Mask Accessibility for Bay Area Students
No matter where you turn these days, you see one thing: masks. They’ve been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), by some our families and many of our peers, by countless social media posts, and by our school, all to keep us safe from the outrageously contagious COVID-19 virus.
However, some teens in schools can’t access them. In some cases, public school administrations can’t, or won’t, provide them for their students. Many of us have enjoyed access to hundreds of masks, but some haven’t had as much opportunity to choose their own desired level of safety.
In the US, there have been upwards of 83,000,000 COVID-19 cases so far, with the rates for adolescents significantly lower than rates for adults. Many people are now vaccinated, and even boosted, but that doesn’t completely stop the virus from getting to people, and it is still extremely contagious.
Across Bay Area school districts, high school students have been performing sick-outs, the act of refusing to come to class to boycott the policy, or lack of, implemented to provide KN95 masks or covid safety measures offered to students. Students and even teachers have skipped school and instead rallied, protesting for free masks and routine COVID testing.
According to KTVU, a sickout in the Oakland Unified School District had 500 teachers out of class and forced 12 schools to close for the day. Some teachers went to a drive-through protest at the school district headquarters to demand more COVID protection policies like free masks and weekly PCR tests.
Licensed photo from Shutterstock
Some schools, on the other hand, like Chabot Elementary and Berkeley High School, have gotten free KN95 masks and routine testing. This contrast is intense, some schools receive masks while others in the same district receive none at all.
Still, the fight for safer COVID protocols has led to some change; many schools have begun more steadily supplying masks and providing testing to students, if not for safety reasons, for fear of widespread truancy.
There is also risk that protests and outrage over the issue will continue to spread like wildfire, with petitions, and the information-shaming of schools flooding Instagram with more stories that will reach farther out-of-district than the schools probably want.
Many schools now have free masks and testing provided – but some still don’t. So the question is, why don’t these schools provide masks and follow the lead of schools like Chabot and Berkeley to provide what the students so clearly demand? If masks help keep the student body safe, why not further that process the best they can? There may still be more questions than answers. Yet, even partial victories suggest that students may be their own best advocates for change.
