Fighting Kansas school mask mandates is ludicrous, and now is the absolute wrong time

This can’t wait a few weeks until the end of school? Until what may be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic? Do parents really have to drag school boards to hearings, and even into court, to end a mask mandate that may be going away in a few weeks anyway?

It’s ludicrous, wasteful and fraught with danger. But that’s what’s happening in multiple school districts, after the Kansas Legislature passed a new law allowing such legal challenges to mask mandates by any student, parent or teacher in the state.

The Blue Valley school district scheduled such a hearing for 10 a.m. Tuesday after at least two parents made a complaint seeking to end the mask mandate in district schools. Only the parties to the complaints will speak before a district hearing officer, and public attendance is limited to those who registered via an online form Monday. The Olathe district, too, is dealing with a complaint in a hearing at 2:30 Tuesday.

So let’s get this straight: Some folks want to eat up school districts’ invaluable time and resources in order to end a policy that makes schools safer? And they’ll do it at public hearings, which still are, themselves, a public health risk. What are we missing here?

Good grief, what is so onerous about mask wearing, which you still must do in Johnson County businesses, that we have to divert school districts’ time, attention and money away from teaching — in a hopelessly truncated school year?

Will anyone really feel this is worth going to court over when the school boards, as is likely, reaffirm their existing mask mandates?

“It’s a control issue,” says one commenter opposed to mask mandates on the “Olathe parents in support of in-person learning” Facebook page.

Absolutely. It’s about controlling a deadly virus. It’s not about the tyranny of government, as some want to believe. It’s about the public health.

Parents even contemplating these useless legal challenges to school masks should consider a few things before doing so.

First, the end of school, and the end of mask mandates, is just over the horizon. We’ve done masks for over a year. What’s another few weeks?

Second, just because the Legislature has opened the door to such legal challenges doesn’t mean we have to go through it. Pass it by, on the way to what is undoubtedly a healthier — and, yes, freer — future.

Third, isn’t it just possible, if not likely, that the vast majority of families in your district favor the mask mandate until the pandemic has more fully lifted? What about the tyranny of the minority, imposing its will on the majority?

None of this is to demonize those who file these complaints. They are free to do so, even if most of us think it’s folly.

No, the real blame lies with leaders in the Kansas Legislature, who allowed this Wild West fracas to ensue at the local level when they overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s decision last week to extend the statewide mask mandate. Now it’s everyone for themselves.

School districts are left to deal with the Legislature’s frontier-town approach. Our friends and neighbors who make a living in school administration — who have worked their tails off the past year to navigate a historic pandemic while still trying to educate our children — are now faced with complaints, hearings and possible lawsuits for merely requiring safe learning environments through masks.

This is the last thing they needed. And a maskless school, so close to the end of both the academic year and the end of the pandemic, is the last thing our kids need.

To parents even thinking of doing this, please consider the cost — in money, certainly, but also in focus and finite time.

And be careful what you wish for, on everyone else’s behalf.

This story was originally published April 5, 2021 at 1:05 PM.