It’s becoming increasingly clear that the last place that will be freed from COVID restrictions will be the public schools.

And this mania for pushing both mask wearing in perpetuity, and a full embrace of vaccinations, has become more than just a public health issue. For those in charge of the public schools, it has turned into a religious cult. And you can tell it’s become a cult because they aren’t stopping to consider the harm that they will do to children. They have the power in the public schools, and they will cram down compliance for their mask mandates and pressure kids into getting vaccinated – OR ELSE.

Our first example comes from a New York parent, who witnessed this at her child’s school.

Upper West Side Story
My son's middle school holiday show featured a song where the kids, holding "Pfizer" and "Moderna" signs, were singing "if you're not vaxxed you're no friend of mine" to the tune of "Safety Dance."
1 in 5 kids at that school are unvaxxed. pic.twitter.com/4H54pgGBhq

— Antigone Michaelides (@oneantigone) February 4, 2022

This would be social shaming, pushed by the adults, at its finest. Odds that the kids just spontaneously came up with this idea for a song-and-dance number on their own? Zero. The telltale giveaway? No one under 18 can even legally get the Moderna vaccination. And yet the kids are holding “Pfizer” and “Moderna” signs. Oops.

Our next example comes from Wake County Public Schools in North Carolina, where Assistant Superintendent Paul Koh accidentally gave the game away.

Assistant superintendent Paul Koh of @WCPSS, explains he wants to mask 2 yr olds to train them in “mask compliance” in preparation for the next few years: pic.twitter.com/0cnLTSDqhx

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) February 3, 2022

When that video went viral, the local media went into spin mode for the school district, loudly protesting that the schools weren’t going to REQUIRE masks on two year olds.

The tweet shows a 26-second clip of a longer presentation that Koh gave to the school board on Tuesday. Koh was recommending expanding the face mask mandate to include 2-to-4-year-olds based on new guidance from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. Instead, the board opted Tuesday to continue only requiring face masks for ages 5 and up. Face coverings are being recommended but not required for younger children. In explaining the recommendation, Koh told board members that teachers recognize that younger children can’t wear masks as long as older students.”

They also pointed out that Koh then started getting death threats after the video went viral. Yes, that is bad, and law enforcement can deal with that. But what Koh said is so ugly and poisonous that just because the school board DIDN’T go along with it, doesn’t mean that his opinion as the ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT should be brushed off. And notice how he puts it. He wants two-year-olds to “practice” wearing masks in preparation for when they are THREE AND FOUR YEARS OLD. Meaning that he sees NO END to the mask mandates, even a year or two years from now. What the hell are they THINKING? That’s a rhetorical question – we all know they are trying to groom kids – and parents – into believing that this is the forever pandemic. Ending COVID is not the goal. Controlling students – and by extension, their families – IS the goal.

Which leads to Oakdale High School in California, where school administrators apparently lost their minds when the students staged a protest against wearing masks in school, citing Governor Gavin Newsom’s example while at the 49ers-Rams game last weekend. The kids made it clear to local media that the governor motivated their protest.

The school, for its part, said the kids weren’t facing disciplinary action. But perhaps the staff should.

Update: Confirmed staff attempted to barricade the maskless high schoolers in the gym by putting tables in front of the exits. A staff member also was caught turning down the thermostat to “freeze them out.” Here is one of the photos taken by a student. pic.twitter.com/SckZIG5Tm0

— Reopen California Schools (@ReopenCASchools) February 4, 2022

So, staff turned off the heat on the kids and tried to “barricade” them in the gym. Leaving aside that the “barricade” is completely useless and stupid if they really thought it was going to keep able-bodied teenagers inside the gym, THAT’S A FIRE HAZARD VIOLATION. And the kids called the police, who then turned the heat BACK on! What on earth were these adults, who were supposedly “in charge,” THINKING??? An update from the district now lamely claims that the tables in front of the doors was “unintentional and temporary” and that police, a building inspector, and a fire inspector all showed up to check on the doors. Hmmm, how many angry parents do you think made phone calls? Incidentally, the update from the school does not mention the turning off of the heat by staff. Are they tacitly admitting that this happened, and can offer no excuse for such shitty retaliation toward the kids?

These public schools have a problem, and the problem is that they are now drunk on fear and power. Parents are demanding answers. And while the schools LOVED it when kids were protesting for their favorite social justice causes, they’ve discovered they aren’t so much in love with protests when their authoritarian and draconian rules are the ones being targeted in these protests.

Unfortunately, the public schools aren’t going to go down without a fight, and the seven school districts in Virginia that were defying Governor Youngkin’s executive order have been granted a temporary restraining order by an Arlington circuit judge to keep the masks on the kids. The bill being cited by the judge, SB 1303, does have an expiration date of August 1, 2022. Will the schools drag this out in the courts just long enough to let the law expire, or will parents and students in Virginia force a national reckoning on what will be allowed in public schools? We shall see.

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Featured image via Alexandra_Koch on Pixabay, cropped and modified, Pixabay license