Help Schools Mandate Masks (Fines & Budget Cuts)
We are at a pivotal moment, living in an area of high transmission of the Delta variant of Covid-19, as one of 8 states with a ban on school mask mandates. This public health crisis can get better or it can get a lot worse. Hospitals in the Corridor are seeing pediatric admissions again and children under 12 are still unable to be vaccinated. Schools have been unable to create six feet of distance between these unvaccinated children, as there is not enough space to do so. Unvaccinated people should not be in crowded rooms unmasked during this pandemic, especially when we have such a high rate of community spread.
See the current spread at: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view
Corridor Community Action Network, alongside other organizations and area parents, is calling on the Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, Solon, Lin-Mar, Mount Vernon, Marion Independent, Center-Point Urbana, North Linn, and Clear Creek Amana School Boards to challenge the ban and issue mask mandates to protect our students. Protecting our children is a community responsibility and we cannot just throw our hands in the air and say it is illegal to do so. Challenging harmful laws is also a community responsibility and a normal part of our civic process that has had successful outcomes with the Reynolds administration in the past.
As we watch Texas school districts make the right choice to place life over law and protect their students (https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/09/texas-mask-order-schools/?fbclid=IwAR1rUlxr5ao23pY2cOtglouXVMp9zFQFQ5kwRTlNsVTIbgyfsVf3dwFYodk) we call on our districts to do the same. We also recognize the realities of potential consequences to teachers, administrators, and districts. While these risks are obviously far outweighed by the alternate consequence of child death, they are very real. Fines and funding cuts are possible and we would like to help mitigate them. We hope that providing a safety net to cover potential teacher, administrator, and/or district fines/budget cuts will help our school boards feel comfortable making the right choice to protect our kids. We recognize that everyone is in a difficult position. Please help us provide support.
We will be presenting letters to each of the previously mentioned school boards before their next meeting with our formal request and offer of mitigation support. If this initiative is unsuccessful, all funds raised will be dispersed to PTO's and other organizations in the Corridor working on ways to incentivize and increase mask-wearing in schools.
