This spring, Yelmmite Sarah Greulich’s child came home from school one day red in the face and short of breath due to what Greulich believes is the mask mandate at Yelm Community Schools.
That’s why Greulich started a Facebook group called “Unmask Our Kids Yelm And The Surrounding Communities” on June 9, garnering more than 200 members in just 24 hours.
Since then, as of June 12, the group has grown, amassing more than 600 members.
Members hosted a sign waving event on June 19 at the intersection of Yelm Avenue and First Street.
Greulich, a nurse, said the group was created in an effort to protect children from mask-wearing guidelines passed down from the Washington state Department of Health and Human Services (DOH), guidelines she said have been shown to be ineffective and detrimental to the wellbeing of children in the district.
“I feel like there’s a huge barrier to learning effectively with these masks, with the social distancing,” Greulich said.
According to a mandate, DOH calls for “face covering, ventilation, cleaning and disinfecting” among students and district staff during the 2021-22 school year.
The Nisqually Valley News confirmed with the district’s Communications Director Teri Pablo that it plans to follow that guideline in the fall and that it was put in place by the DOH.
The group is calling for equality of choice among parents and children.
“I think what’s good for (children’s) emotional health is what they choose,” Greulich said. “They want to see their friends’ faces. They want to breathe when they are outside ... exercising.”
When children wear masks, she said, they struggle to recognize who they are talking to, or whether an authority figure is joking or serious.
She said social distancing also has negatively impacted kids.
Children crave the touch of another human, Greulich said, to build those friendships through uninhibited interactions.
“I think it is detrimental to their mental health to take that away and limit what they can and can’t do in reacting with their fellow students and having that interaction,” she said.
The group doesn’t want to force people to forgo wearing masks, but instead, they want people to be able to choose what is right for their kids, Greulich said.
“It’s not that we’re saying that everybody else can’t vaccinate their children, that everybody else can’t let their children wear a mask to school,” Greulich said. “We believe in equal opportunity. We just want the same opportunity that they are getting to make that personal choice to put a mask on their children, to make that personal choice to vaccinate their child.”
The group’s next event will be on Thursday, June 24, an “Occupy the School Board” meeting, where select group members will address the limited-capacity Yelm Community Schools Board of Directors meeting, while the rest will sign petitions to the state and rally in the district office’s parking lot.
“The longer we wait and we don’t hold these schools, the district officials and the school board accountable for it, then they’ll get away with deciding what they think is best for our child’s physical and emotional and mental health and I think that should be up the the parent, ultimately, and not the school board, not the department of health,” Greulich said.
Greulich said she and others have contacted the district and know the organization is simply following state mandates for mask wearing, but said the school board has a duty to listen to the concerns of parents.
She said she’s hoping the Yelm Community Schools Board of Directors will go to bat for the group.
“Ultimately these are guidelines from the DOH, but at what point (do) the schools push back, does the school board push back, when all these parents come to them with all these multiple concerns?” Greulich said.
Many group members, Greulich said, have offered up a plan to have a mass-exodus from the school district, to un-enroll their children from the district if things don’t change.
“But I don’t think it needs to result to that,” she said. “I think we need to hold people accountable and I’m hoping that the school board will listen to our concerns and find it in their heart to (do something).”
In the end, she feels the DOH guideline undermines the American people and needlessly divides them.
“At what point did we become a country where we’re segregating ourselves to unmasked and masked, vaccinated and unvaccinated?” Greulich asked. “I mean, that’s the point of having a democracy and a free nation.”
