School calls police on 4-year-old, sends him home for not wearing mask

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (TND) — A school district in California has reportedly lifted its mask mandate after a video spread of police responding to a school and sending a 4-year-old boy home for not wearing his mask.

The video, recorded by the young boy's father on Thursday morning, captured the momentTheuerkauf Elementary School's principal blocks the elementary schooler from entering his classroom, as theMountain View Whisman School District requires students to wear masks inside classrooms.

The young boy, who his father says is experiencing developmental issues, won't keep his mask on. For this reason, the school's staff won't allow him in his classroom.The boy's father says that he wanted to catch the encounter on video so he could show other parents.

I'm watching my son. I'm waking him up every day go to school, get turned away with tears in his eyes. He doesn't know what's going on, he's visibly upset, visibly disheveled by getting turned away and rejected," the boy's father reportedly told ABC7 News.

I welcome him here and I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I want him here but it is our district’s policy to have to wear a mask," the principal can be heard saying in the video.

The young boy is then seen in the video being escorted into the classroom for a quick moment before emerging with a note. The note features the school's mask policy. The principal then tells the father that she is "going to have him [the boy] removed from campus if you [the father] don't leave at this time."

Later in the video, a police officer, who is apparently a school resource officer, briefly speaks with the father. The officer was called by the principal to remove the 4-year-old from campus, the father claims in the video. The officer can be heard explaining the school district's mask policy to the father, who doesn't film the officer's face during the interaction. The officer explains that he is only there to enforce the rules as they are.

I can't say what they are doing is wrong; I can't say what you are doing is wrong. Both sides have valid points," the officer can be heard saying in the video.

Once posted online, the video stirred fierce backlash from critics. The father, who only wishes to be referred to as "Shawn," submitted his video to TheDailyMail.com, which featured the video in one of its articles and called the encounter a "shocking moment."

On the same day that the video was recorded and widely shared, the school board voted to make masks "optional," according to TheDailyMail.com

On Friday, a statement was released byMountain View Whisman School District Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph about the incident, according to ABC7 News. In that statement,Rudolph laments that the father recorded the incident.

It's very unfortunate that this parent chose to video record one of our principals after she repeatedly asked him not to," the statement reads. "This parent worked with an advocacy group outside Mountain View to create a professional video in order to nationally shame a public servant doing her job while maintaining a safe and orderly school. In all of our time in the pandemic, only one parent has resorted to these tactics taken from a national playbook on how to disrupt educational environments."

While I understand that not everyone will agree with every position we take, it is completely unacceptable to harass an employee in such a way that they and parents no longer feel safe at their own school," the statement added.

An attorney representing Shawn,Tracy Henderson with the California Parents Union, claims to ABC7 News that the school broke the law by sending the 4-year-old home, as schools can only send sick children home.

The Mountain View Whisman School District still requires masks on school buses and at large events, the news outlet added.