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It’s time for superintendents at Indiana schools to push back against ‘contact tracing’ for the sake of our children’s education.

Jason Hammer’s son is forced to quarantine himself for two weeks after he was ‘contact traced’ at his school last Friday.

“He wore his mask all week and hasn’t had so much as a couch or a sniffle,” Hammer told listeners Monday. “He does the sanitizer, washes his hands, and does everything right. But here we are again for the second time in his high school career.”

The Indiana Department of Health states in its Fall 2021 Back to School Guidance that “COVID-19 is a reportable communicable disease, and as such, falls under the provision of the Communicable Disease Reporting Rule.”

Under that rule, “state and local health departments have the authority to implement prevention and control measures, including contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine, for disease cases and outbreaks.”

When school officials find out about a case, that initiates the process of contact tracing, which includes checking seating charts and speaking with teachers to determine who the infected individual’s close contacts are.

But many kids who wind up testing negative are still forced to remain home, which can have a negative impact on their education and cause them to fall behind their peers.

Nearly 9 in 10 parents are worried about their children falling behind academically due to coronavirus-related school closures, according to The Education Trust, “ranking higher than any other financial or socioemotional concern.”

WIBC’s Jason Hammer says it’s time for schools in the state of Indiana to push back.

“They could tell the Marion County Health Department or their local officials, ‘Listen, we have enough evidence to show that kids are going to be fine and these masks don’t do anything. And we’re not going to keep healthy kids at home because the data shows that it is detrimental to their education and their mental health,'” said Hammer.

“But we continue to do this because nobody has the testicular fortitude to tell the powers that be to ‘stick it,'” he added.

Hammer was just getting warmed up. Click the link below to hear his full comments.

https://omny.fm/shows/hammer-and-nigel-show/hammer-sounds-off