The surprising, unexpected benefit of the NJ school mask mandate (Opinion)

New Jersey is known to have the highest property tax in the country. Our school funding formula is flawed, with a whopping 70 to 75% of your property tax bill going to schools, and most of that money going to administration like principles, vice principals, assistant vice principals, etc.

Multiply that by 613 school districts and you can see that we’ve got it all wrong.

Even though we have some of the best public schools in the country, we also have many, many problems besieging our schools and the solution from lawmakers is always to throw more money at the problems. Plus, with new initiatives like anti-bullying, LGBTQ education, and critical race theory curricula looming on the horizon, our schools are now filled with more propaganda designed to mold our children into the future lefties of America.

So here’s the bright side: When parents get angry about mask mandates for kids, they have only one solution. And that is to independently educate their kids and unilaterally withdraw from the public school education system in the state. And this is happening more and more.

Parents who are appalled by the ludicrous child mask mandates are forming pods to group teach their kids within their own communities, with hand selected teachers, or just homeschooling them on their own.

This is actually a solution to a problem that many people didn’t even know they had.

In other words, our school system is bloated, antiquated, and rapidly teaching less and indoctrinating more. The silver lining of the mask mandate is that more and more of our kids will be taught at home or away from the education “industry.”

Many parents have been complaining for years about political ideology seeping into education. Parents have been frustrated about the messaging that kids are bringing home with them. And many of these messages conflict with their own family values.

Once, parents thought this would be temporary. But now that the mask mandate in schools seems to be indefinite, parents are being forced to rethink where their kids will be spending most of the day and what’s actually being engraved into their brains.

Now, with the school alternatives that are flourishing because of the mask mandates, the bonus is that children can actually be in an educational environment where personal family values are paramount.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco. Any opinions expressed are Judi Franco’s own.