WASHINGTON––U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR) joined U.S. Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Richard Burr (R-NC), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and other GOP colleagues in sending a letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra requesting the department rescind its one-size-fits-all federal mask mandate on Head Start programs. Children six months to five years of age are currently eligible to be vaccinated against COVID-19, but a HHS interim final rule (IFR) still requires all staff and volunteers in Head Start educational facilities to be vaccinated and requires all staff, volunteers, and children two years of age and older to wear masks – even when they are outside on the playground. 

“This IFR continues to be an overly rigid, inflexible rule that complicates individual Head Start programs’ ability to operate and attract staff and volunteers – though there is a preliminary injunction against the IFR in multiple states – and we request that you immediately rescind it,” the senators wrote. “The nation must continue to transition toward treating COVID-19 as an endemic condition and return to a sense of normalcy, and it is past time for Washington bureaucrats to allow Head Start programs to do the same.”

In May, the Senate passed a bipartisan resolution to repeal the Biden administration’s mask mandate for toddlers in the Head Start program. In January, Republican Senators sent a letter to Secretary Becerra requesting the administration rescind the IFR.

The Head Start program is a federal program that provides qualifying, low-income children with early education services. Program facilities are located throughout the nation and, up until the issuance of this IFR, individual locations had been able to set and enforce their own COVID-19 protocols. Although this rule has been halted by federal courts in several states, the only way to ensure it never sees the light of day is to permanently rescind it nationwide.    

The letter was also signed by U.S. Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Braun (R-IN), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), James Lankford (R-OK), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Jim Risch (R-ID), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Dan Sullivan (R-AK) and Thom Tillis (R-NC).  

Full letter

Original source can be found here.