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Helen’s Place LLC Update: August 10, 2022
Since this article was first published August 19, 2021 – when Covid-19 Delta was the major concern, the U.S. has had two dominant strains of COVID-19 emerge – Omicron beginning in the Fall of 2021 and its sub-variant BA-5 currently in circulation.
The CDC continues to advise Americans to get vaccinated, and regularly updates the CDC Guidelines on its website.
Today, Monkeypox is spreading across the U.S., and Polio is spreading in New York – a disease once thought to be eradicated in the U.S. due to vaccinations, but now reemerging due to the antivaxxer movement.
The confusion, over mask wearing or not, and vaccine mandates or not, continues to wreak havoc on our divided country, especially on the emotional fitness of teacher’s who are smack in the middle of the culture war in America.
This, along with pay that’s not commensurate with the stress teachers are experiencing, has caused many teachers to retire or not renew contracts for the current 2022 – 2023 school year.
The “every man for himself,” culture dominates after two years of COVID, making teaching problematic in a field where communication and community is so critical to teaching children cohesively.
It remains to be seen how the 2022-2023 public school year will progress with very few mask mandates or mandatory COVID-19 vaccines requirements at the start of the school year, in any of the 50 states.
What we know is that last year’s 2021-2022 school year was confusing and rocky, with angry parents, both for and against vaccines and/or mask wearing, causing state legislatures and state supreme courts to get involved in some cases.
Covid outbreaks occurred around the country, causing returns to mask mandates and school shutdowns. It was a difficult year.
The Bentonville, AR school district reflected this confusion after it imposed a temporary mask mandate during the fall of 2021 due to a spike in COVID cases, but was overturned on October 6, 2021, after parents sued.
However, The Arkansas State Supreme Court ruled April 14, 2022, that the Bentonville School District can require students to wear masks. The hope is it won’t be necessary to require masks in the 2022-2023 school year.
Helen’s Place LLC August 19, 2021
It doesn’t matter what the CDC guidelines say about elementary school kids wearing or not wearing masks, the verdict is in for one Arkansas educator:
“I challenge anyone who thinks elementary school children are actually wearing masks to peek into a classroom.
Imagine a room full of kindergarteners – Now picture about 5 of them actually wearing them. The other 15 are licking them, chewing on them, spinning them, coloring on them – or my favorite – just wearing them on their chin.”
This elementary school educator started the 2020 school year hopeful and a huge fan of masks to keep kids safe during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But by the end of 2020 she wanted to have a “bonfire” with them, “It’s one thing to get adults to wear masks, and something else entirely different to get kids to wear them.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying. “Teachers really made a valiant effort to get kids to wear masks, and so much instruction was spent on mask directions,” she said. Teachers spent “all friggin day long trying so hard to get kids to pull them up,”
In conclusion, she said “masks are the devil” for elementary school aged children, because they whisper in a kids ear to put them upside down!
But this educator acknowledges that the mask debate isn’t over, and with the new Delta variant making its debut in the 2021 school year, maybe the debate has started all over again!
“I’ve had people tell me masks really do work because we didn’t have a huge flu season or strep season, so that shows they work. I get that, but masks at the elementary school weren’t the reason for that.”
What caused the success of the 2020 school year may be attributed to a number of factors. Perhaps COVID-19 didn’t affect younger children much, or that more older children and family members wore masks successfully, thereby preventing the spread to the younger ones.
Other factors that may have helped elementary kids stay healthy included protocols like kids staying in classroom pods for instruction recess and eating lunch. Also, employees quarantining away from school if they came down with COVID-19 for three weeks helped.
But that was 2020, and the 2021 school year is likely to be worse than it was last year due to the COVID-19 Delta variant being as contagious as chicken pox.
The one thing everyone agrees on is that no one wanted to deal with COVID again for another school year;
In fact it’s almost too much to bear! And the state legislatures in Arkansas, Texas and other states passing no-mask policy legislation drives home this point.
In Arkansas, Senate Bill 590 anti-mask mandate, was signed by Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson on April 28, 2021. Hutchinson, appeared to defend his state’s policy on CNN’s “State of the Union” program with Jake Tapper on July 25, 2021.
In this interview Hutchinson told Tapper that when he approved the law the state “shifted to the emphasis on vaccination” and that its guidelines “continue to say if you’re not vaccinated, you should wear a mask.”
Later, Governor Hutchinson reversed his position due to the Delta surge in AR, and put a mask mandate back in force in the public schools.
During the July 25 interview, Hutchinson reiterated that he wouldn’t consider a vaccine mandate “because that would even cause a greater reaction of negativity toward the government, and then imposition on freedom.”
Based on the direction of the state, the Arkansas school system decided they would embrace the no mask mandate and instead focus on returning everything to normal for the 2021 school year like it was before the pandemic – choosing to get rid of all COVID protocols, encourage everyone to get vaccinated, and hope for the best.
A do-nothing policy is the result of what happens when you throw out the Girl Scout Motto “be prepared,” and replace it with pretending that COVID-19 Delta isn’t that bad.
However, wishful thinking can’t hide the facts about Delta, and that kids are getting sick and some are ending up in the hospital or worse. How bad does it have to get for people to get scared enough to get vaccinated remains to be seen.
Fortunately, due to the Governor’s quick action to require masks, some of the injury to children may be prevented.
Nevertheless, the possibility exists that the situation in AR and schools around the U.S., with or without masks, could get so severe that a school has to shutdown and/or go back to remote learning.
In extreme cases, a school might be forced to remain closed until proof of vaccinations are received for the children, their family members and school staff as a condition for reopening.
But nobody wants to talk about that possibility, and educators hope things never get that bad.
Related audio/video interview recording:
Video, CNN, Devan Cole, July 25, 2021, “Arkansas’ governor defends decision to approve a statewide ban on mask mandates”
Other related articles you may be interested in:
Article includes teachers:
Helen’s Place LLC, “What’s Threatening Women in the Workforce the Most”
Bookmark this CDC site:
The latest COVID-19 guidelines and information updated by the CDC
Historical record of where things stood at the start of the 2021-2022 school year:
Pew Research, August 10, 2021, “10 States Have School Mask Mandates, While 8 Forbid Them”
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