More than 1,000 Catholic school parents and parishioners are pressuring the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington to fight D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s mask mandate for schools.
The group ADW Parents has existed for several months, but revamped its efforts in light of Bowser’s recent announcement removing mask mandates for many businesses and government offices but keeping the mask requirements indefinitely for both public and private D.C. schools.
Sheila Dugan, a mother of three children enrolled in Blessed Sacrament School in Northwest Washington, started the parents group.
“She [Bowser] has said that on March 1, you no longer need a mask to go to a strip club or a bar or a sports facility or a restaurant, but our children in D.C. schools have no offramp,” Dugan said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal.
ADW Parents has sent Wilton Cardinal Gregory, archbishop of Washington, dozens of letters from elementary and middle school students who are begging to take off their masks at school.
“Dear Cardinal Gregory,” Will, a second grader, wrote in one letter. “Please let us take our masks off. They itch and it’s hard to breathe. I can’t understand my teacher.”
‘Simply Not Enough’
The archdiocese announced last week that it would lift its own mask requirement in Catholic schools in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. The requirement remains in effect in the District of Columbia because of Bowser’s mandate, even as COVID-19 is abating and data challenges the presumed effectiveness of masks.
Kelly Branaman, secretary and superintendent for the Archdiocese of Washington’s schools, wrote in a letter:
In the District of Columbia, Mayor Muriel Bowser’s February 14 executive order continues to require masking in all schools in the District, both public and non-public. The Archdiocese is reviewing these requirements and advocating with city officials to make face coverings optional for our school families in the District. We invite parents to do the same. In the meantime, ADW Catholic schools located in the District of Columbia remain subject to the District’s masking order.
Although the archdiocese has told parents it is exploring taking action against the mandate, ADW Parents’ Dugan said, “the promise for future action is simply not enough.”
Dugan, whose children are third-generation students at Blessed Sacrament, said the archdiocese needs to be more transparent about how it is fighting Bowser’s mandates instead of offering vague promises.
“There has not been an open dialogue between parents and the Archdiocese Office of Catholic Schools,” Dugan told The Daily Signal. “We would like the archdiocese to really go to bat for their students on such an unjust mandate. And it appears that they’re asking their parents to lobby the mayor’s office. They say they’re doing the same, but we don’t have really any concrete information on that. And they’re not providing us instructions on how to effectively lobby the mayor’s office.”
ADW Parents sent a letter with 45 pages of signatures to Gregory, urging the archbishop to implement a mask-optional policy for Catholic schools by the end of the month.
“If you conclude you do not have this authority in the District,” the letter states, “we ask that you forcefully advocate for change directly with the mayor and that you otherwise explore all available legal options to implement mask choice in Washington.”
‘Very Frustrating’
Liz Yost, a mother of four who has a first-grader at Blessed Sacrament, told The Daily Signal that Gregory has the power to effect change but was not using it to advocate on behalf of schoolchildren.
“It feels very frustrating to see that Cardinal Gregory will go to battle against the D.C. government for certain things that affect him as our leader of the D.C. Catholic Church,” Yost said in a phone interview. “But he seems completely [uninterested] in supporting the students and the families who choose to send their kids to Catholic schools in D.C.”
In a one-sentence email to The Daily Signal in response to a request for comment, the archdiocese wrote: “The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is advocating in a variety of ways with the District of Columbia to change its masking policy as it is applied to private schools.”
ADW Parents was to hold a town hall-style event Wednesday night at a Knights of Columbus hall in Bethesda, Maryland.
Yost said she wants guaranteed parental rights to decide whether to mask or vaccinate children, not just a temporary decision until a future variant of COVID-19 emerges.
“I want to hear that not only are the masks off, but that they’re not coming back. It was an ineffective treatment against a disease that does not affect this population,” Yost said. “As Catholic parents, we are charged with being our children’s primary educators, and that is our duty. And if the school is failing, it’s still our job.”
Yost said her tipping point came when she was asked to submit proof of vaccination directly to the principal at Blessed Sacrament just to be able to volunteer for lunch duty.
“He’s the principal. He’s not even the school nurse,” she said. “At what point does it stop? You have to show your health records to volunteer your time at your child’s school.”
‘What’s the Reason?’
Although her daughter had COVID-19 over Christmas break with no “measurable symptoms,” Yost said, her daughter still could be contact-traced and quarantined at any moment.
“We’re still currently within our 90 days that she had COVID. But if another student, whether they’re vaccinated or not, tests positive for COVID, she still has the potential to be sent home for school, even though they’re in masks all day,” Yost said. “If the rules made sense, we’d follow the rules.”
Kelly Duval, a mother of three children at Our Lady of Victory School in Northwest Washington, said she wants the archdiocese to “forcefully advocate” for parental choice in masking children.
“We’re saying that adults don’t have to wear them anymore, but their children do. What’s the rationale? What’s the reason? Where’s any scientific evidence that this has any positive impact whatsoever?” Duval said in a phone interview.
“They feel that they can hold these children hostage,” she said, referring to the D.C. government.
Duval told The Daily Signal that it’s her prerogative as a parent to be her children’s primary educator and make decisions about their health:
In their communications to us, the archdiocese continues to repeat and then amplify whatever the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the D.C. Health [Department] people say. So what they want to say is that the measures that they implemented worked. They will not admit that there was no point to any of it. So they continue to say, ‘We did everything right. The masks worked, the vaccines worked, everything worked great.’ And so here we are, which means in my mind that they would have no qualms about doing it again.
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