After more than a year of some form of pandemic online learning, students were all required to come back to school in person. Tameka was deeply afraid of COVID-19 and skeptical the schools could keep her kids safe from what she called “the corona.” One morning, in a test run, she sent two kids to school.
Her oldest daughter, then in seventh grade, and her second youngest, a boy entering first grade, boarded their respective buses. She had yet to register the youngest girl, who was entering kindergarten. And her older son, a boy with Down syndrome, stayed home because she wasn’t sure he could consistently wear masks.
After a few hours, the elementary school called: Come pick up your son, they told her. He was no longer enrolled, they said.
Around lunchtime, the middle school called: Come get your daughter, they told her. She doesn’t have a class schedule.
Tameka’s children — all four of them — have been home ever since.
That part stuck out to me too. The party of limited regulation and small government always seems to have the most onerous and demanding regulations and oppressive governments.