The California Department of Social Services raided a chain of San Diego preschools and interrogated students as young as 2 over the preschool’s compliance with the statewide mask mandate.
The students at Aspen Leaf Preschool, which has multiple locations in the city of San Diego, were grilled by state officials in January in response to a complaint that the school was not following the statewide school mask mandate. The interviews were conducted without any parental notice or awareness.
The owner of the preschools, Howard Wu, told Fox News that the state’s visit came as a surprise because the preschool had made no secret of its policy to allow young students to attend the school without wearing masks.
“Every family we heard from after the inspections [was] furious about the interviews,” Wu said. “Put simply, the mask guidance says children cannot mask when eating and sleeping. In full-day child care, that’s three hours, so masking at other times offers no health benefit.”
Wu said the preschool had the full support of registered families for its policy. The lone exception came in January when one complaint resulted in the raid.
“They could have issued us a citation in five minutes and let us take our challenge up through the proper channels,” Wu said. “The simultaneous multischool raids and the child interviews just felt like a power play.”
Aspen Leaf has now updated its mask rules following a citation from the social services department. The California school mask mandate is set to expire on March 11, at which point Wu plans to remove the preschool’s mandate.
The California Community Care Licensing Division, which participated in the visit to the school, defended the interviews the agency conducted with students, saying they “were conducted in an appropriate manner and were a necessary component of the required complaint investigation.”
“CCLD has confirmed that conversations with children during the complaint investigation were conducted with Aspen Leaf staff present or within line of sight of Aspen Leaf staff,” agency Deputy Director Kevin Gaines told parents in a March 1 letter in response to complaints about the actions.
