Please sign to encourage our schools, Ridgeview Community School and Dexter Regional High School, to make masks optional for students for the 2021/2022 school year.

Science has shown us over the last year and a half that covid spread from children to adults as well as asymptomatic spread amongst them is a rarity, as well as serious illness. Nationwide, children have a statistical LESS THAN 1% mortality rate and a very low rate of hospitalization from covid-19. Kids have also been mask-free since the last school year ended, including in summer schools and on school buses, and have camped, played with others, intermingled with other families, traveled, and been in all sectors of the public without significant spread.

Masking for this fall has thus far been a recommendation from the CDC, far from the mandate we saw for last year. As parents, we want our kids to learn in the best way possible and for parents to be making this choice for their children. Those who feel the need to mask should do so. Those who feel that a 'recommendation' should not be a requirement for school attendance shouldn't be forced into masking their children. That said, parents should also be taking the reasonable and expected precaution of keeping a child that shows any sign of illness HOME. 

Nothing is more important than our kid's education, and part of that, particularly for younger children, is seeing faces, expressions and learning to connect feelings and words to those faces and expressions. Many kids struggled with mask-ne (acne from masks), anxiety, panic attacks, headaches and stomach aches. Some were forced to use remote learning or homeschool if they could not tolerate masks because of physical or mental health conditions. This is not conducive to learning and is distracting, and repeating the last year ensures more of the same. As the parent of an autistic child with significant sensory issues, all-day every-day masking is especially difficult and why we homeschooled last school year.

Please considering sharing to encourage our schools district to make this choice optional and one that kid's parents should make.