Stephanie Lundquist-Arora | June 11, 2024
(Washington Examiner) — In Fairfax County’s public schools, where drug possession on school grounds does not necessarily result in suspensions, political infractions, such as attending school maskless or “misgendering” peers, have been severely punished.
Fairfax County’s code of conduct transcends “the science.” Even students in elementary school know from the highly technical “smell a fart test” that masks do not stop the transmission of COVID-19. But this fact seems to have eluded the district’s leadership for years.
In January 2022, when the harms of mask mandates on children had become abundantly clear, the recently elected Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) implemented Executive Order Two, which gave Virginia’s parents the ability to opt out their children from wearing masks at school. In a defiant political response, Fairfax County’s school district leadership, including its 12 Democratic-endorsed school board members, surreptitiously altered its dress code to include masks in order to circumvent the governor’s executive order.
When the district’s students, including my sons, exercised their rights under state law and arrived at school without masks, school principals were forced to issue suspensions based on the new dress code. It is the first time in the district’s history that students were suspended for multiple days based on the dress code. The draconian punishment is almost laughable in light of what some students are wearing to school with impunity.
And in case it was unclear before, now we know without a doubt that Fairfax County Public Schools’s “dress code” policy and its resulting punishment were based on something other than science.
Anthony Fauci, the nation’s coronavirus adviser during the pandemic, testified in front of Congress last week that the recommended six feet of social distancing was not based on science. Earlier this year, Fauci further admitted that he could not recall reviewing studies that supported the masking of children in public schools.
As the mother of three students in Fairfax County’s public schools who were suspended for a cumulative total of 39 days for not wearing their masks, I think it is past time for the district to apologize to all of the students it unjustly suspended, and then issue expungements.