FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Fairfax Co., Va. (Mar. 1, 2022) — A unified coalition of educators, students, and advocates across the Commonwealth of Virginia are unequivocally calling for school systems and policymakers to continue prioritizing COVID safety within our schools and to maintain masking requirement protocols.
Removing mask mandates in school systems poses a consequential safety threat to communities across the Commonwealth, while maintaining masking and COVID-related requirements in no way obstructs education and ensures no COVID-related disruption of instruction.
When educators were asked how they felt about the new masking guidelines, union members from American Federation of Teachers Virginia’s local chapter Fairfax County Federation of Teachers responded “As educator[s], many of us are feeling violated; by [school districts] making decisions at us not with us…Seems that the rules are set to protect students who want to go maskless. What about students who want or need the protection of a mask? What about the immuno-compromised family members they return home to? Do students who wear masks get to decide what spaces they can opt out of for safety’s sake?”.
Zakareya Hamed, an FCPS student and Advocacy Director at Saphron Initiative, added that “students, both in Virginia and across the nation, are demanding that masks continue to be mandated in schools as COVID-19 rapidly evolves. Youth across Virginia are making their voices heard: student and educator safety are not things to play with. Saphron Initiative has worked in the past with youth organizations nationwide on COVID-19 safety, and now students and educators are uniting to ultimately show unity on the need for continued mask requirements here in our Commonwealth,”
Lenience in COVID protocols consistently lead to spikes in cases, and new infectious variants are prone to arise with the removal of mask mandates. As the COVID-19 virus continues to mutate, and while less than half (48%) of youth ages 5-11 in Fairfax County schools have been vaccinated thus far, Saphron Initiative and AFT Virginia find it essential to maintain COVID-preventive measures.
Both organizations immediately issue a unified call to school districts across the Commonwealth to reconsider mask-optional policies that will lead to detrimental negative effects on the safety of our school communities.