A Tennessee mom's brilliant response to her school district's decision to make masks optional is going viral because some serious points were made.
The anonymous mom has a teenage daughter in Hamilton County Schools. The district recently announced that students, teachers, and staffers would be required to wear masks, but parents would be able to opt their children out of mask wearing.
That got this Chattanooga-area mom thinking. If that policy was going to be optional, she reasonably felt that other policies should be, as well. With that, she laid down her masterful reasons why her daughter should be opted out of the dress code.
One mom is standing up for her kid and sticking it to her school district's decision to settle on a mask-optional policy, all in one masterfully crafted email. The mom, who has decided to remain anonymous, penned a letter to Hamilton County Schools explaining why she was opting her daughter out of the school's dress code.
"I am writing to request the parent opt-out form to opt out of the school dress code," she began.
"In light of the opt-out option related to the recently announced mask mandate, I can only assume that parents are now in a position to pick and choose the school policies to which their child should be subject."
"As someone who holds a strong commitment to my feminist ideals and my desire to raise my daughter to be a strong and empowered woman able to make choices for herself, I find that the school's dress code policy does not align with my belief system," the mom continued.
"I therefore intend to opt out of this policy and send my daughter to school in spaghetti straps, leggings, cut offs, and anything else she feels comfortable wearing to school. Please make a note that she is not, under any circumstances, to be dress coded, as I have clearly communicated my decision to opt out of this policy."
The mother spoke to Raw Story and explained that she wanted the school district to see what other kinds of exceptions they might be opening themselves up to if they went forth with their plan for the optional mask mandate.
"While I disagree with the dress code policy, I'm not really in this to fight that policy," she said.
"My goal is to draw attention to the importance of mask usage in our schools," she continued.
"We need to base decisions around this issue on medical data and be guided by the recommendations of experts in this area. But I'm up for fighting the dress code once we get the mask issue taken care of!"
The mom explained that the Republican-controlled state legislature called a special session to impose sanctions on school districts that impose mask mandates, leading many schools to the opt-out policy. She wanted to make her stance and that of so many other parents known.
"We should be guided by science and the recommendation of experts, not by what Tucker Carlson says," she leveled.
"Our cases and hospitalization rates in Hamilton County have spiked up in a big way the past few weeks. We are back to where we were last February. It's very discouraging," she noted.
"There is a very loud contingency agitating against mask use, but I do not believe they are representative of most of us who want to keep ourselves and others safe. Hardly anyone is wearing masks at this point, which is troubling given the spread of the delta variant.
"It is frustrating that people do not want to get vaccinated and they do not want to wear masks either. I hope that my letter will inspire others to make their voice heard and to advocate for policies that will keep our children and teachers safe."
