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Students and teacher wearing masks in a classroom
Requiring students to wear masks in school is the best way, aside from getting vaccinated, to prevent the spread of COVID-19. There should be no debate about this, but, as a new school year draws near, tension around mask mandates is ramping up.
On August 9, a crowd of people packed into what likely would have been a sleepy, summertime school board meeting in Waconia, Minnesota—if not for the continued spread of COVID-19 and the politicization of mask-wearing throughout the United States.
We can see that banning masks in schools leads right where many scientists have said it would—into further bouts of quarantining and disruption of students’ right to an education.
Scores of unmasked community members sat stuffed into plastic chairs, while still more people stood shoulder-to-shoulder both in the meeting room and outside its doors.
A handful of school board members sat before them, absorbing—and at one point appearing to nod along with—the crowd’s insistence that the school district not force their children to wear masks at school.
Parents who want their children in masks can just choose online school, one mask critic stated. Another parent with immunocompromised children argued that her kids won’t be safe unless there is a mask requirement.
In the end, the school board voted 6-0 to make masks optional for the upcoming school year.
It would be hard to describe Waconia as anything other than a privileged community, at least in terms of resources and demographics.
Of the town’s 13,000 residents, 97 percent are white, and the majority are under forty years old. Most own their own homes, and there is a local hospital available, sparing anyone who might need emergency medical care a forty-minute drive to Minneapolis.
The town rarely ends up in the news cycle, except perhaps when there is a windsurfing competition on the idyllic shores of nearby Lake Waconia.
More than seventy percent of residents in Carver County, where Waconia sits, have been vaccinated. That number climbs to 100 percent for residents older than sixty-five. That is certainly notable.
If the Delta variant surges through the area, residents older than twelve years old will likely have the hospital beds and vaccination rates needed to protect themselves.
And this is exactly the sort of ruggedly individualistic approach to COVID-19 that many Republicans, locally and nationally, have relentlessly pushed for since the pandemic first hit in 2020.
Republican governors such as Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas have made a farce out of the concept of local control. They, along with colleagues in other states, have backed themselves into a corner by trying to stop local school districts from making their own decisions regarding mask requirements.
Doesn’t that just prove that they have no real ideology, and would rather subject residents to death by COVID-19 than adhere to their own professed devotion to local control?
We can see, after all, that banning masks in schools leads right where many scientists have said it would—into further bouts of quarantining and disruption of students’ right to an education.
Even worse, perhaps, is the growing number of children who can’t be vaccinated yet and are, therefore, ending up in the hospital due to complications from COVID-19. Many doctors have taken to Twitter to share stories of having to perform emergency medical procedures such as intubation on very young children.
It’s harrowing to read about and must be terrifying to live with.
Here in Minnesota, we are clearly not protected from the politicization of COVID-19, even though our overall statewide vaccination rate is around 70 percent.
Republican legislators in the state have fought Minnesota’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, every step of the way throughout the COVID-19 crisis, especially when it comes to mask mandates and other mitigation strategies.
Walz was granted emergency powers early on in the pandemic and used that cover to issue a statewide mask mandate that included public schools in July 2020. That took the burden of decision-making off the backs of local school boards, which often can’t hold their own when faced with a crowd of mask-averse community members.
It seems evident that Walz’s mask mandate and push for a high statewide vaccination rate have helped protect Minnesotans from the worst of the pandemic.
But that early protection might be wearing off. Walz’s emergency powers ended on July 1, thanks in part to continued efforts by state Republican leaders. Walz no longer has the ability to implement a statewide mask mandate, even though the Delta variant is now posing a threat to Minnesotans.
This is, by no means, a Minnesota-only phenomenon, of course. Tony Evers, the Democratic governor of Wisconsin, has also faced continuous pushback from state Republicans regarding COVID-19 mitigation strategies.
In Wisconsin, as in Minnesota, the majority of those vaccinated are white and sixty-five years or older. Racial disparities exist with vaccines as they do with most other aspects of health care, and this is putting already-vulnerable populations at greater risk, thanks to the highly contagious Delta variant.
Public health experts in Minnesota are continually playing catch-up, as they race to try and get more Minnesotans of color vaccinated before the Delta variant gets out of control.
This seems like a situation that no one should take lightly, even those who live in communities as well-resourced as Waconia.
Putting masks on our kids, and explaining to them that it’s for their own sake as well as for the sake of others, seems like a good way to kick off the upcoming school year.
We have a right and an obligation to keep our children safe, whether or not it suits Republicans’ increasingly ridiculous attempts at political theater.