Fighting Back: A Story from an Anonymous Mother
Parents are sending us their stories. Here is an important one.
So, it’s come to this: parents want to advocate for their children, but fear the reprisals — personally and professionally — that come with speaking out publically.
Restore Childhood is committed to helping people tell their stories, even (and perhaps especially) those who want to remain anonymous.
Here is one such story — the story of a mother who is fighting for her kids, a teacher who is fighting for her students, and a human being who is fighting to restore normalcy for children.
Our Anonymous Heroine’s Bio:
This mother of two is an educator who lives in the Twin Cities metro. She has experience working with learners throughout the lifespan and is passionate about serving and advocating for students who face barriers in their education. She can be found on Twitter at @mn_libby.
Her Story, in Her Words:
“When the pandemic began in March 2020, I was not a skeptic of the messaging coming from public health leaders. I bought cloth masks before any mandates were issued because I wanted to do my part. I followed every public health guideline and mandate without resistance.
When my child’s district announced in August 2020 that they would begin the school year in distance learning, I was devastated. But I still did not speak out. I had private conversations with friends and family members, talking about the success of school openings in other countries and lamenting that while our family would struggle (and struggle we did), children more vulnerable than my own would truly suffer. But I was intimated by the criticism of the parents who were advocating for school openings. My conflict-avoidant self couldn’t handle being called a “Covidiot” or told that all I cared about was free daycare. So I stayed silent.
Toward the end of the 2020-21 school year, the difficulties we had endured seemed to be at an end. School was back to five days per week of in-person learning. Minnesota's state mask mandate was lifted, and the end of the official state of emergency was announced. My husband taught the latter part of summer school mask-free. And although we were hearing about breakthrough cases amongst the vaccinated, those cases seemed to be overwhelmingly mild. I was optimistic that the upcoming school year would be normal for my child.
However, I was shocked again in August 2021 when districts around my state, including my own, announced that masks would be mandated. Additionally, while our state had previously only required masks on children over the age of 5, school districts were mandating them for all children aged 2 and above. I was successful in petitioning my pediatrician for a mask exemption for my speech-delayed 3-year-old, but my friend's developmental pediatrician denied her 4-year-old child (who is on the Autism spectrum, has multiple developmental delays, and receives speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy) a mask exemption for his early childhood special education program. I had listened to an interview with Michael Osterholm where he said that cloth masks would not protect us against this aerosolized virus. I knew the school guidelines set by the World Health Organization. I knew that many elementary-aged children in Europe had never been masked, and that the US is an outlier in masking children under the age of 5. I knew the American Academy of Pediatrics had no evidence when they said that masks do not impede young children.
Despite all of this, I stayed silent.
It wasn’t until November 2021 that I finally found the courage to speak out. When the 5-11 vaccine was announced, I spent hours drafting an email to my school board asking for them to lift the mandate once all children had been given the opportunity to be vaccinated, citing international guidelines and policies, studies on masks in school settings, data on the low risk that COVID poses to children, the costs of masking children, and my district’s commitment to educational equity. I was optimistic that they would be responsive, however they told me that while my thoughts and perspective were appreciated, the district felt it has a duty to err on the side of caution and would be working on metrics by which to eventually move to a mask-optional policy. So the mask mandate remained in place.
The mandate was in place when our district announced that they would pivot to distance learning the final three days before winter break due to rising COVID cases and the mental health needs of students and staff. The mandate remained in place when our district announced another move to distance learning in January 2022 for two weeks, due to staffing issues from employee illness. Over the course of a month, students in my child’s district lost 13 days of in-person learning. When I reached out a second time to my leaders, questioning their policy decisions, citing more studies and more articles and the increasingly common sentiment that cloth masks were nothing more than mere “facial decorations,” I was told that they understood my frustration, but that masks helped to keep schools open and they would continue to rely on guidance from public health officials.
This marked a major turning point for me. I couldn’t find a single example of a school in Minnesota that had closed for longer than 13 days this school year, regardless of masking policy. I decided that simply relaying my thoughts was not an effective means of advocacy, and that it was the policymakers who should be justifying their actions. So I wrote a series of questions to my school board, asking for metrics that were used to shut down in-person learning, if the leaders of this district felt that students had been harmed by fall 2020 closures, what studies they had that showed masks effectively prevented the spread of the virus in schools, what evidence they had that masks provide any benefit to children under the age of 5, and for their evaluation of the potential harms of masking as it relates to literacy, communication, classroom engagement, speech development, socioemotional development, and psychological harm.
The board refused to answer any of my questions, sending instead a short response thanking me for expressing my concern, but that the district relies on the expertise of public health experts in their decision-making. I wrote to them twice more over the course of several weeks, asking for them to answer my questions, and never received a response.
In the meantime, I sent the same questions to my state health and education departments. When I didn’t receive answers to my questions, I called every single person who represented me, with a special focus on my local legislators. Those who answered their phones said there was nothing they could do, as these were “local decisions” they had no jurisdiction over. I eventually was able to convince a state senator to intervene, asking that he at least advocate for my questions to be answered, even if he did not share my views. And he did. Within hours of our conversation, I received replies to my questions. Not satisfactory ones, but responses nevertheless. It was a new starting point for me to continue to push forward in my advocacy.
I was eventually offered a meeting with my district superintendent, where I was able to have a conversation about my concerns. At this point, the CDC had revised their guidance and our district was a few days into a new mask-optional policy. My superintendent listened intently to my concerns about the negative impact that future mandates may have on students, and the likely negligible impact it would have on community spread. While she said she appreciated my remarks, she also said that the district does not have the capacity to create its own health policy and relies on the guidance of state and federal public health officials. I told her that I was working on communicating with state agencies about my concerns, and promised to keep her updated on any developments.
Communication with the state agencies was slow, and required persistence in getting responses to my questions. They had me communicate with a lawyer who liaised my questions to a team and sent back responses. But it was clear early on that the state was not considering any risk to children in their masking guidelines, because “masks work,” and they believed that any risk must be considered at the local level.
I was shocked by this. Every day, new articles were appearing about the harms of learning loss, the child and adolescent mental health crisis, and other detrimental harms that children had endured as a result of COVID policy. Every article that I read said that harms were exacerbated in children who were already educationally, socially, or psychologically vulnerable prior to the pandemic. At the same time, it had become a general consensus in society as a whole that prolonged school closures, in the US and globally, were an egregious mistake.
I could not understand how a state agency that had issued guidelines to close schools in fall 2020 thought it was ethical to continue to issue school guidance giving no consideration to harm. They knew that many school districts have mandated, and will continue to mandate, whatever guidelines they issue.
So I pushed back. Again and again, I pushed back. I told them that my district had refused to answer any questions about risk, and that they deferred to their agencies’ guidelines when explaining why they had formed their policy. I asked them to, at the very least, clarify in their guidelines that local decision-makers bear the responsibility of assessing risk. I also asked for them to include language from WHO guidelines, which is that masking decisions should be made in the best interest of the child.
At this point, I was told by the lawyer that they would no longer be answering my questions.
Incensed, I reached out to my district leaders, and informed them that risk was not being considered at the state level, and requested that our district conduct a risk assessment and, in the event that they mandate masks in the future, for the district to transparently explain to families the evidence they have that shows the effect size of masking children in school, and how that benefit outweighs the risks identified in their risk assessment. I was once again told that my district does not have the capacity to form their own health policy, but was invited to speak again to the superintendent and the board chair.
I went to the meeting prepared. I had a 31-slide powerpoint showing the harms that COVID policies had inflicted upon children, how it had likely had a negligible effect on the spread of the virus and overall mortality, and data point after data point showing the futility of mask mandates on community spread. I had an affidavit from Dr. Ram Duriseti from Urgency of Normal, explaining why mask mandates do not impact community spread. Finally, I had a series of ethical questions asking how, after it is abundantly clear that COVID policies carry a high degree of potential harm to children, we can continue to move forward with mandating guidelines written by state agencies that have not considered harm.
My district leaders continue to say that they do not have the capacity to form their own health policy, but that they are considering my information and will be sharing it with others. And maybe something will come of my advocacy. But at this point, I realize how naïve I have been. I am a single person operating against a bureaucratic system that has aligned itself with the public health branch of the medical industrial complex, and I am nothing more than a persistently annoying mosquito that can easily be swat away.
I despise conflict. Every single time I have composed an email or made a phone call or gone to a meeting on this issue, I have felt shaky and nauseous and full of regret for not having continued my trajectory of staying quiet and compliant. But I was raised with a strong moral compass and I know that what has happened around me is wrong. I can’t change the fact that I didn’t speak out earlier, and will always regret that. But I can’t ignore this calling that I have now, to do everything within my power to prevent harmful restrictions from returning to our schools and to ensure that forced, seasonal masking does not become a permanent fixture in the lives of this generation of children.
This has been a lonely fight, and I realize that I cannot do this alone. I am exploring ways to help myself and others organize locally into child advocacy teams to address issues like mask mandates, quarantine rules, masked speech therapy, and any other policies that are impeding children from maximizing their potential educationally, developmentally, socially, and psychologically. There is a long road ahead, but hopefully with like-minded people at my side, we can make meaningful progress sooner rather than later.”
Our Take:
Thank you, @mn_libby, for sharing your story with us. You are a hero.
And rest assured — you are not alone. There are other “persistently annoying mosquitos” out there, others just like you in other towns and other school districts across America who are maddened by the harmful policies and pushing back.
Together, we can swarm the establishment of anti-childhood, politically-motivated decision-makers — and restore normalcy for all our kids.
What’s Next:
If you would like to:
A) Get in touch with the real @mn_libby
or
B) Tell your own story through our Substack — anonymous or not
then
C) Please reach out to us at Restore Childhood, and we’ll do what we can to make that happen.
and of course,
D) Share @mn_libby’s story with the heroes in your life who are also fighting back.