We are writing in support of the recent decisions of the Cohasset School Committee. Last Fall, a group of Cohasset citizens presented the School Committee with a petition that provided over 200 parent signatures in support of the choice to mask their children at school.  

At that time, children were coming off a mask-free summer with a total of nine cases in town.  While much of the community was supportive of allowing children to go to school without masks, the petition was met with anger from some, even to the the point of threatening remarks aimed at the authors on Cohasset143.  In addition and to our distress, the petition was seemingly not used in the decision to universally mask our children for the Fall 2021 start date of school despite a low number of Covid cases.  It has become exceedingly clear that the social-emotional burden on children of all ages was beyond what anyone had predicted during Covid, and we are signing this petition to help ensure that we don’t face a similar situation in the near future.  When school finally resumed in the fall following the spring 2020 Covid outbreak, there was no communication offering parental choice for masking and no social emotional support for children being masked against their parent's will. It is only now, almost two years later, that the schools are acknowledging the importance of choice and making sure all are respected. Sadly, it will be years before we know the full impact of our masking guidelines on young children during the Covid outbreak. 

While we applaud the efforts to get us to this point, our intent in this petition is to ensure that we never have to fight for parental rights that never should have been rescinded. The CDC has now stated that masking does not work to stop the spread of an airborne virus like COVID-19. Our own school board members have agreed that masking did not work.  We are petitioning to state that we will not relinquish our freedom of choice to mask our children at school ever again.