We the concerned parents of Half Hollow Hills School District are in favor of parent choice when it comes to mask wearing during the 2021-22 school year for children grades K-12.

We are calling on our school board and district administrators not to mandate masks for every child.

Camps and other events have taken place all summer long on HHHSD property with masks being optional. There was only a 3 cases in the entire district all summer which is very similar to our neighboring districts. Please don’t forget the majority of cases are minimally symptomatic and DO NOT cause hospitalization or death.

By now, teachers, staff and other adults have all had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated and the choice to continue to mask/distance if they would still like to. The risk of infections in schools still remains extremely low as opposed to large indoor and outdoor gatherings.

In October of 2020, the World Health Organization has reported that, “studies suggest that transmission from staff-to-staff was most common, and student-to-student spread more rare”. The burden our young children are carrying is NOT theirs to carry. It never has been. Their mental health is not being considered; they need to see facial expressions, and should have the right to take their masks off at their individual desks and not just have “mask breaks” while they are spaced 3 feet apart. Children and staff are constantly encourages to wash their hands and sanitize often.

Patrons in restaurants ALL OVER LONG ISLAND have the option to take masks off once they are seated at their table. Why can’t our children take their masks off at their desks then? If parents are unhappy with unmasked children being in the schools and feel they are a threat to them and their family then I’m sure accommodations can be made for them. Have them seat 6’ apart from the rest, tell the parents they can secure a double mask on their own child if they are fearful.

Is the psychological damage that all of our kids experienced not enough? How about the child who developed anxiety because he couldn’t keep up with the work since he couldn’t see the board well through his fogged up glasses or see beyond the plexiglass? He was too little and afraid to tell his teacher or his parents so his grades slipped and he became withdrawn. How about the child who vomited in their own wet, smelly mask and then passed out on the way home from exhaustion? Or how about the kid who came home crying to her mother right after school because she developed chronic debilitating headaches from feelings of heat stroke after sitting all day for hours masked in non-air conditioned, stuffy buildings? How about the kid who became depressed when he couldn’t look at himself in the mirror due to the infection he developed on his face? There are no long term studies of the potential mental health aspects of these masks on children and many researchers agree that has to be studied. Our children are not science experiments!

At this point, the only answer to mask wearing during the 2021-22 school is......

IT SHOULD BE UP TO THE PARENTS