“But the Kentucky Board of Education has never issued a mask mandate during flu season, which you'd think that they would have done if this regulation were actually about protecting our children.”

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KET video

Transcript of Audio

[This section I have Sarah Durand with the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy.]

Thank you Mr. Chairman and committee members for allowing us to have a seat at the table today.

It's been well established and we've heard it said over and over and over again that COVID poses a very small risk to children, a smaller risk than even the flu.

But the Kentucky Board of Education has never issued a mask mandate during flu season, which you'd think that they would have done if this regulation were actually about protecting our children.

Despite that, they passed this regulation as an emergency regulation so that they could avoid public comment.

The public comment period is essential for government transparency and accountability.

This was not an emergency as this regulation was redundant to a mandate that was already in place through an executive order.

It's not an emergency because it's a virus that we've been dealing with for over a year and a half that has a vaccine that's been available to adults for months, in fact, educators had access to this vaccine well before our higher risk groups just so that we wouldn't be in this situation that we're in currently.

The emergency passage also usurped local control.

The governor had advised school districts to mask all children, but some school boards and superintendents weighed the minimal health risk to children against some negative psychological learning consequences and chose to leave the decision to mask or not up to the parent.

This is a much better approach than a one-size-fits-all decision by unelected bureaucrats who are more concerned about control than about health.

It is not the role of the Kentucky Board of Education or the governor, or even the CDC to make decisions about my health or the health of my children. It is their role to provide information so that parents can make informed decisions, taking into account our children’s individual needs-- needs that the KBE doesn't know anything at all about.

Because the legislature passed laws limiting the governor's power, he's using an illegally appointed board to keep control, but worse. He's using our children as pawns.

If you’re for masking, that's great; you want to mask your children, that's wonderful- you should have the right to do that; I fully support that.

But as the gentleman earlier said, for those parents who don't support masking, they feel helpless in this battle.

They can't tell their children, ‘Practice civil disobedience and don't wear your mask to school’--because they're the ones who are going to feel the retribution, and this is not their fight to fight--- it's our fight to fight.

You know I plan to talk a little bit about some of the negativities that masks have on children, but I think that, again, we've seen that already first-hand.

We teach children now as young as kindergarten that they live in a world that's unstable, full of sickness and death, and that we have this invisible enemy that is so terrifying that we give up our basic rights to our parents and to freely breathe.

Regardless of the ongoing debate about the efficacy of masks and how you feel about mask mandates, this regulation does not meet the criteria for emergency status.

Therefore it should be found deficient, and it should be forced to go through the proper process required by law that provides for adequate vetting of this policy.

Thank you.