School board extends mask mandate
School board extends mask mandate
As anti-mask ‘vitriol’ pours into Laramie, trailing attention from Fox News and Steve Bannon, Albany County School Board trustees say they want to save lives and follow the science.
Citing high transmission rates and decrying the division that has gripped the school district for the past week, the Albany County School Board voted Wednesday to extend its mask mandate to mid-November.
Transmission levels are worse now than they were when the board last met to consider its mask policy. While the delta variant is gradually loosening its grip on the state, hospitalizations, deaths, case counts and transmission levels remain significantly higher than they were at any point throughout the summer. Among the current hospitalizations are an increasing number of school age children.
Superintendent Jubal Yennie opened the board’s meeting with a prepared address, responding to the chaotic events of the past week, which saw a lockdown at the high school and put Laramie in national headlines.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has damaged our compassion for one another,” Yennie said. “It, like so many things in recent years, has divided us. We most certainly have one thing in common, however — we want this pandemic to be over with as little loss of life as possible. While disagreements about our educational system can be constructive, we’ve found that this pandemic has brought out the very worst in us.”
As fights over the mandate have gotten worse, so too has the pandemic. Voicing his support for the mandate, Trustee Lawrence Perea highlighted how the county’s death toll continues to rise.
“Back in September, when we had our board meeting, 18 of our neighbors had died because of the pandemic,” he said. “And since that time, it’s gone up to 31. That’s 13 of our neighbors still dying in our community because of this coronavirus. I understand the division and the rhetoric and the politics behind it, but we are still in the middle of a medical emergency.”
Despite the backlash the board has received — at meetings, in demonstrations, from state politicians and in the national news — Trustee Kim Sorenson said the mask mandate was something worth doing.
“I feel like we have created an action that certainly has the appearance of a non-enforceable rule, but I need to point out that the fight is worth it,” Sorenson said. “I have no intention of backing down on this one. It’s a pandemic. It kills people. It’s killed 700,000 people so far.”
Sorenson said he regretted “turning educators into enforcers.”
“It’s not what they were trained to do; it’s not what they want to do,” he said. “However, when I hear that our efforts are divisive, unenforceable, perhaps ineffective, and not making much of a difference — I think about how great the difference would be if it were someone I knew or worse yet, someone I loved dearly. It would make all the difference in the world.”
The mandate passed on a 6-1 vote, with only Trustee Jason Tangeman voting against. Vice Chair Mark Bittner and Trustee Nate Martin were absent from the meeting. Trustee Jamin Johnson, who did not support the mandate in September, voted to approve the extension this time.
The original motion would have extended the mandate through the end of the semester, but the trustees unanimously approved an amendment shortening that time frame.
The mandate will now expire Nov. 12, unless the board takes action to extend it before then. The board meets again Nov. 10.
‘Vitriol, serious threats, insults and personal attacks’
The mandate extension comes at a tense time. While anti-mask demonstrators have disrupted board meetings and picketed outside the school since the idea was first floated, the last week has seen a concerted campaign to disregard or fight the mask requirements.
One week ago, Laramie High School junior Grace Smith was arrested when she refused to leave campus. Smith had been suspended multiple times for refusing to follow the district’s mask policy. When she refused to leave after her third suspension, she was arrested for trespassing.
This incident caused a lockdown at the school and contributed to a tense atmosphere last Thursday and Friday that many students and parents described as disruptive to the educational process.
Smith’s campaign against the mask mandate was not over, however. She met with right-wing state politicians and national media figures — including Steve Bannon, who has made violent statements regarding pro-mask authorities. Meanwhile, her father launched a crowdfunding campaign that has raised more than $117,000, as they together plot a lawsuit against the school district.
The national spotlight encouraged people from across the country to get involved, giving money to the Smiths or emailing and calling local elected officials and the police department. The Laramie City Council passed a strongly worded proclamation this week, decrying the threats and attacks they and others have received.
Yennie’s address to the board did the same.
“We need your help in putting a stop to the vitriol, serious threats, insults and personal attacks,” Yennie said. “We are also asking for your understanding and perhaps a bit of compassion. Each of us takes our responsibilities as educators very seriously, and whether you choose to believe it or not, we are all doing the very best we can during this no-win COVID-19 era.”
But many of those opposed to the mandate attribute different, less charitable intentions to the board.
Sen. Anthony Bouchard labelled the mandate “COVID tyranny,” accusing the board of wanting nothing but control over the population. Grace Smith, in a comment Wednesday, said the board had given itself “an egregious amount of power.” When Smith appeared on Steve Bannon’s program, Bannon told Smith, “The first thing they try to do is break you, and make sure you don’t have the will to resist.”
Trustee Sorenson pushed back on claims like these.
“When I hear that we’re on a power trip, all I know is what I know — it’s not about me and I don’t feel that from you all,” he told the rest of the board. “What I do is for the people of our county. If you look at our emails, it may look like we’re representing Florida, Massachusetts, Mississippi, northern California, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and even Puerto Rico. (But) in a state that embraces local control, I represent Albany County.”
Public input: Personal choice vs. science
Grace Smith herself made an appearance at the board meeting Wednesday. She spoke of bullying she has experienced for her anti-mask stance and action. Smith said she had been refusing to mask up since the start of the semester.
“This should have been a respected decision, but astonishingly, I was arrested on school grounds,” she said. “I now owe $1,000 in trespassing citations for freely going to school.”
Smith will not be paying that $1,000 herself though. That figure is less than one percent of the money the Smiths have raised in the past week. Their crowd-sourced fundraiser has garnered more than $117,000 so far.
Smith also announced her withdrawal from Laramie High School.
“I want to make it very clear to you that you do not own us, as kids; you have no right to tell us who we get to be and you have absolutely no right to make our health decisions for us or for our parents,” Smith said, pointing to constitutional language that will likely inform her family’s lawsuit against the district. “I am pro-choice for masks. I don’t want to make my fight about the efficacy of masks or masks alone. I want this to be about our civil liberties. Why can’t we just come together and let these families make their own decisions so we can all go back to school to deal with normal high school problems?”
This has been a suggestion floated by many anti-mask speakers during board meetings and elsewhere. Those in favor of mask mandates counter by citing the clear evidence on the effectiveness of masks.
Not only does masking reduce transmission rates between individuals, the more people mask, the safer their community is. This has even been studied in the specific context of schools, with research that has compared school districts with a mandatory masking policy to those who left masks optional.
Trustee Emily Siegel-Stanton cited a study published this month showing the clear advantage schools that mask have over those that don’t when it comes to cases per capita.
The board ultimately voted to extend the mandate, basing their decision on this and other research. But some pro-mask speakers still had criticisms for the district.
Christina Lewis, who supported the mandate and praised Yennie’s address, said the district had failed to be communicative during the chaos last week.
She asked that the district work to improve this.
“To get that text from my son on Friday that there was the threat of a school shooting — definitely puts everybody in a panic,” Lewis said. “If we would have known ahead of time, it would have been easier to mitigate that, not only with our kids, but for us to understand what was going on.”