It’s as if Kamala Harris is still the Attorney General in California.

Facing a wave of students peacefully protesting mask mandates by simply showing up to school unmasked, administrators all over the country are doubling down – leaving elementary school students outside with no coats on a cold day, unsupervised; attempting to barricade high school students in an unheated gymnasium; making them sit on the curb without desks, a teacher, or work; denying them access to the school; and labeling them a “clear and present danger to the life, safety, or health of a pupil or school personnel” in order to legally exclude them from campus.

A school district outside Stockton, California, in the state’s Central Valley, is proactively warning parents about what will happen if their children show up to school unmasked (possibly in support of the students in neighboring Oakdale). In a letter distributed Thursday, Ripon Unified School District told parents to “remove your students from campus unless they wear a face covering,” and that failure to do so “would force the District to consider taking other potential actions which the District would rather avoid, if possible, including”:

• Labeling the presence of their child a “clear and present danger to the life, safety, or health of a pupil or school personnel,”
• Contacting county Child Protective Services without even contacting the parents first “as they have been abandoned on campus by you,”
• Identifying the children as truants and refer them to a School Attendance Review Board “which could result in criminal charges against” parents,
• Dis-enrolling the children from school,
• Filing for a restraining order in Superior Court which would prohibit children from attending District schools unless they wear a mask indoors on campus.

I’d like to say we’ve reached peak insanity, but I don’t want to tempt fate.

After citing Education Code 48213 and the “clear and present danger” language, the district attempts to induce guilt with a laughable assertion in a run-on sentence:

Presently, your children refusing to wear a face covering in compliance with a legal requirement to do so in light of the world’s greatest pandemic in over 100 years which has resulted in over 3.4 million deaths constitutes a clear and present danger to both your children and to other District students and staff who could be infected by your children.

Of course, we know that there is no scientific evidence (at least not in a reputable study) showing that masking in schools – or failure to mask – results in any difference in Wuhan coronavirus infection rates. We have, however, seen overwhelming evidence of the harm caused by masking in schools, even in lefty Bibles like The Atlantic, which has run at least eight stories on the harm caused in the last seven months.

The final paragraph contains some pretty abusive, gaslighting language – essentially telling parents, “We don’t want to hurt your kids, but hey, that’s up to you.” It reads (spelling unchanged):

“Again, the District would hope that it isn’t forced to consider these admittedly more drastic alternatives, but what action the District ultimately is forced to takes is dictated by your actions in this regard. At the same time, the District continues it’s offer to enroll your children in the District’s Independent Study if you decide that they will continue not to wear face coverings at school.”

So the district assumes that every child refusing to wear a mask is doing so because their parents decided they would refuse? They really do believe that kids are incapable of independent thought.

To those who have been following recent activity in California regarding masking in schools, this tactic isn’t surprising. Education Code Section 48213 is what Simi Valley Unified School District cited when “excluding” Kamdin Hernandez, the 9-year-old boy I wrote about Wednesday. The district then sent Kamdin’s parents a truancy letter, claiming that days he was on campus but sitting outside he was really absent without a valid excuse (at least the district isn’t claiming he was there in order to receive per capita funds). They also threatened to call CPS if Kamdin’s dad didn’t take him home, saying that would constitute abandonment.

In Kamdin Hernandez’s case, the district also ignored the fact that Kamdin’s ADHD made the mask so distracting that he was unable to think – something he and his parents told them on multiple occasions, and sought to keep his dad off campus by claiming he was a “disturbance” when he showed up every afternoon to pick his son up from school and stood in a socially-distanced line without a mask. By sending him a letter claiming he was a disturbance, they could charge him with trespassing – and they tried – if he even stepped onto the walkway leading to the school gate he could be charged with trespassing. You can guess that’s what the next step will be for Ripon Unified School District should any parents decide to stand up for their children.

Meanwhile, you can bet that Gavin Newsom will again be unmasked at SoFi Stadium at the Super Bowl.

We should probably thank Ripon Unified – their actions might produce a few plaintiffs in lawsuits that can lead to the end of this madness.

UPDATE Saturday, February 5, 2022, 2:30 PM PST

According to Sacramento’s ABC10, Ripon Unified School District officials claim the letter was only handed out to a few students whose parents had asked what could happen if they showed up unmasked, and was not district policy.