As some New Jersey school districts return to mandatory masking, State Senator Mike Testa Jr. (R-1) insists the decision whether to make a child should be left to individual parents. He’s introducing a bill to make parental discretion the law in a very innovative way.
“Sadly, we expected school bureaucrats to once again push their power over students and their parents with renewed masking mandates,” said Testa on Monday, the same day that Franklin Township in Somerset County resumed requiring masks. “This bill gives parents the ability to fight back and the power to ensure their children are not forced to mask up.”
A 2021 CDC study of 90,000 elementary school Georgia students concluded that mandatory masking “lacks a well-grounded scientific justification.”
“Masks don’t seem to affect medical outcomes and serve only to make some adults feel they are doing something to protect students. Kids shouldn’t suffer to make adults feel better. My bill restores parental control to local education,” added Testa.
The South Jersey Republican’s bill would go further than letting parents simply ignore a district’s mandate. Testa plans to write a school choice component into his bill.
The legislation, which has not yet been released, will inaugurate what the Senator’s office described as an “educational savings account” that, if adopted “could then be used to allow their schoolchildren to attend a school in a district that does not mandate masks on students.” The district imposing the mandate would bear the cost of creating the acocunts.
That rushing sound you hear, Save Jerseyans?
It’s the rapidly rising blood pressure of NJEA union bosses.
