Michigan public and private school students ages 6 to 11 are required to wear masks, per a new rule from the state government.
On Sept. 25, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer mandated masks for K-5 students. The order took effect on Oct. 5. However, on Oct. 2, The Michigan Supreme Court struck down Whitmer’s emergency powers, stating that Whitmer had no authority to issue or renew executive orders relating to COVID-19 beyond April 30. Shortly after, Director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Robert Gordon reinstated the mask mandate.
For some parents and students, the mandate is another sign that everything is not yet back to normal.
“Just the other day, my son mentioned how much he missed the all-school assemblies,” Manager of Hillsdale’s WRFH radio station, Scot Bertram said. “It’s not quite the same yet and the kids know it.”
Locally, school administrators are adjusting to the changing demands and legal ramifications coming from the state.
Hillsdale Academy Headmaster David Diener said the school will continue to follow the executive order that mandates masks for K-5 students.
“We already communicated to families that we would follow that executive order,” he said. “Right now there are a lot of legal ambiguities after the decision about what exactly is going to be the status on executive orders.”
At the time the Michigan Supreme Court struck down Whitmer’s powers, the governor claimed her orders remained effective for 21 days. However, the court issued another ruling, on Oct. 12, stating Whitmer’s orders have “no continuing legal effect.” Nonetheless, few are willing to challenge the health department’s reestablishment of the mask mandate.
“I’m not in a position to be political. I’m in a position to follow the rules and the guidelines that are provided,” Superintendent of Hillsdale Community Schools Shawn Vondra said. “The department has made that order. We are certainly going to follow those orders.”
Diener said that though the “goal at Hillsdale Academy is to continue in-person education as normal as possible within parameters that are legal and reasonably safe,” the school has not been given a choice as to how to proceed.
“Our faculty and students would appreciate the ability to choose for themselves how to learn safely instead of having blanket rules imposed statewide,” he said.
When it comes to making young children wear masks, the mandate does not necessarily accord with science, according to Diener.
“I have yet to see compelling evidence that requiring facial coverings for kindergarten through fifth graders is a necessary precaution in order for students to continue learning safely,” he said.
“We are monitoring the legal requirements and our options daily.”
Bertram has children who attend Will Carleton Academy. According to Bertram, their experience has been positive.
“The recent mandate hasn’t actually been a big deal for my kids,” he said in an email. “They don’t seem to mind the masks all that much. We also had been talking with them about this possibility, so it wasn’t a total surprise. And the school has handled all of it really well.”
However, Bertram said he is not convinced masks are a necessary precaution.
“Based on what I’ve read, the mandate seems wholly unnecessary for children in the younger grades,” he said. “At the same time, I’m interested in any measure that might lead officials to permit us to get closer to the ‘normal’ school experience.”
Hillsdale College lecturer of History and mother Dedra Birzer has one child in K-5 and three others attending the upper schools at Hillsdale Academy. Birzer said that her children are grateful to be in person at school, but that wearing masks has created challenges.
“My 9-year-old, like her three older siblings at the Academy, gets headaches from the masks,” she said in an email. “I have advised each of my children to go to the bathroom and get drinks of water as often as possible to get a break from wearing the mask.”
Shanna Cote, art director at Hillsdale College and mother of several children who attend Hillsdale Academy, said the mask mandate is both unscientific and unconstitutional.
“As a parent of children attending private schools, I find little to no evidence that masks serve any real protection against contracting COVID-19,” she said in an email. “In fact, I see kids currently passing along head colds and strep throat while wearing masks. I think that the best approach to this question lies in exercising caution and executing personal freedom.”
According to Cote, the mask mandate is “anathema to principles of freedom and liberty.”
“As a believer in constitutional conservatism, I find it troubling and problematic that ‘mask mandates’ were widely instituted and broadly adopted by the general population with little to no resistance,” Cote said.
“People quickly adopted and adapted to the procedure with no real science backing the practice. Citizens became ‘sheep’ with an illegitimate shepherd dictating compliance.”
