Brianne Magel, a divorced mother of two in Des Moines, Iowa, faces a Hobson's choice — between safeguarding her young daughter's health and earning an income to support the family.
Seven-year-old Eleanor has Loeys-Dietz Syndrome, a rare genetic connective tissue disorder, which compromises her immune system. In 2019 she had an anticipated open heart surgery.
"If she got COVID, it would threaten her life," Magel says.
But there is no requirement that other children or staff at her Perkins Elementary School, or any school in Des Moines, be vaccinated or wear masks. All school districts, cities and counties are barred from requiring either, under laws the governor signed in May. So by going to school, Eleanor would be vulnerable every day to exposure to the coronavirus.
Her doctor has cautioned against returning to school now in light of the more contagious delta variant. "Her cardiologist here said if there was a mask mandate it would be safe but if I can keep her home, I should," said Magel.
Schools reopen this month for half a million Iowa kids. As of Aug. 16, a little over a quarter of 12- to 15-year-olds were vaccinated. Children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccines. But a least 81 children died of COVID-19 between March and July in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Last year Eleanor and her 4-year-old brother stayed home and Magel stayed with them. That required putting on hold her part-time job as a children's church choir director and depending on what her father, Tom, describes as "the pittance of alimony and child support she gets."
"This decision is having a drastic effect on her life," he said of his daughter.
Eleanor thrived at home doing virtual schooling last year, where she could interact with her teachers and peers, her mother says. But the self-guided Edgenuity online learning program offered by Des Moines schools this year under a contract with a for-profit company doesn't provide that. According to a Register story, "Edgenuity curriculum differs from the Virtual Campus in that there will be no teachers to help most students. A teacher will monitor student grades."
Des Moines schools Superintendent Tom Ahart has said he doesn't think virtual option is in the best interests of elementary students. Brianne Magel has signed Eleanor up for it, though concerned that it lacks any teacher or peer group interaction. So she and a friend whose son will be home from Greenwood Elementary School because of a heart condition will do their best to connect their kids by Zoom. Her own son will attend preschool at their Plymouth Church, where masks are required.
"It's so unfair," said Magel, who says she sent emails daily to Gov. Kim Reynolds for a while but got back only canned responses. She has also conveyed her concerns to her state legislators.
"It'll be another year of tough budgeting and cutting corners where I can," she said.
For a while, the thinking was that school-age children aren't very susceptible to COVID-19, or that, if they get it, they have mild cases. But that has changed as the numbers have shot up.
"When the pandemic first hit, that was kind of the messaging that we received from, kind of, the top down, was that COVID doesn't affect kids," Dr. Joel Waddell, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at UnityPoint Health, told Iowa Public Radio. "And we now know that that's just not the case. We know that kids can get severely impacted by the virus. And, on top of that, they are severely affected by the pandemic itself."
Some 500 recent positive test results in Iowa were of children under 18, a state government seven-day positivity rate breakdown indicates. That's based on children being 11% of the 4,800 positive cases.
A Change.org petition signed by 11,352 condemns the law preventing school mandates, calling it unscientific and warning Reynolds, "we will not forget this careless disregard for public health at the ballot box."
It says there are some 750,000 school children up to age 17 in Iowa school and that with only 45% of Iowans fully vaccinated, the state is still highly vulnerable to COVID-19.
But an earlier petition before Reynolds signed the bill against mandates had 8,165 people calling on her to "Unmask Iowa's School Children."
It is hard to understand how parents, of all people, could be so relaxed about potential risks to children as to mouth such unscientific opinions. But petitions like that fit a “government-off-our-backs" political agenda embraced by Iowa's Republican lawmakers.
What happened to the Republican Party that used to believe in local control and built its rhetoric around saving babies? Why does it draw the line when actual children at medical risk need protecting?
If it's not rescinded, this law will harm lives in a myriad ways, not the least of which is by hamstringing breadwinner parents. Lawmakers should admit they were wrong and scrap it.
