Rosemary Hills Elementary School is requiring third graders to wear N95 masks in the classroom. Fox News, the Daily Mail, and other news outlets report that Principal Rebecca Irwin Kennedy is also sending at-home rapid test kits home with kids and is encouraging parents to be on the lookout for COVID symptoms.
Caleb Michaud, whose two children are not in third grade but do attend Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland, wonders how the principal was able to establish this policy.
"MPCS had dropped their mask requirements over a year ago," Michaud tells AFN. "We've received no communication from MCPS on who had the authority to reestablish this, why the principal would have had authority to reestablish this, or who even approved that mitigation mechanism to be put in place."
Esther Wells has two children in MCPS. One child is in kindergarten, and the other is a fifth grader with autism.
"I am firmly against the mask mandates coming back," Wells asserts. "I think we need to evolve as a people, as a school system, and we need to use the data we have in the last three years that shows that, with our students, the mask mandate is not effective, and ultimately, the cost benefits to our children's education is not there."
Michaud is concerned the renewed mandate "puts us on a pathway of other mitigation strategies, such as school closures, that have had a detrimental impact on children, their education, and their degree of learning."
"I think that is a dangerous precedent for a public school system that is putting out some of the lowest scores in reading literacy and in math that it's put out ever," he adds.
Dawn Iannaco-Hahn is the mother of two boys, one who has an individual educational plan (IEP) and had to transfer to a private school for in-person leaning while MCPS was virtual.
"I'm a Democrat," Iannaco-Hahn states. "I think it's absurd."
She assures AFN she is not the only Left-leaning person to say as much about mask mandates.
"The press likes to pit us against each other, and they definitely make it a blue vs. red, Republican vs. Democrat, liberal vs. conservative," she observes. "But across the board, most of my close friends are Left-leaning people, and all of us hated the mask mandate stuff."
"I believe in bodily autonomy the whole way around," Iannaco-Hahn declares. "If somebody wants to wear one, they can wear one. But leave me alone."
AFN reached out to Montgomery County Public Schools and the superintendent for comment and did not hear back by press time.
