We want AAPS to lift their mask mandate, in order to give every student and family the ability to balance the benefits and harms of wearing a mask at school by making mask-wearing an individual choice, not a requirement imposed on every student without regard to individual differences in educational needs, physical and emotional health, and risk tolerance.

Personally, this matters to us because our children are being actively harmed by the mask mandate: our daughter's ability to learn has been impacted by fogged eyeglasses and an inability to see others' faces. Our son is claustrophobic and his mental health is suffering. Children in Ann Arbor (not just ours) are being hurt while adults stand idly by, unmasked. Adults have been able to drink alcohol in crowded bars without masking since June, but AAPS is still requiring our kids to wear what in many if not most cases CNN would call useless "facial decorations." It's beyond time to act. 

We are not asking anyone to take off their own mask. We are just asking to have the choice for our kids to take theirs off. And we believe everyone should have the same choice. Well-controlled real-world studies have not demonstrated any clear benefit of masking students, while masks negatively affect learning and cause social and emotional harm. Everyone has the chance to protect themselves with vaccines and N95 respirators, and high-quality one-way masking is more effective than universal use of low-quality masks.

Join us in calling on AAPS to lift the mask mandate. Our children deserve to have a choice.

Please find more information on the importance of returning to normalcy and data on masks here.