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A California school district voted to make masks optional for students inside the classroom, breaking with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide indoor school mask mandate, with a school board official telling Fox News that parents should “have the right to decide what is best for their children.”
The school board for the Rancho Santa Fe School District, which enrolls about 500 elementary school students, voted 3-2 during a meeting this week to make mask-wearing optional — giving parents the chance to decide whether their children should wear face coverings when at school.
“It is important that we listen to the parents in our community — that is why we are elected to the board — to be their voice,” Board Vice President Annette Ross told Fox News. “They have stood before our board in tears asking us to offer a mask option.”
CALIFORNIA LEAVING SCHOOL MASK MANDATE IN PLACE DESPITE LIFTING INDOOR MASK MANDATES ELSEWHERE
Ross, who voted in favor of making masks optional in schools, told Fox News that the school board is feeling “an outpouring of support.”
“Our decision was met with a standing ovation,” she said.
Kindergarteners wear masks while listening to their teacher amid the COVID-19 pandemic at Washington Elementary School on Jan. 12, 2022, in Lynwood, California.
(Associated Press)
Ross, a mother of five and an author, told Fox News that two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the “conversation is not about the dangers of COVID, but the problems created by masking.”
“We know that the need for speech therapy has skyrocketed all over the county,” Ross explained. “Children, younger children especially, have suffered from not seeing the faces of their teachers, and often, they are unable to pick up social cues.”
Ross added that “test scores are down all over the state,” and said children “are stunted emotionally, and many are in fear.”
“Parents say they cry before going to school,” Ross said. “We have created a…
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Source : foxnews
