A social media account that became a rallying point for parents who oppose Connecticut’s mask mandate in schools has been removed for repeatedly violating Facebook’s COVID-19 and vaccine policies, according to the company.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, took down the Unmask Our Kids CT account last week. It had grown to include some 13,000 followers, according to an email newsletter sent by the group to its members.
Efforts to reach the group’s founder for comment were unsuccessful.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the move Tuesday, saying it followed repeated violations of company policies.
Those policies are designed to “protect people from harmful content and new types of abuse related to COVID-19 and vaccines,” including false information about the existence or severity of the disease, the efficacy of wearing masks or the safety of vaccines, according to a description available online.
The policy cites as examples claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous to people than the flu, and information that discourages good health practices, such as claims that wearing a face mask does not help prevent the spread of COVID-19, or that mask-wearing can make the wearer ill.
Members of Unmask Our Kids CT have been a vocal presence around the state in recent months, holding rallies and protesting Gov. Ned Lamont’s executive order requiring masks in schools.
Members were also present at an education roundtable in Cheshire last August that ended abruptly when parents began shouting at the governor.
Cheshire Superintendent Jeffrey Solan was emceeing that event. He says that over the last year, school board meetings became the conduit for conveying frustrations that have built up during the pandemic.
“That’s where decisions about my kids happen,” he said in a December 2021 interview for CPTV’s CUTLINE. “And so if I’m not happy with something that my child is going to experience, as was the case for the masks, that’s where people come out and express that frustration.”
After lockdowns and a range of other disruptions, some school boards in Connecticut are coping with a surge of increased activism by parents, including pushback on mask mandates and other COVID-19 policies.
And it wasn’t just the virus that sparked controversy. Schools also faced a reckoning around racial justice. In places such as Guilford, a vocal minority pushed back, saying new diversity and inclusion efforts go too far into the realm of teaching political ideology.
Watch CPTV's CUTLINE at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 20, for a deeper dive into contentious school board meetings and how the pandemic has changed education in Connecticut.
A slate of GOP candidates unseated incumbent Republicans on the Guilford Board of Education this summer to win the party’s endorsement. They campaigned on a platform that included keeping critical race theory out of the classroom. They ultimately lost on Election Day in November but grabbed national attention in the process.
Danielle Scarpellino, a mom of three who ran on the GOP ticket, said she wants to protect her kids from indoctrination in the classroom.
“There should never come a time where you feel that someone has more authority over your child's ethics [and] morals,” she told the producers of CUTLINE in December. “That should never come into play.”
There have been other dust-ups over cultural issues, too, including an altercation last month involving a member of the Glastonbury school board. It came after a heated debate about whether to bring back the school district’s former Native American mascot.
Ben Proto, chairman of the state’s Republican Party, says the national discussion is seeping into local politics. But tension also mounted as parents watched boards make consequential decisions about education during remote hearings, rather than in person, and as the governor extended special orders put in place during the pandemic, Proto said.
“And suddenly, there’s a whole lot of issues coming together at one focal point,” he said. “And it’s the board of education.”
When Lamont extended the mask mandate and other directives back in September, he said he was just asking people to be cautious a little longer while the state weathers a public health emergency.
But Elizabeth Brown, president of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, agrees with Proto that the recent conflict in local town halls is a sign of bigger shifts in society.
“There’s an undermining of all of our institutions,” Brown said. “People are questioning science. People are questioning government. People are questioning education. So I think these are the times, and it’s being reflected now in these controversies in the boards of education.”
