Moms in Darien, Conn., started the ‘Mask Choice’ Instagram page to push back on mandates, prompting a wave of similar accounts in towns across the country.
Every afternoon when they arrive home from kindergarten, Emma Burnett’s twin five-year-old daughters complain about how difficult it was to breathe in their masks all day.
Burnett, like many moms in Connecticut, was very Covid-19 conscious at first, accepting the state restrictions as a necessary evil to combat the spread of an ominous disease.
But as the Delta wave came and went in the fall of 2021, vaccine uptake soared, and scientific data supporting school masking started to dwindle, all while the teachers’ unions continued to insist that kids had to cover their faces for their individual and collective safety, something didn’t sit right with Burnett and other moms.
Given the countervailing evidence, the long-held consensus that masking in K-12 protects children and the community from the virus started to unravel, prompting many parents across the country to ask their Democratic-controlled states and school districts the same question: “Why haven’t you adjusted the rules in response?”
Outrage over the inflexibility of local authorities hit home especially hard in the New York City suburb of Darien, Conn.
There, a small grassroots movement of parents, each with emotional stories to share about the collateral damage their children have suffered due to masks, came together and launched Mask Choice, an Instagram page advocating an end to the school mask mandate in Connecticut. Hoping to make a splash in their little town, they had no idea that their message would spread far and wide.
In a sudden success, the account’s follower count exploded from about 150 in August, 2021, when it first launched, to 1,000 just last month, according to Caroline Montero, who started the first account in Darien, Conn. Her account went viral after she posted damning photos and emails exposing children’s poor treatment at school under the Covid-19 rules.
In one email, prompted by a mother’s inquiry about how snack time works during the day, a teacher, calling herself the “mask police,” responded that she permits “about seven minutes of chew time” for kids to have a snack, according to documents Montero provided to National Review.
From there, the parents’ anti-mandate campaign caught on like wildfire, with Mask Choice accounts popping up all over Connecticut, then the Tri-State Area, and then across the map from Maryland to Virginia to Massachusetts to Michigan. Accounts linked to Connecticut towns such as Darien, New Canaan, and Fairfield now lead in popularity with over 1,000 followers each. There are now over 200 Mask Choice accounts in the Tri-State Area alone.
While each chapter is independent and focused on its respective locality, the Connecticut groups have effectively formed a loose coalition, with some towns even sending members to support each other’s rallies, Alexandra Sullivan, a mom and member of the New Canaan group, told National Review.
As for the reason behind the Mask Choice boom, “Omicron busted it wide open,” Sullivan said. The new highly infectious variant proved that the virus wasn’t discriminating based on masking, vaccine status, social distancing, or other Covid-19 mitigation strategies, she said. It didn’t matter whether only three kids were at a table six feet apart at lunchtime or whether all or no classroom windows were open in mid-winter. The virus was spreading rapidly, and the vast majority of children were still avoiding severe outcomes.
As masks, especially the cloth variety used by so many kids, increasingly appeared ineffective, parents began pointing out that children had been needlessly bearing their brunt of pandemic mitigation measures for two straight years, Sullivan added. Parent testimonies poured in as the Mask Choice Instagram accounts proliferated. Kids had been struggling with speech delays, skin irritation, poor vision due to foggy glasses, sensory issues, and more. Children with autism and Bell’s palsy fared even worse.
“Every family and town have been suffering in unique [ways]. Masks might be okay for one family but not for all, that’s why we’re asking for choice. Families should have the right to choose what to do with their children. Masks are not one-size-fits-all,” Sullivan said.
Parents in multiple Connecticut towns submitted letters to their boards of education explaining the side effects of masking on their children.
“My four-year-old has spent more than half of his life in a mask. My 18-month-old has known nothing other than a mask,” Montero said.
Beyond the developmental and learning disruptions associated with masking, there have been serious psychological repercussions, an elementary school teacher in Darien told National Review.
The teacher, who remained anonymous of out fear of retribution, said the mandatory masking has created a bullying culture among her students.
“Kids are being taught to call out their peers. I constantly see kids bullying their classmates, yelling things like ‘Johnny, put your mask above your nose!’,” she said.
While the teacher encourages her children to take “mask breaks” outside to get some air, she says she’s noticed that some are afraid to ask for one because they’re worried that they’ll be ridiculed. Not only is there a strange tattle-taling dynamic among students, but many teachers are promoting it, she said. “Teachers don’t even realize they’re normalizing a bullying climate with the masks and it’s really affecting the kids’ mental health,” she noted.
“I hear teachers say things like ‘Pull your mask above your nose or everyone else will get sick. We’re in a pandemic’,” she recalled.
Not only that, but masks, especially among young children, present their own sanitation risk, she suggested.
“I had a kid throw up in my room. The mask was covered in vomit, and then the student felt like they had to cover their mouth with their hands. The masks are disgusting. I offer my students extra masks because theirs’ are often covered in dirt, spit, etc.” she said.
In her preschool and kindergarten classes, she teaches kids who have been refusing to speak in class, a first for her career, she says, and she attributes the apprehension to the masks.
Erica Garvey, the mom of two behind the Mask Choice Fairfield Instagram page, said that while the academic and social cost of mandatory masking has been immeasurable, the financial expense associated with the learning loss is quantifiable.
At a January board of education meeting, Robert Mancusi, executive director of Special Education and Student Services, noted that the district spent $2.9 million over budget on special-education services to meet the huge uptick in Individualized Education Plans (IEP) in Fairfield. An IEP is a program by which a child who is diagnosed with a disability identified under the law can receive specialized instruction.
“We’ve had an increase over the past couple of months in the number of psychiatric evaluations, and speech is another huge driver in the increased contracted services cost because we have gaps in our ability to meet the mandates of IEPs,” Mancusi said.
Because of the surge in IEPs in Fairfield, schools are severely low on resources, which has forced parents to seek supplemental services outside of school, in some cases running up $600 a month for additional help, Garvey said.
“At the state level they’re pushing mask mandates and at the local level we’re seeing the repercussions in real time. No one is educating our representatives about what’s happening, and that’s why there is such a disconnect,” she added.
On Wednesday, Mask Choice Connecticut had planned to congregate in Hartford to lobby Democratic Connecticut governor Ned Lamont and the legislature to allow the mask mandate to expire Thursday. However, on Monday, Lamont announced that he would lift the state K-12 mask mandate, deferring to local boards of education and superintendents as of February 28. While it looks like a victory, Montero said the bulk of the fight is still to come, given that many progressive towns in Connecticut are expected to reimpose the mandates.
“Stamford and Norwalk are very liberal and already implemented universal mask mandates for public schools and businesses,” she noted.
As the masking wars consume communities across America, the concerned parents behind Mask Choice Connecticut still have more battles in store. Now, they must convince their local school boards that masking children should be a decision left up to parents. While masking proponents continue to repeat that “kids are resilient,” these Connecticut parents are fighting to reclaim control of their children’s wellbeing and show the real victims of the mask mandates.
“What we’re doing to this generation is unforgivable. Our kids protected the community and now it’s our time to protect them,” Montero said.
In a survey of 2,027 Darien teenagers in 7th to 12th grade conducted by the Thriving Youth Task Force, only 31 percent reported that they’re “thriving.” As for the rest of the students, the vast majority are struggling, with 20 percent responding that they’re “distressed,” 20 percent “vulnerable,” and 8 percent “anxious.”
“In saying kids are resilient, they’re admitting that they’re doing something to the kids that they shouldn’t be. ‘They’ll be fine, they’ll get over it,’ that’s everyone’s tag phrase. But I don’t think some of them will,” the Darien teacher said.