A school district in Missouri is requiring children to wear masks outside in the sweltering heat, even as teachers union officials and school board members have not done the same.
As temperatures neared 90 degrees in the humid South, elementary school children are required to wear masks even when playing outside at recess, leading to medical issues, according to Christine Widel, a mother in the state’s Francis Howell school district in St. Charles County.
Widel said that on Monday, her 10-year old son vomited into his mask while he was exercising outside. “He was at recess and he and his friends were playing four-square, and he started getting hot so he stepped out of the game and he pulled his gator down and was told to put it back up even though he was away from all of his friends,” she told The Daily Wire.
She said her son is a rule-follower, and he vomited into the mask, with the chunks ricocheting and covering his body. She said he had seen teachers threaten his classmates with detention for removing their masks from their mouths for any reason.
“He was mortified. He had to come home,” she said. “I said ‘baby, let’s just take a shower.’ He looked at me and said ‘it smells so bad.’ It’s just too hot outside for these babies to not have 100% oxygen flowing to their little lungs that aren’t even fully developed,” she said.
But the politicians who make the rules and the teachers unions who demand severe coronavirus restrictions do not always appear to subject themselves to the same restrictions they demand of small children.
The Missouri branch of the National Educators Association (NEA), the teachers union that is the largest labor group in the country, has posted numerous pictures of its members not wearing masks, including one featuring 17 retired teachers, most with gray hair and in the age group most at risk of dying from COVID-19, nearly touching.
A May 6 post, now deleted, appears to show union President Phil Murray and Vice President Rebeka McIntosh reading to a classroom of young children, while the union honchos are unmasked, but the children are masked.
“Great visit at Castillo Elementary in the Francis Howell District. Thank you Francine Hill and Anita Kuehner for inviting us!” it says.
Murray did not immediately return a request for comment.
The union Facebook page blocks people from commenting on its posts.
A May 20 Facebook post shows Francis Howell school board member Chad Lange conducting a ceremonial groundbreaking of a new high school as he stands inches from others, none of whom are wearing masks.
An April 12 picture from the Missouri School Boards Association shows four officials sitting just inches from each other at a speakers table, and none of them are masked.
“I’m absolutely heartbroken that these adults feel that it’s ok for them to not abide by the unreasonable mask mandates that they’ve set for children, the child abuse that they’ve inflicted,” Widel said.
Research has shown that children are far less likely to contract or spread coronavirus.
“We know that vaccinated adults are very well protected and that healthy kids are at relatively low risk of severe illness from COVID-19. There’s also evidence that kids younger than 11 or 12 are much less likely than adolescents or adults to transmit the virus if infected,” MIT Medical Associate Medical Director Shawn Ferullo has said.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Children were 0.00%-0.20% of all COVID-19 deaths, and 9 states reported zero child deaths.”
Widel said that no one wants to take responsibility for the masks, with the school district blaming the county health department, and the health department passing the buck to the schools.
Teachers unions have been the most consistent advocates for draconian coronavirus measures, which were used to close schools for nearly a year across much of the country.
On Friday, the American Federation of Teachers, the second major teachers union, tweeted: “In elementrary [sic] schools, until we have the vaccines, it seems like unfortuantely [sic] we still [sic] going to have to keep wearing our masks and keep social distancing because we don’t want outbreaks.”