We took Covid seriously at Aspen Leaf. When we reopened in June 2020 following the initial lockdown, we instituted a range of science-based policies meant to prevent Covid from entering the preschool in the first place, and to identify and extinguish any outbreaks quickly. Thanks largely to these policies, our preschools did not experience a single Covid outbreak between 2020 and the Omicron surge in 2022.
From the beginning, we never required masks on the children for scientific and developmental reasons. Specifically, the 3+ hours children could not wear masks (while sleeping and eating) rendered masks at other times wholly ineffective, not to mention the practical difficulties of keeping masks on the face of two-, three-, and four-year-olds. We were open and transparent about our policy and the reasons behind it. It was on our website, and in the materials we provided to families before they enrolled.
We had also done the legal research (Howard is a lawyer), and found that the child care licensing agency had not taken the steps necessary under California law to assume jurisdiction to enforce the mask mandates issued by the California Department of Public Health. (If the state had sent sheriffs to Aspen Leaf, as it did with some gyms, we would have done what was required, but we were confident we were not in violation of any child care regulations by failing to require masks on the children).
The licensing agency inspected our preschools several times during Covid, noticed the children were not masked, but never issued a citation for it, which led us to believe that the agency understood it had no authority to enforce the Department of Public Health’s mask mandate.
In January 2022, following an anonymous complaint, the licensing agency called Howard and said Aspen Leaf needed to start requiring masks. Howard explained the scientific reasons why masking would be ineffective in a full-day preschool like Aspen Leaf, and went on to lay out the legal reasons why the agency had no authority to enforce the mask mandate. But he concluded by saying that he knew the analyst was only doing her job, and that if she needed to issue a citation, she could mail it and the preschool would take up its legal challenge through the normal legal process.
The licensing agency, though, does not like being told it doesn’t have authority to do what it wants to do.
A week later, the agency responded in force, sending a half-dozen agents to every Aspen Leaf location simultaneously. The agents were on site for 4-6 hours “investigating.” The agents photographed children not wearing masks, and most egregiously, pulled children into rooms alone to interrogate them about masks at preschool. All of this was completely unnecessary and a flagrant abuse of power given that we had admitted to the agency that we were not requiring masks. The citation then issued four “Type A” citations to Aspen Leaf for failing to require masks on children.
Parents were understandably furious, but the agency ignored every single call, email, and letter parents sent demanding an apology or at least an answer to the question of why the agency felt it was necessary to force their children into rooms alone with strangers when the preschool was already being transparent about the issue the agency was supposedly “investigating.” This made the news.
In the meantime, Aspen Leaf appealed the citations and also filed a court petition (called a petition for writ of mandamus), seeking a ruling from the court that the agency did not in fact have the authority to enforce the mask mandates and so the citations needed to be dismissed. One week before the agency was due to submit its response to the court, the agency dismissed the citations against Aspen Leaf so Aspen Leaf would have to dismiss its petition.
To date, the agency still has offered no explanation about why it decided to interrogate kids, and certainly has not issued an apology. We sought the agency’s internal documents through a public records request and were disappointed to find that even internally, the higher-ups at the agency were not interested in getting answers or protecting children, but were focused on avoiding media attention (which failed).
