As of this week, ten states and the District of Columbia require all students and teachers to wear face masks in the public schools.  Not surprisingly, these are mostly blue states — California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington.  Eight states prohibit school districts from forcing students to mask up.  These are Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.  The remaining thirty-two states leave the decision up to the local school district.

The drawbacks of wearing facial masks are well known.  The ones that are typically used have been shown in numerous studies to be ineffective in preventing the spread of a virus.  How could it be otherwise?  The viral droplets are many times smaller than the mesh openings in the masks.  Are we to believe that the masks are somehow magical when it comes to the COVID virus?  It defies not just science, but common sense to think the masks can prevent a respiratory viral infection, no matter what the CDC says.

And if that's not bad enough, prolonged wearing of a mask has been shown to be unhealthy.  It has caused an uptick in bacterial pneumonia, fungal infections, and facial rashes and, in some cases, CO2 poisoning.  Again, how can it be otherwise when the wearer is constantly re-breathing what he just exhaled, including CO2 and bacteria?

Then there's the lasting psychological damage done to kids by forcing them to wear a mask throughout the school day, including their bus rides to and from school.  This is nothing short of child abuse.

So why do so many K–12 districts (like mine), which aren't forced by the state to require masks in the schools, do it anyway?  Look at reality to find the answer. 

In the public education system, the elected school boards are supposed to be the voice of the people.  They have the authority to say how schools are run...if they use it.  As to masks, board members can't be oblivious to the fact that they are ineffective and unhealthy.  So why mandate them?  They do it because, more often than not, the districts have become impotent in the face of the teachers' unions.  These boards are nothing but sock puppets for the education establishment.  When you get right down to it, the actual role the school board plays is to give a veneer of citizen control over the schools while rubber-stamping what the school administration and union want.  Simply put, the unions, which are jointed at the hip with the Democrat party, want masks.  And no doubt union pressure for masks in schools was a major factor in getting ten states to mandate them across the board.

The teacher unions have had a pernicious effect on all aspects of the K–12 system.  The unions helped in lowering academic standards, enforcing political correctness in the classroom, teaching anti-Americanism, bloating the cost structure, cutting parents out of the loop, and now supporting absurdities like Critical Race Theory and mask mandates.  Public education is too large and too corrupt to expect it to be reformed.  The answer is for more and more parents to choose either homeschooling or private schools for the education of their kids.

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