7 Hour-Long St. Johns County School District Board Meeting - Our Hands Have Been Handcuffed

 

Parents raised their voices about a mask mandate in St. Johns County School District today. A regular school board meeting scheduled for this morning at 9 a.m. quickly went from the regular agenda of approving School Board Rule 9.041 on Tobacco and Tobacco Products to a more than six hour long meeting. After approval of the rule, the school board opened up for public comments. The comments varied from parents against and for masks, many opposed, many in favor of masks in the schools.

 

Some parents expressed anger over their children's rights being violated if a mask mandate was enforced, while other parents pleaded for a mask mandate to protect their unvaccinated younger children. Most parents were polite and respectful, but there were some, who raised their voices and became disrespectful.

The most powerful comments and statements were those from the myriad of health professionals standing up and speaking up, or calling in over the web portal about what they are seeing in their offices, in their hospitals and about how they need help. 

 

School Board Superintendent sent out a letter to parents on the evening of August 9th, 2021.

 "This year we will continue to implement our COVID safety protocols as communicated on May 14, 2021 and Board approved in July 2021. The most notable adjustments include optional face masks, no longer having daily temperature checks, and reduction in the use of classroom dividers based on specific needs. Due to the most recent increase in COVID virus spread in our community, I highly recommend the use of face masks as the school year begins. This is an important consideration in our elementary school environments in which the parents of students 12 years old and younger do not have the option for their children to be vaccinated. Ultimately, we are expected to follow Governor DeSantis Executive Order 21-175 which acknowledges the parental right to make decisions for their own children related to face masks. This order has been followed by emergency rules of the Florida State Board of Education and the Florida Department of Health. 

Our schools will begin the year limiting visitors and parents during the school day to support a healthy and safe school environment. Student and staff quarantining will continue to be a strategy this year to minimize the opportunity for the spread of COVID within the school building and in the community. While we understand that quarantining is disruptive to classrooms and families, it is a necessary prevention strategy. We are committed to maintaining campus sanitation and health protocols that were introduced last school year. Please refer to our website for comprehensive COVID protocol information at http://www.stjohns.k12.fl.us."

 

After more than six hours of comments from the community, the school board made their closing comments. 

After talking about the various safety measures, which the school district will be able to keep in place, Associate Superintendent for Student Services, Kyle Dresback took the time to remind everyone that: "If your child does not feel well, or if you as a staff member does not feel well - do not come to school."

School board attorney Frank Upchurch III was asked to share some of his thoughts based on Govenor DeSantis' executive order. "If we were to defy this mandate, it wouldn't surprise me if the district were sued by an anti-masker," Upchurch said. "My sense is that these questions will end up in the courts sooner rather than later, and that there will be a decision. If the governor's order and the rules predicated on the governor's order were invalidated, the legal premise of this discussion would be different, and certainly we could revisit it. My recommendation now is we have a clear mandate from the executive branch binding on the school board, and the school board should follow it."

"There's one thing I think we all know," Superintendent Tim Forson said, "hopefully we've learned since the beginning of this. I dare not say that's it, that's the way it is, that's the way it will be forever. Things change. We have to be fluid enough and responsive enough if the time comes to adjust to the needs to our children and our staff and our employees."

Below is part of the closing statement made by School Board Chair from District 5, Patrick Canan:

"This has been a difficult decision for me, and I've wrestled with it for a long time, especially over this past weekend. You can see it here in the auditorium today the fervor, the difference of opinion. Most of the time listening respectfully, but it doesn't seem like people these days, or maybe I am just overgeneralizing, want to respect the other person's opinion, and that's a concern. I don't think it is a good role model for our children.

It's like two major things sort of colliding in my head. One obviously is the parental right, which I totally understand, I have three children, versus the community right to protect the community and the children as a whole. Those are clashing head on. What also is clashing head on is the state and the local. In my opinion, this is the decision that should be made at the local level, because we have local input, we have our own hospital, we know our hospital levels, we have a health department, but instead we've been restricted by the state government from doing what we may otherwise not do. We've been restricted to do what the state of Florida thinks we should do in this one county. There are 67 counties, 4 of them that I know so far, it may have grown at this point, but I think it was Broward and Dade, Alachua and Hillsborough last time I counted had decided to opt out. But that is not a defiance of the executive order signed by the governor just recently. That is simply a different way of doing what we are doing, which is we are highly recommending that the children mask. It's the same thing in those four counties. The parents will decide.

My concern in those of you that disagree with the governor - your beef is in Tallahassee, because we have been handcuffed. I totally believe that we should be listening to science.

I have said since the beginning of this, since March of 2020 that I am not going to allow politics to be involved. I think we should be listening to the science, and then we get an executive order, where this is who this state has elected as our governor, and I have to respect his decision and respect his opinion."

 

No matter what happens with the mask mandate in St. Johns County, the voice of parents had a victory today, because for more than six hours parents continued to get their three minutes of say. Based on the school board's closing comments, each comment was listened to, and the school board was clearly as conflicted as to having their hands tied from a state level.

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