Attacks On Masks In Schools: Not Just About Masks, An Attempt To Destroy Public Education

[appalachiablue]

- Aug. 23: Anti- mask crowd fills a Michigan school board mtg. People voice their opinions during a special Board of Educ. Mtg. on mask mandates for students & staff in Kalamazoo County Schools at the Schoolcraft High School Gymnasium in Schoolcraft, Mich. The School District opened the floor for public discussion.
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- Daily Kos, Sept. 7, 2021. 'No masks? Check. No vaccines? Check. No remote classes? Check. Public education ended? In progress.'

Across the country, school boards—and school board members—have found themselves at the center of a firestorm. In a matter of months, meetings that would ordinarily have been sparsely attended have become full to overflowing. Boards that in a normal year might spend nights balancing the need to replace tattered textbooks against an always-too-tight budget have found themselves being screamed at over protests around a “critical race theory” that seemed to change definitions from one outraged speaker to the next. Even more, they’ve found themselves threatened, in every sense of that word, over efforts to simply do their best to protect the children placed in their care.

There are two simple steps that schools can take to protect both students and staff against a virus that is still burning through communities across the nation: requiring that everyone wear masks, and requiring both staff and older students to be vaccinated. Those actions provide the very minimum level of discomfort while providing the best chance to not just keep children safe, but keep schools operating. Since governors and legislators in multiple states have made it more difficult to conduct any sort of distance learning, those already urgent goals have been given even greater weight.

Then those school boards found themselves deluged by people screaming a mantra that somehow, in some unexplained way, equated masks with stripping away freedom and vaccination with Nazis. Meetings didn’t just become raucous, they became violent. Dangerous. Board members found themselves facing off with white supremacist militias, and with people whose anger followed them into the parking lot and back to their homes.

But if the people behind these verbal and physical attacks seemed unfamiliar to board members, it’s because they are. Not only are these meetings being crammed with people who have no students or stake in local districts, they’re following scripts for creating disruption and fear that were crafted on a national level. Because this isn’t just about blocking masks, it’s about using this moment to destroy public education...

- More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/7/2050780/-Attacks-on-masks-in-schools-aren-t-just-about-masks-they-re-an-attempt-to-destroy-public-education
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NPR, Parents of Children With Disabilities Join Legal Battle Over Masks In Schools https://www.npr.org/sections/back-to-school-live-updates/2021/09/07/1034918212/parents-of-children-with-disabilities-join-the-legal-battle-over-masks-in-school

.. In a wave of lawsuits in nearly half a dozen states, families of students with disabilities are joining the legal battle over masks in schools. Complaints filed in Tennessee, Florida, Utah, Texas and South Carolina argue that restrictions on mask mandates infringe on disability rights and that children with disabilities are being forced to choose between their health and their education...

[Irish_Dem]

1. None of what is happening is about masks. Or vaccines.

There are obviously some other agendas.