Does viral video expose conspiracy to keep school masks indefinitely? Wake says no.
A video of a Wake County schools assistant superintendent talking about masking 2-year-olds has gone viral on social media.
Opponents of mask mandates claim that the video shows a hidden agenda to indefinitely continue masking in schools. But the Wake County school system says Assistant Superintendent Paul Koh’s comments have been taken out of context and that he was only discussing how masking is handled for preschoolers.
“Assistant superintendent Paul Koh of @WCPSS explains he wants to mask 2 yr olds to train them in ‘mask compliance’ in preparation for the next few years,” the @libsoftiktok account posted Wednesday on Twitter.
As of mid Friday afternoon, the video had been watched 393,900 times. The tweet had 1,885 retweets, 1,042 quote tweets and 3,689 likes.
“The district has no interest in requiring face coverings indefinitely,” the district said in a statement Thursday. “Such a suggestion is wrong. Our priority is to maintain in-person instruction. And at this time, state health officials have made clear that safely achieving that goal includes the use of face coverings.”
Mask compliance
The tweet shows a 26-second clip of a longer presentation that Koh gave to the school board on Tuesday. Koh was recommending expanding the face mask mandate to include 2-to-4-year-olds based on new guidance from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.
Instead, the board opted Tuesday to continue only requiring face masks for ages 5 and up. Face coverings are being recommended but not required for younger children.
In explaining the recommendation, Koh told board members that teachers recognize that younger children can’t wear masks as long as older students.
“Between like 2-to-5-year-olds, it’s very different from say a 16-year-old on whether masks can be kept on or not,” Koh told the board. “Our instructors and teachers and program folks are working with the families to make sure that learning can occur towards full mask compliance later down their growth as students,
“It’s like if you’re a 2-year-old you’re trying to help them practice for age 3 and then 4 when they’re going into pre-K classrooms and from there you’re trying to help them get them into a normalized situation wearing masks potentially in a kindergarten classroom and so forth.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, and it is with a developmental lens and not a ‘you must do this or else’ lens. “
The Libs of Tik Tok twitter account got the video from Children First NC, a group that has been fighting Wake’s mask mandate. Kelly Mann, the group’s founder, said Koh didn’t provide any health reasons for masking younger children and that “parents will not subject their children to endless mandates.”
“I want to thank Paul Koh for his candor,” Mann said in a statement Thursday. “It proves what parents have long suspected: The argument for masking children is short on science and long on alternative agendas that are aimed at forcing mask compliance on children as young as age 2.”
GOP weighs in on video
Several Republican groups and elected officials have weighed in on the controversy. The N.C. Republican Party accused the school district of trying “to ingrain a life long submission to forced face coverings” in a tweet on Thursday.
“This was in Wake County, NC,” added U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican from Charlotte, in a tweet on Thursday. “These deranged people don’t want their mask mandates to ever end, and they’re finally saying it out loud.
“We need to keep them away from our kids and defeat them all at the ballot box soon.”
N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore tweeted Friday that the pandemic has opened the door for endless masking of children.
“Masking 2 year olds and indefinite mask mandates for our children are unacceptable,” Moore, a Republican from Cleveland County, tweeted. “This General Assembly has fought and will continue fighting for parent’s rights!”
State School Superintendent Catherine Truitt, a Republican, also referenced the video at Thursday’s State Board of Education meeting.
“It’s very concerning to me that an assistant superintendent in one of our larger districts has presented to the state board a recommendation that we start masking 2-to-4-year-olds so that we can prepare them for masking in elementary school,” Truitt said. “That does not indicate progress towards removing the mask mandate.”
But the district said Koh had an obligation to share the masking recommendations from DHHS to the school board.
“Mr. Koh was asked how the district would carry out the recommendation from the state that children ages 2 to 4 wear face coverings,” the district sad in the statement. “He made clear it is not appropriate to expect such young students to fully comply.
“He explained that it is more realistic to expect they would build that skill over time, much the same way other skills develop in children that young.”
Racist and violent comments
Some people on social media have used words like “evil” and ‘monster” to describe Koh, who is Asian. Some made threats with tweets, such as “end this man” and saying that he “should be swinging from a rope.”
Some of the comments were racist, with people calling Koh a racial slur, a “Chinese spy,” a “commie” and a “Chinese agent” who brought COVID-19 to North Carolina.
The comments come after Lunar New Year was celebrated on Tuesday by the Asian community.
“I’m saddened to see this is going in a racist direction toward one of our educators,” school board chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in an interview Thursday. “We always benefit from having more representation from our academic community and our school community.”
Hoping for end of mask requirement
Both Mahaffey and the district said they have no intention of keeping the mask mandate forever.
“We can’t wait for the day COVID protocols are removed from schools,” the district said in a statement.
Mahaffey was one of two board members who opposed the effort to not require masks for students younger than 5.
Mahaffey said she’s hopeful the mask requirement will end soon. But in the meantime, she said it’s helping keep students, like her daughter, stay in school despite being exposed to COVID-19.
“Do we have a nefarious desire to maintain masking for years and years, no,” Mahaffey said. “This is not anything that I’ve heard discussed.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2022 at 4:51 PM.
