California School District Brings Back Forced Masking on Children

Parent Melissa Jean reads "The Gruffalo" to her son's Pre-K class at Phyl's Academy, Wedne
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, Pool
Hannah Knudsen

California’s San Diego Unified School District brought back forced masking this week, citing previously agreed upon material in defense of its decision.

“Effective Monday, July 18, indoor masking will be required at all schools and District offices. We will continue to monitor the COVID-19 community level according to the CDC and County data and we will communicate if there are any changes in two weeks,” the district wrote in an update to parents.

“As a reminder, the District established criteria approved by our Board on May 24, 2022 that, if reached, would require a return to mandatory indoor masking. This week, one of those criteria was reached, with San Diego County entering the ‘high’ COVID-19 community level,” it added, instructing parents to send their children to summer school or summer programs with a mask.

“Students and staff will be required to wear their masks while indoors only,” the update added.

The return to forced masking comes over two years after the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. As Breitbart News has reported, studies indicate that surgical and cotton masks are not effective at blocking aerosols.

More recently, California’s Alameda County served as a case study, as it stood as the only Bay Area county to keep a mask mandate in place for part of June. As it turns out, however, the mask mandate did not make a significant difference in the case rate compared to nearby counties that did not have mask mandates in place.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is among those who has stood up against forced masking of children in schools.

File/ Maren Chen holds a sign with a picture of her son, Rowan Chen, 6, during an anti-mask rally outside the Orange County Department of Education in Costa Mesa, CA, on Monday, May 17, 2021. More than 200 people came out to protest children in school being forced to wear masks. “(Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

“We want kids to be able to be kids,” he said last summer. “We need them to be able to breathe. It’s terribly uncomfortable for them to do it. There’s not very much science behind it”:
DeSantis explained that Florida already saw some schools that did not have mask mandates and some that did, and the outcomes “were not meaningfully different.”
“I think it’s really important that — parents can obviously equip their kid to go to school however they want, but there shouldn’t be any coercive mandates on our schools,” he said, adding that school districts appear to be going in the right direction, falling in line with the administration’s prioritization of liberty.
President Biden’s underlings seem to support renewed calls for forced masking. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for example, recently told CNN’s New Day that people “should wear a mask in a congregate indoor setting.”

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