Parents throughout the country have rallied against school coronavirus mandates to push back against masks and other policies, resulting in tense scenes, some of which prompted a police presence.
On Tuesday, parents from the Granite School District in Salt Lake County, Utah, erupted at a local school board meeting that later turned into a full-scale protest. Unruly attendees repeatedly chanted “no more masks!” at the meeting while some in the crowd approached top brass in the district, forcing the gathering to a halt.
Law enforcement was alerted to the display, and police are in the process of identifying the “main aggressors” who could face legal repercussions, district spokesman Ben Horsley told WGNTV. The demonstration followed comments from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox who has said face coverings will be required for the next school year. Adults have also filed a lawsuit on the matter in an effort to repeal the COVID-19 protocols.
One of the parents present at the meeting, Monica Wilbur, argued that children are less susceptible to the virus than their adult counterparts.
“One size does not fit all, and adults who have higher risks should not project their fears or expect the youth to carry the burden of those fears,” she can be heard saying.
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She later told Fox and Friends that she was at the raucous display because her children “have no voice of their own.”
“I was at that meeting because kids really have no voice of their own, and I felt that my and other parents’ legitimate concerns over their kids, social, learning, and health needs were totally being ignored,” she said.
“We’ve had health difficulties due to the masks. One of my children has a deviated septum, so his oxygen intake is already significantly reduced, which hurts his ability to concentrate and sleep,” Wilbur said. “We also have another child with speech recognition problems, and his speech-sound disorder makes normal communication difficult, which you can imagine how that’s made worse with masks.”
In the past few weeks, calls to end COVID-19 protocols have been amplified amid a downturn in cases and a widespread vaccine rollout across the country. Parents such as Georgia mother Courtney Ann Taylor continue to insist that the regulations hurt children both socially and emotionally.
Taylor’s remarks to a Gwinnett County Board of Education went viral toward the end of April.
“Every month, I come here, and I hear the same thing. Social [and] emotional health,” Taylor said on April 15. “If you truly mean that, you would end the mask requirement tonight.”
“Every one of us knows that young children are not affected by this virus. … And that’s a blessing,” she continued. “But, as the adults, what have we done with that blessing? We’ve shoved it to the side, and we’ve said, ‘We don’t care. You’re still going to wear a mask on your face every day. … You still can’t play together on the playground like normal children. … We don’t care. We’re still going to force you to carry a burden that was never yours to carry.’ Shame on us.”
On April 28, police were called after Arizona parents forced their way into a meeting of the Vail School Board, which oversees a district in Tucson, and demanded the mask mandate come to an end. Some 100 parents, many of whom brought their children, protested the policy, and the meeting was subsequently canceled due to safety concerns.
In response, attendees held their own election and purported to select new school board members who would rescind the face-covering requirement. The staged election was not legitimate, and it followed an executive order from Gov. Doug Ducey on April 19, which ended guidance that recommended schools implement mask mandates.
Districts retained the choice on whether or not to require face coverings, and many in Arizona opted to continue the practice.
“Nearly 2 million Arizonans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, with many teachers and school faculty now fully vaccinated after being some of the first in line for vaccine prioritization,” the Republican governor said in a statement. “Teachers, families and students have acted responsibly to mitigate the spread of the virus and protect one another, and our school leaders are ready to decide if masks should be required on their campuses. We will continue to work with public health professionals and Arizona’s schools as more students return to the classroom and our state moves forward.”
Similarly, parents in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Tuesday planned a large-scale protest against the district’s mask policy after Gov. Ron DeSantis divested the state of all emergency orders related to COVID-19 on Monday. A group called Unmask Palm Beach County Kids has formed to push back on the school’s efforts.
“The only thing we want as parents, speaking for me and my husband, we want the option to send them to school without a mask,” Eliza Lieberman, a parent with two children in the district, said. “The only people technically forced to be in masks are little children, which to me is not right. It’s been over a year.”
More than 5,000 parents have signed their names on a petition to remove the face covering requirement, and many planned not to send their children to school on Friday as a message.
“We’re gonna be there supporting one another and trying to get attention to the fact that we want to have the choice to send our children to school without a mask,” Lieberman said.
On Monday, Elena Dinverno, a Michigan parent, filed a lawsuit against leaders in the Oakland County School District for allegedly infringing on her First Amendment rights when she was terminated from her job after advocating for school reopenings on social media. The mother of two reportedly belonged to some conservative groups on Facebook and criticized the school district’s COVID-19 closures online.
Someone from the district, during the fall of 2020, contacted Dinverno’s employer, Blake’s Hard Cider Co., where she worked as a marketing director, and said she had launched threats against them, the suit alleged. Dinverno was then asked about her posts by her human resources manager and was later fired even after she had attempted to clarify the contents of her posts in a letter to her employer’s leadership, she said.
Lori Grein, a spokeswoman for the Rochester Community Schools, called the allegations in the suit “false and unfounded” but declined to comment further on pending litigation.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“We have all wanted the same thing during this once-in-a-century pandemic, to get our children back to in-person instruction with as much of a normal routine as possible, but we had to do so in a safe and healthy way that protected our students, teachers, staff and families, including parents and grandparents,” Grein told the Washington Examiner.
