Arguments for why masks should be considered optional would have more to do with the feeling of being in a normal state again, as it has had a psychological impact on many students. Although some think that schools are safe enough to no longer require masks, 33% of children ages 5 to 11 have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Although these statistics are unfavorable, you do have to remember that children are less susceptible to covid.
Last Wednesday, 450 San Francisco parents signed a letter sent to Mayor London Breed asking for masks to be optional stating that covid does not pose much of a threat to children. Many have begun to question why the business space wll become optional but will continue to stay required for schools.
Schools probably are not ready to lift mask requirements mainly because a lot of the children are not fully vaccinated. The only people who are able to go maskless in business spaces are those who are fully vaccinated. Education is obviously different from private businesses, but many believe that in this case when the requirements change for one, they should also change for the other. The mandates that have been administered to the state of California have greatly taken away the rights many people deserve they have, which would fall under the first amendment. Now that many other parts of the nation have lifted mask mandates, the citizens of California are wanting the same change to come.
Questions:
Do you believe that school has become safe enough where masks can be optional?
Do you believe that the lifting of mask requirements on Feb. 15th should also apply to Schools?
Sources:
2 comments:
I think we should continue to wear masks in school. For me, wearing a mask is definitely worth it to reduce my chances of contracting COVID; the benefits far outweigh the costs and will continue to do so until COVID no longer poses a viable threat. Although our rates of COVID here at Aragon are going down and are relatively low, they are because of the mask mandate and I fear that this will change if masks were no longer required. I agree with the teachers that the top priority should be keeping schools safely open and that vulnerable relatives could be put at risk — wearing a mask benefits your community as well as yourself. I don’t believe that just because businesses are lifted mask mandates, schools should, and likewise, that just because other states have done so, California has done so — this seems illogical. I do not believe that mask mandates threaten people’s first amendment right to freedom of expression, as they are necessary to keep people safe, and multiple court cases support this. According to the Constitution Center, in a 2020 case regarding mask mandates, the Florida “State Circuit Court concluded that ‘the right to be free from governmental intrusion does not automatically or completely shield an individual's conduct from regulation.’ [It] also cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), arguing that it permitted a local government to impose a vaccine mandate during a public emergency.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-constitutional-issues-related-to-covid-19-mask-mandates
I think that the mask requirement in schools should be upheld because, like Ella mentioned, schools are much different than private businesses. Students don’t have a choice if they want to go to school or not, meaning they don’t get to choose to keep themselves out of a possibly contagious environment. If they have high-risk family members at home, they can’t get an exemption from going to school. On the other hand, people have more freedom in deciding whether or not they want to go into private businesses and possibly expose themselves to COVID-19. Given the mandatory nature of school, which puts kids and their families at risk without a choice, it makes sense to keep the mask mandate at school in order to continue protecting students and their families. Also, students are spending more time with one another at school than strangers normally would while going into private businesses. Students are sitting next to about 35 other peers in most classes for an hour and a half before switching to another class where they’re with another group for another hour and a half again. However, people going into places like grocery stores, coffee shops, and even restaurants are usually there for less time and further away from one another. They simply pass by each other rather than sit next to each other in a room without open windows or doors. Overall, the mandatory nature of school and the extensive time students spend in close proximity to each other prove to be critical differences between schools and private businesses that make it wise to keep the mask mandates, at least for the rest of the 2021-22 school year.
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