My daughter is not disabled. She is not special needs. She is a child who needs to breathe oxygen normally. I’m at a fundamental disagreement that she needs to get a special categorization in order to breathe.”

Ellen Schaffer

Ellen Schaffer has become an agitator in the Barrington school system. She attends every Barrington School Committee meeting, does not wear a mask and makes frequent public statements about masking and district policy. She said she does it all for her daughter, a third-grader who she is choosing to home-school.

“My daughter is excluded from her education in Barrington because of this issue,” Schaffer said.

Schaffer has home-schooled her daughter since she became school-age, however they had wanted her to enter the traditional school environment this year. The daughter’s friends all go to school, and she’s reaching an age where she knows she’s a little different than most of the other kids.

Schaffer claims her daughter cannot wear a mask. Asked why she has not sought a medical exemption to allow her daughter to attend school without a mask, Schaffer said, “I am not about to pathologize her, or go through this entire process of pathologizing why she needs to breathe oxygen.

“My daughter is not disabled. She is not special needs. She is a child who needs to breathe oxygen normally. I’m at a fundamental disagreement that she needs to get a special categorization in order to breathe.”

Despite her vehement opposition to the mask mandate, and her constant frustration with Barrington school leadership, Schaffer said things are going fairly well this year. “We’re doing well now. This year has been better, in terms of more home-schooling resources that are available to us. We work to find lots of our own activities, too.”

Schaffer plans to continue her advocacy for mask choice, for her daughter and others.

“As has been stated by the judge in this case, they are causing irreparable harm. They are causing day to day physical irritation and harm. They are obstructing children’s airways, for an unheard of amount of time,” she said. “We will never know the medical impact being imparted on these children’s airways on a regular basis. We cannot know what damage we are doing by reducing their oxygen intake.”

Like others, she also believes only some of the damages are physical. “On a social and emotional level, the impact is enormous,” she said. “I’ve spoken to speech and language teachers who are horrified at the milestones that are being missed by young children.”

She demands that school begin assessing and tracking the impacts of the masks. “Has a single child in the entire school district been assessed,” she asked. “Are they tracking data on children with headaches, children who didn’t want to go to school without putting this mask on … This policy is socially and phsycially damaging, and they’re not assessing it.”

Schaffer worries about the long-term perceptions of school.

“We’re telling children, when you’re at school, somehow everything is dangerous, you’re dangerous, everyone else around you is dangerous, and we’re going to put this over your face to make you less dangerous,” she said.

“When are we going to say, it’s okay to breathe normally. It’s okay to show your face again.”