I am once again sending my kids to school in the middle of a pandemic. We live in Iowa, a state that passed a law preventing schools from mandating masks. I don’t know the vaccination status of my kids’ teachers. Cases in Iowa are rising, and they are almost as bad as they were last August when school started. The state has a 50 percent vaccination rate. And in my county there is a 55 percent vaccination rate. Right now, the positivity rate in Linn County is 15 percent. Liz Lenz writes about the powerlessness of parenting (not just during a pandemic) in the latest Men Yell at Me.
Legally, Iowa’s lawmakers have taken away school’s’ ability to enforce the one thing that we know prevents the spread of a deadly disease and have also prevented them from moving to online-only education, should an outbreak occur. So, here we are. Stripped of every enforcement tool to keep our kids safe from a deadly virus.
Other states are facing similar tensions and handling them differently. Some districts are fighting back—hiring lawyers, working around the laws. Already in Mississippi, 20,000 students are in quarantine from COVID exposure, five have died. Just days after restarting in-person learning, Louisiana has thousands of children in quarantine after positive tests.
I am more afraid this year than I was last year.