LOS ANGELES—Many parents lost patience when California lifted the indoor mask mandate for vaccinated individuals while delaying the decision for all K-12 students and teachers.
Hundreds of parents and students gathered in front of the Chino Valley Unified School District the morning of Feb. 15 to protest.
“It’s time for the kids to stand up for their rights and our parents to support our children in their right to choose whether they want to wear the mask or not,” Kadie Kirkpatrick, mother of a student, told The Epoch Times.
She believes that the prolonged mask mandate only brings harm and not much benefit for the students.
“They hate wearing masks. They do not want to go to school anymore. Everything is just sad and depressing at school,” she said.
With new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations falling, California has decided to drop its indoor mask mandate beginning on Feb. 15, but students in the Golden State still cannot take off their masks at school. Kirkpatrick believes that “it makes zero sense.”
Unmasked and Unvaccinated Students Excluded
Many students joined the protest, holding slogans such as “End the Mandate,” “We Can’t Breathe,” and “Freedom of Choice.”“We don’t want to wear masks eight hours a day,” Elena Ochoa, an 11th grader at Chino High School, told The Epoch Times. “We respect anyone who does and who has that decision, but we should be allowed to make that decision for ourselves.”
Ochoa said she was excluded from certain school activities because of the mask and vaccine mandates. Some time ago, she was looking forward to a trip her school organized for everyone, but was only to be told that everyone has to show vaccination status to be able to go. “That was unfair,” she said.
