Jim Marchese Looks at Parents’ Rights and How School Mask Mandates Can Hurt Our Children

After the rise of the delta variant for COVID19, the blue states have been mandating masks for kids in school. While all 50 states removed the mask mandates in place during 2020, the controversy has been high surrounding policies for schools. Jim Marchese recently spoke on his concerns about states choosing to circumvent parents’ choices regarding masks for their children while at school. 

He is President & CEO at MortgageNOW, Inc. and a resident of New Jersey, a state with mandated masks for all students. He finds it absurd that football and baseball stadiums pack tens of thousands in without mask mandates in the same states kids are required to wear masks in school.  

“This is a case where the ones without a voice are being abused with senseless infringement on their rights while the wealthy in the entertainment industry and in politics enjoy their freedoms.”   

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) came out with guidance for the 2021 – 2022 school year that noted, “Due to the circulating and highly contagious Delta variant, CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age two and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.”  

The CDC has become a political beast pushing whatever agenda  the democrats request,” says Marchese. “My entire family contracted COVID in September with both of my children testing positive.  My son had a cough for three days and my daughter had a headache.  My experience is consistent with the statistics which show children are not at risk of hospitalization or death due to covid.”  

Parents have noted the hypocrisy and are seeking other options such as private schools,  and homeschooling, while other parents have pulled their children out of school to attend virtual classrooms in order to avoid mask mandates.   

Many families have decided to flee the big cities and democrat run states moving to red conservative areas without mandates.  The latest jobs report shows the impact over 132,000 teachers & administrators were not hired back from summer break due to the drop in public school attendance, Jim Marchese noted. (See September’s job report) 

Several states have an order for masks in place, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.  

“Ironically, these are the states realizing a mass exodus due to their tyrannical policies.”  

Some states have banned the orders for masks from school districts, including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, and South Carolina. In those states, the argument has been made that masking requirements take the choice out of the parents’ hands and hurt the children.

Iowa state representative Holly Brink worked on a law preventing schools from setting and enforcing mask mandates. “I believe in local control, and the ultimate local control is letting the parents and students make their own decisions in regards to their health,” she stated.

“This is about personal responsibility,” said Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt in late July. “This is about freedoms.”

Jim Marchese is concerned with the gross overreach by state government officials who make policies for the wealthy (like allowing packed stadiums with 70,000 people without masks) but  without individual case consideration, create a one-size-fits-all mask mandate which is not in the best interest of children. 

“The masks are political theater to appease the teachers union,” he stated.  “Children rarely wear them properly all day long, and there isn’t much evidence the fabric masks are even effective enough to be worth wearing for hours on end.  

“Moreover, it is senseless that children who are immune due to vaccination or prior exposure are required to wear a mask. At the end of the day, people have a constitutional right to ‘life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness,’ which means parents make the call regarding personal health for themselves and their family, not some liberal politician who pushes whatever agenda the lobbyist pays them to push.”