Carmen Abreu is hoping to save a little face this coming fall in Monongalia County’s school district.
Abreu, who first spoke to Board of Education members last month asking them to reconsider the district’s mask mandate for students in younger grades, presented a petition with 316 signatures requesting the same during Tuesday night’s session.
Masks in younger children only add to the angst of the pandemic, she said.
She is a licensed social worker and mental health therapist who counsels children.
Abreu also has five kids of her own – and four of them wear face masks for hours at a time during the course of their days in the local district.
Children, and many adults, she said, generally wear cloth coverings opposed to technical masks.
Either way, none of the above are properly fitted to the faces of younger wearers, she told board members.
“One thing masks do and cloth coverings do is contain bacteria and germs,” she said.
Abreu covered the same ground as her first presentation to the board, discussing the clinical negatives of mask-wearing in children – headaches, occasional nosebleeds and dizziness – with the emotional downsides of angst and isolation.
With Friday being the last day of school for the 2020-21 academic year in the district, Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said that the best way to not wear a mask is to roll up one’s sleeve for the COVID vaccination.
A total of 1,500 middle-schoolers in Mon did that last week, receiving their first Pfizer dose.
Now, the district is working with state entities to schedule those second doses.
The lobbying effort to get more shots in the arms of students who are aged 12-15 will continue through the summer and into the start of the school year, the superintendent said.
“I want us to look completely different this fall,” he said.
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