friday marks the “third day” that defiant students will have been placed in alternative learning settings. She said multiple parents “spread the word” related to concerns that children had been barricaded in the gym without heating.
Indeed, there were photos that showed folding tables leaning against gym doors at the high school, but the district released a statement Friday saying the placement of the tables was “unintentional and temporary” and stressed that claims of students being trapped in the gym were “false.”
Woah! Newsom really did start a #MaskRevolt! https://t.co/oDuYLxzMM9
— Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) February 2, 2022
A spokeswoman for the district also told the Washington Examiner that claims of the incident regarding students being barricaded in the gymnasium with no heat were “inaccurate.”
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Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has received criticism after appearing maskless in a photograph at the NFC championship game between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers.
Jonathan Zachreson, the founder of the volunteer-led Reopen California Schools group, told the Washington Examiner that “ever since Newsom’s mask fiasco at the NFC championship game, just the pressure and the anger has boiled over. We’re seeing these mask protests by students now across the state.”
The Oakdale Police Department issued a statement Wednesday in response to reports of protests outside schools throughout the district.
“We would like to provide accurate information,” the police department said in the statement. “Today there are a few schools throughout town where protests have taken place related to the COVID-19 mask mandate. These gatherings have been small in nature and have been peaceful.”
