"They have taken away the best tool that we have to keep them safe," said a mom in Arkansas, one of a handful of states that have banned mask mandates in schools.
With just a few weeks until school starts, Jennifer Carter, a mother in Springdale, Arkansas, is agonizing over whether to send her 8-year-old to in-person class this year.
Her daughter Lucy is too young to get the Covid-19 vaccine, and Arkansas is one of a handful of states that have banned schools from mandating masks.
With the contagious delta variant spreading throughout the state, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, Carter is wrestling with whether she should choose virtual learning for Lucy or risk sending her to school.
Lucy would wear a mask, but now that schools can’t enforce face coverings, Carter fears few other kids will do the same.
