A Virginia school board got an earful from a mom who chewed them out for continuing to require students to wear masks.
Merianne Jenson reasoned she and Prince William County School Board members both wanted to protect the children and get through COVID-19 without harming them.
“Unfortunately, politics leads us to believe there is only one solution. Masks,” Jensen said, claiming many schools had continued in-person learning without masks throughout the pandemic without a spike in serious illness or death.
“There were not child coffins lined up as some educators in this county suggested would be the case,” Jenson added. “In fact, things have been going pretty much as normal. Kids are getting sick despite wearing masks. We are forcing healthy children home for ‘exposure’ despite them wearing masks.” She noted regretfully children are being segregated by vaccination and religious exemption status, even though the district mandates masks.
“So I ask you, if masks work, why don’t they?”
After pausing to allow applause from the large number of other parents present, she laid out some fact she said trumped policies from the White House or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She snarked that their policies seem to change by the day, often without a scientific basis.
“So here are the facts, available to any one of you,” she said. “Over the course of the pandemic, 49,000 children had died of all causes; 331 of those were COVID-related.”
“Yet we have turned kids’ lives upside down at school for what is essentially a non-risk,” she said, comparing the number of children who died of COVID-19 to the number who died of heart disease, cancer, suicide, homicide, and drowning.
“Have the schools stopped serving hamburger and french fries?” she asked in illustration of how larger causes of deaths are not addressed with anywhere near the rigor that COVID-19 is.
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The irate mother concluded by calling out the superintendent by name. Jenson claimed the superintendent explained “her hands were tied, during a 10-minute meeting she described as friendly, after a CRT hearing last year. She was informed the mask mandates instituted by former Governor Ralph Northam left the district with no choice.
“Well tonight, things are different,” she exclaimed, noting that the state’s new governor, Glenn Youngkin, had reversed that policy. She demanded the district end the mask mandate, in line with the executive order issued by Gov. Younkin.
Dr. Babur Lateef, Chairman-at-large of the Prince William County School Board did not immediately return a call for comment so it is unclear if the board acted on Jenson’s demand.
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