For the first time in the 22 years that I have lived in Southern Boone County, I am ashamed of and embarrassed by the actions of our local school board. Last week, in the face of a huge increase in students and teachers testing positive for Covid-19 and/or being placed in quarantine, the Southern Boone School Board inexplicably voted to ban mask mandates in all of the district’s buildings.
The board’s policy requiring mask-wearing for two weeks, when case numbers in any given building reach a threshold of at least 15% of students and staff infected and/or quarantined, had already been implemented in two buildings after just 13 school days, yet board members decided against implementing a stronger masking policy and instead opted to discard mask mandates entirely. You are reading that correctly. Rather than taking additional measures to keep our children and their educators safe, our school board instead removed existing safety protocols.
Watching the special board meeting online, I was so stunned by this turn of events that I replayed the video numerous times to be sure of what I had just witnessed. Days later, I still cannot believe that a room full of people elected by their fellow citizens and entrusted with the responsibility of keeping our community’s students and teachers safe deliberately voted to make the people in their care less safe.
Though three board members voted against the motion, I am nevertheless disappointed with all seven representatives. When President Steve Condron asked for further discussion after Tiffany Clevenger’s motion to ban mask mandates was seconded by Amy Begemann, no one spoke up. Not one person thought to say aloud, “Hey, wait a minute. It sounded like, with the way cases keep going higher and higher, that we were exploring the possibility of making a universal mask mandate in all district buildings, at least until the numbers start to drop. Instead, we’re talking about doing the opposite?! I thought we were supposed to make our schools safer for our students and their teachers, not more dangerous.”
Unfortunately, none of the seven board members paused for even a moment to debate the ramifications of discarding themask mandate policy. There was no further discussion.
I believe further discussion is in order. Masks have been scientifically proven to help block respiratory droplets and aerosols containing viruses from spreading. While cloth masks do not give complete protection, they are much more effective than wearing no mask at all—especially when everyone wears them.
What will happen as Covid continues to spread unabated due to not requiring kids in school to wear masks? How many family members will contract the more contagious and far deadlier Delta variant from their unprotected, school-aged children? How many people in our community will die as a result of the board’s reckless change in policy?
The biggest question on my mind and on the minds of many people in Southern Boone County is “Why?” Why did the board create a safe re-entry plan with a temporary mask mandate clause before the school year began and less than three weeks into the fall semester remove it? With active, symptomatic cases far outpacing last year’s numbers, why would the board abandon a well-reasoned safety measure as soon as it went into effect?
Was it because of the 8 or 10 anti-mask protesters who caused a disruption in front of the elementary school on the first day the temporary mask mandate was to go into effect? Was it because some of those same protesters attended the special board meeting? Is this a case of the squeaky wheels getting the oil? If so, I strongly urge every single parent, student, and community member who is as outraged as I am by this shocking decision to please contact the members of the board of education to express your displeasure. Their names and contact information are posted on the district’s website.
Perhaps even further discussion is in order. Such as, do we need new representation on our school board? I have met most of the members of our board of education. I’m Facebook friends with many of them. I taught several of their children during my years as a substitute and full-time educator. These are good people. They care about our community. I believe they have good intentions. But I also believe that they made a terrible mistake by voting to “not have a mask mandate at any point.”
If you, like I do, want the board to reverse this decision, then it’s our turn to do some squeaking. And if all of our squeaking doesn’t convince the board of education to do everything in their power to protect our children and their teachers, then perhaps we’ll need to do some squeaking at the polls during the next board member election.
I’ll end now with this final thought. Exactly eight hours ago, my wife and I attended the funeral of Bethany’s uncle Mike. Mike was a good man, a dedicated servant to his community, and a loving husband, father, grandfather, and uncle. He made the world a much better place. Tragically, Mike spent the last month of his life in the hospital, dying of Covid-19. I assure you that this disease is real, as is the threat to the safety of the unmasked children and staff members packed into our schools—and their family members at home, many of whom are too young to be vaccinated.
I sincerely hope that the school board will reverse its decision as soon as possible. Doing the right thing is often difficult, but those good people whom we elected to serve our community are capable of doing great things. Now is their chance to prove it.
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