This matter is urgent and can not wait to be dealt with a week before school starts!!!

Masks must be OPTIONAL for all Rockingham County, NH school students and staff. The levels of COVID in our Towns and State do NOT support the extraordinary action of FORCED masking of children or staff members in schools. Masks on our children do more harm than good, both physically and mentally. An alternative is to create a mask waiver, other states have had success with this.

Throughout the summer children have attended,camp,summer school,sporting events,amusement parks,shopped in stores, slept over a friends house,played on the playground,and ate in a restaurant. Please take note that NOT ONE of these children died from COVID.

New Hampshire's statewide mask mandate was lifted on April 16, 2021.

As of July 28, 2021:

The county has confirmed 156 new cases in the last 14 days. With a population of over 310,000. That is 0.0004% of our population.
Only 68 average daily positive cases across our ENTIRE state of NH (July 22 - 28) which has a population of 1.30M. With a 98% recovery rate and only 20 hospitalizations statewide.

Amongst those numbers you will NOT find that any child ages 0-19 have died from the virus.

www.covid19.nh.gov

Every county resident 12 years of age or older has the OPTION to receive the COVID vaccine, and study after study has proven that the risk of serious COVID illness for children under 12 years of age is extremely low. 

Every Rockingham County parent or guardian should have the right to make their own informed decision about whether to mask their child or not.  This choice is especially important for school, a setting of key importance to the social and emotional well-being of every child.

The education of our future generation is what is at stake here. They took the brunt of it last year and we will no longer accept the minimal standards of a public education!!

It’s time to make masks OPTIONAL in all Rockingham County SAU schools districts!