Can we mandate masks in schools? No. Can we at least make a plan to improve ventilation? No. Can we improve contact tracing and testing? Also no.
None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours.
I can only speak for myself, but I don’t conform to your statements above. Surely I’m not alone.
I want to see schools opened.
I oppose state and federal mask mandates, but if a school wants to mandate them, that’s their business.
One of the big takeaways for me from COVID is that we should be doing more as a rule to consider airflow and ventilation in all public spaces. I’ve not gone to great lengths to validate my instinct with data, but I strongly suspect doing so would result in a significant decrease in the spread of many airborne illnesses. Schools should absolutely work to improve in this area.
I oppose mandatory contact tracing, but if an individual wants to opt in to one of the schemes, by all means go for it! I wouldn’t even be philosophically opposed to a scheme implemented and/or “blessed” by a government - as long as it’s opt-in.
> None of these people care about safety, they just want a babysitter to get their annoying kids out of their hair for 8 hours.
Yeah, about that… we homeschool. Our children have never been enrolled in a government school, and they will never be - with the possible exception of is they decide they want to be and have a reasonable justification for it.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t have opinions about government policy.
Schools are a net good for most people that attend them. Closing them means that not only do those kids lose the opportunity to learn and develop social skills, but also that their parents’ lives are disrupted to the point where they are likely to be completely unable to provide for their families.
This doesn’t mean that it’s never appropriate to close them; it means that they shouldn’t be closed without very good reason, and that they should be re-opened as soon as possible.
In short, I want schools open because closing them demonstrably hurts people.