When the history of the covid pandemic is written, there will be many shameful acts of damaging bureaucratic power plays that should be fully described so that they are never repeated.
Few episodes in that history will be as disgraceful as a recent incident at a San Diego area pre-school. California state regulators raided the school and privately interviewed children as young as 2 without their parents’ consent about masking practices.
Officials with the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) visited all three locations of Aspen Leaf Preschool in January after receiving a complaint that the school was not enforcing the state’s mask mandate, according to the CDSS’ response to a complaint by the preschool’s owner, Howard Wu.According to the CDSS letter, which Wu shared with Fox News Digital, officials with the agency’s Community Care Licensing Division entered the three preschool locations on Jan. 19, separated the children from their teachers and interviewed them privately about their masking practices.In his complaint to the agency, Wu described the investigation as a “simultaneous, multi-school raid” that resulted in “unnecessary and inappropriate child interviews.”“Every family we heard from after the inspections were furious about the interviews,” Wu told Fox News Digital. “We were open the whole pandemic about not masking children and the reasons why. The policy was on our website. Put simply, the mask guidance says children can NOT mask when eating and sleeping. In full day child care that’s 3 hours, so masking at other times offers no health benefit. All the families (except 1 in January) supported the policy.”
The parents of children the Aspen preschool were also extremely angry at the raid.
“This gross abuse of power is shameful and unacceptable for many reasons,’ wrote parents Stephanie and Richard Rosado in another complaint seen by the Voice of San Diego.‘The people who ordered this to be done and those who participated should be held responsible,’ the parents wrote, telling the news outlet that they spoke to their 4-year-old son about not talking to strangers just a few days before the raids.Another parent, Connie Wu – who is unrelated to Howard Wu – said her daughter wasn’t even two years old during the January interview and that she’s too young to articulate how it made her feel.“She’s not developmentally able to tell me. She doesn’t have the vocabulary to be able to talk about being interviewed by a stranger,’ Wu told the news outlet.
What is even more outrageous about the incident is that it is truly not about public health. For example, evidence continues to mount that masks on anyone….including toddlers…does not stop covid transmission.
Furthermore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s own data show the risk of serious health effects for children infected with covid are extremely low.
Finally, while the CDSS has the authority to interview children without consent, those rules were clearly intended for use when there is a situation of possible abuse, I would argue continued masking of children is abuse, especially when adults can eat, drink and be merry without such coverings.
The agency has issued Aspen Leaf a Type A citation, the most severe violation type.
Wu said he believes his preschool was unfairly targeted because he challenged the CDSS’ authority.After it all happened I actually pulled every licensing report issued in California during the pandemic to get the data to show we were treated more harshly than any other center,” he told Fox News Digital.Wu published the data on a website he created declaring, “California has a child care crisis,” and “the child care licensing agency is making things worse.”
Would any of us have agreed to “2 weeks to flatten the curve” if we knew that 2 years later our toddlers would be subjected to mask raids?
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