About 40 percent of parents say that school masking policies during the last year of the pandemic damaged their children academically, socially, emotionally, and mentally.
Forty-six percent believe masks harmed their kids’ social learning and interactions, and about 33 percent believe the policy harmed their education, according to a recent Politico-Harvard survey. About 40 percent believe masking harmed their child’s general schooling experience and 39 percent their mental and emotional health.
As for parents whose kids who were forced to wear masks in the classroom, 51 percent believe wearing a mask is necessary to combat Covid-19 and 47 percent believe it is not. The poll, conducted March1-7, surveyed 478 parents whose children go to school in-person.
The poll’s findings come after two years of masking requirements in K-12 public schools, which, compounded with remote classes, stifled academic development for many students. Covid-masking caused learning loss in many speech-delayed children, studies and surveys are now indicating. While some societal and personal sacrifice was tolerated to counter the disease, children seemed to have disproportionately suffered the fallout. For them, the cost was high, maybe unreasonably so, 40 percent of parents seem to agree.
In school districts where parents believed masks hurt their children, these parents were more likely to lobby to lift mask mandates than those districts where most parents believed masks had no effect, according to the poll.
Many districts across the country have dropped their rules amid a waning Omicron wave. And a number of Republican-dominated states have passed laws or imposed executive orders banning mask mandates in K-12.
A similar Politico/Morning Consult poll from last month showed slightly more parental acceptance of school mask requirements as Omicron infection rates were still high. Some parents and school districts have likely taken some cues from the CDC, which finally relaxed its masking recommendations for most U.S. counties late last month under a new tiered system for measuring community risk level.
Some members of the Biden administration are concerned about the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron, more infectious but still considered a milder offshoot, spreads rapidly across Europe. The nation is now learning to cope with the virus as endemic.