“I could tolerate most of the stuff—the teachers in N95s and face shields while standing behind plexiglass barriers, the 12 feet of distance for band members, the ban on singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in class. But I just wanted them to end the outdoor masking,” Stein, who is board-certified in public health and preventive medicine, said. Because of her complaints, she said her kids almost got kicked out. After she begged, Stein said, the school let them stay. But at the beginning of this school year, with no end to the interventions in sight, Stein finally pulled her kids from EACMSI. They now attend public school.

As of today, children at EACMSI are still required to mask indoors and outdoors. They are still prohibited from speaking during lunch. Second-graders who began school there as kindergarteners in fall 2020 have never experienced a normal day of school in their lives.

In addition to Stein and her children, I spoke with several parents of current students who are unhappy with the rules. “I see the current situation as ridiculous,” one parent told me. But for fear of angering the administrators of a school they otherwise love, they agreed to talk with me only on the condition that they and their children remain anonymous.

[Worth pondering, too: this is not a public school, but an expensive private school. One would think that parents could control outcomes better than this, but apparently the demand for acceptance at Elizabeth Ann Clune Montessori School of Ithaca makes parents afraid of getting their children expelled — even for complaining about a toxic environment such as this. More school choice might mean more competition for EACMSI and better parental influence on its policies, but private schools in and of themselves are not panaceas to the bureaucratization of education. — Ed]