Reopen California Schools, a Twitter account advocating for “in-person education, extracurricular activities and normalcy,” posted a video sent to them by the parent of a 4-year old boy who was escorted out of his elementary school by police officers on August 18th, 2022.
A school employee from the Mountain View Whisman School District can be seen masked and blocking the child’s entry to the school, claiming, “I’m sorry. He’s not able to come in unless he has his mask on . . . I cannot keep spending time on the same issue.”
The Twitter page stated, “The officer was cordial and understanding, but the child could not stay. The child has missed most of this week. There is no state or county school mask mandate where this school resides.”
“They called a police officer to remove a 4-year old from campus” the father, who is filming the video, can be heard narrating the event.
The school district had a board meeting scheduled the same evening the video went viral, and the board member addressing it had an absolutely despicable response to the situation.
“I think this challenge we’ve been seeing is, some parents when they’ve been feeling unheard by our community, are then seeking to be heard by those outside our community,” Christopher Chiang a member of the board stated. He asked that parents, “keep this within the community”
“There was a disagreement at one of our school sites, and someone in the parent community put it on social media and mixed a political issue with a broader issue, and what that does is that brings risk upon our children . . . there’s so much nasty politics and dangerous rhetoric and ideologies out there were bringing a target to our district when we do that.” Chiang said.
Chiang, whose Twitter bio includes his preferred pronouns, and profile photo displays an avatar of himself wearing a pink mask, was clearly unhappy with the online backlash the school district received. Unhappy enough to attempt to persuade parents to not seek out a larger audience when their concerns aren’t being addressed.
A Twitter user, Laura Powell, who watched the school board meeting yesterday evening, shared some of the slides created by the district’s board, which ironically happened to include an announcement that the mask mandate would be partially lifted:
The slide states:
- Masking will still be required for students participating in wind instrument or choral music
- Required at large events (assemblies, concerts, etc.)
- Required on busses
- Required for visitors and volunteers
“It sounds like [Mountain View Whisman School District] will very likely reimpose a mask mandate as soon as levels of community transmission go up again, as they inevitably will with a seasonal respiratory virus like Covid.” Powell said, posting the following two slides from the board meeting to Twitter:
It is absurd that schools, up until yesterday, have been requiring children to wear masks — from the very start children were not at risk of contracting COVID-19, and IF they did, they were typically asymptomatic. This is especially incoherent when taking into consideration the new CDC guidelines that make it abundantly clear: masks do not work, they have not worked, and forcing a child to wear one for 8 hours is abusive.
Lesson learned: don’t raise your kids in California.
