As the state of New Mexico is within its first week of fully reopening, many conservatives are criticizing the state's handling of COVID-19 guidelines for children.

Children are returning to classrooms for in-person learning, state COVID-19 guidelines are still requiring students to wear masks.

"The governor has put her thumb on the scale of going and reopening things, which is good, [but] the issue that looms largest out there, for me especially as the parents of three young children, who I'm not going to get vaccinated, is the issue of masks, athletics and activities," Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation said in a podcast. "Regardless, masks on young kids whose survival rate for COVID-19 is in the 99.9% you know and so forth out into ad infinitum, but of course looking down the road to school and other states like New Mexico that remain mask requirement states, there aren't a whole lot of other things that the governor is going to hold back on to my knowledge with regard to reopening New Mexico, but that is a very big one." 

New Mexico is currently the only state still requiring children to remain under a mask mandate for student athletes, even for sports that are outdoors and already include social distancing, such as baseball, softball, golf and cross-country. 

Some critics have also condemned the state's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and disruption of in-person classrooms as being harmful for children's education. New Mexico has the fifth-most missed classroom time of any other schools in the nation, the Rio Grande Foundation reported. Before the pandemic, The Kids Count data center had already ranked New Mexico's educational performance as 50th in the nation and this disruption will like lead to it falling further behind. 

The effectiveness of these restrictions are questioned as New Mexico still had a high COVID-19 death rate in the U.S. a WorldoMeter report said.