School Committee - Policy On Masking

001hey everybody brad good evening i'm going to call the meeting to order i'd ask if you're able to stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all [Music] so as we said the last meeting if there was anything that was going to happen with masking we would have a stand-alone meeting and so that's why we're here tonight when guidance first came out we knew there would be parts of it that would have to be adhered to previously and that was there's two mandates there's a federal mandate that requires students to wear masks and school buses and there's a state mandate that requires everyone to

002wear masks in health offices since that time the commissioner has decided had decided to seek from the board of education the authority to mandate masks um school-wide through october 1st and then he'd re-evaluate and then in addition to that he put some other caveats on there mainly around 80 and those who were not looking for 80 vaccinated of staff and students in each building and the piece would be that anybody who was unvaccinated would not be allowed to wear to go unmasked the board of education gave him that authority yesterday just a few minutes ago he submitted his order to school systems and so that's why we're here today so i would give everybody an opportunity to say what they want i would appreciate if you would go to one of the two microphones i'll

003tell you up front that i don't want people asking questions from their seats because people are watching this on both tv and online and so it doesn't allow people at home to hear what you're saying so that's why i'm going to request everybody go to their to a microphone and ask your questions or make your statements so we're going to let people talk first and then we'll have a discussion about how we administer the policy um i have heard a couple of questions up front so i'm going to sort of answer those first somebody said what would happen if the school committee defied the authority of guessing and there's two things the first is that we don't have the authority to defy desi if a school went quote unquote rogue deci has two options they

004can end funding and they can take it over and put it in receivership they've taken over school systems in the past and put them in receivership mainly because of underperforming schools just so everyone understands what happens with receivership is local has no authority over the school system at that point the receiver has all the authority i've seen it happen in lawrence i've seen it happen in chelsea i know it's happened in a couple of western parts of the state um what randolph had happened to um and the state's taken towns and cities into receivership for example the entire city of lawrence was put in receivership and that town manager bob nunes was the receiver for the city of lawrence what it also means is that the receiver negotiates contracts with the unions local towns don't

005the receiver sets the budget for the community local towns don't and the rest of the town has to function with whatever whatever's left over based on what the receivers decided so that's a problem the second problem is this all the administrators here have a license from desi and in order to get the license us the bottom of the license says they will comply with desi rules or lose their license failure to comply means that they don't have a license it also means that they'd have to essentially not do what their local school committee told them to do because they'd have to abide by the rules of decent that's what they're required to do according to their licenses so that's not an option so we'll talk about how we set up our policy in compliance with

006desi um but i wanted to lay those out beforehand i you know i've not been a fan of states coming down and making decisions and then maintaining that you know cities and towns have to do what they tell them to do we also fought on occasion when they've set up programs that we're required to do and haven't put money into them in fact the mass association school committee get a lot passed that said anything the state puts forth and requires schools to do they have to pay for if it costs money so that's where we're at that's sort of my sort of headline for the beginning so again i made a promise to this community that you would have a chance to talk and say what you want and you will the only thing i'm

007going to ask again is that you not do it from your seat you go to the microphone and the second thing is after you're done i i don't want the same person coming up multiple times to talk until everyone's had that opportunity so let's try to do it that way okay so with that does anyone have anything they'd like to say sir thank you yeah sure whatever is easier for you my name is brian madden i have a son in this community and first i'd like to say you know kudos to all those that are here i think it's very alarming how many aren't it's amazing how many empty seats but i'm going to take personal responsibility and say that i always left an empty seat you know i've been sleeping for many years i've

008been paying attention you know i left that up to everybody else except for myself i can't believe you having this meeting tonight if i was a betting man after they made that decision this was not happening this evening so thank you nobody's changing anybody's minds tonight yeah i'm glad that people are here for mass i'm glad the people are here that don't want mass [Music] you know the last time i don't generally write down things you know i've spoken off of my life but i think it's better for a statement to come from paper because i really wanted to get my thoughts down and and i want the community to know that many of us have spent countless hours right over the last year and a half trying to figure out what is going on

009and where are we headed um and how divisive this topic is you know stay away from religion topics i was taught right stay away from politics you can not avoid this topic you cannot avoid the topic of did you get that vaccine did aunties get a vaccine did your sister get a vaccine are you gonna wear a mask are they not gonna wear a mask how do you feel about this right and everybody's afraid to speak their truth i have a business i don't want to lose clients over my truth i don't want to feel like i offend somebody right i'm in the health field i'm trying to get people healthy for 18 straight years i see that diet and exercise with diabetes and obesity right the number one and number two co-morbidity of this

010i don't speak my opinion about that do with yourself what you do with yourself smoke cigarettes do your thing you do you i do me this now has become everybody's business and it's about to get a lot worse and i just want to quickly lay out what i foresee try not to take too much time so that some people can see what somebody like myself and many of us feel is the end game and we gonna try to avoid getting there um the educating uh commissioner was granted authority right as you were just saying which is one thing but to state that as of october 1st that you're gonna highlight the fact that somebody's vaccinated and who's not i don't know if that scares anybody else in this room i i i don't you know

011and i don't know what side of the aisle you're on with that but i just left my pediatrician's office yesterday and she is misinformed because she told me they can't get those records from your son it's only the health paperwork that you have to physically hand in they would know he's not because it's not on there not according to the government website again i was sleeping i wasn't paying attention to this stuff i don't know if others were but did you know in 2011 miis massachusetts immunization information system everybody's on the system they all know schools can get their hands on it schools know who is and who isn't and who is going to be in charge of that information are teachers going to get that in their hands a nurse is going to be

012the only ones a kid's going to be asked to wear bracelets is there going to be bullying involved right because we're going to be trying to figure out who's vaccinated who's not are we going to be floating around rumors that we're at 76 and we can just get to 80 right if we just get a few more kids but that kid's not that teacher's not we are headed in such a dangerous direction and it's not that any of us individually have the ability to do anything about this right but collectively collectively because i think inside of our schools we're being taught inclusivity right we're being taught not to see color not to see gender not to see all these things we're bringing forth right social emotional it's all i've heard this is taking us in

013the wrong direction the wrong direction over something that i believe should require choice right and as i said at the beginning many people i've talked to it's not about the science in air quotes it's your science or my science and everybody's confused you know i'm never getting vaccinated my son's never getting vaccinated so we're gonna have to navigate our way through society going forward understanding that we maybe will be discriminated against all right and i walk in a lot of fear over that a lot of fear over that and i believe there's people who have been vaccinated wear mass who also still believe in choice and would support us and would stand up for us you know and um apparently i don't need to read this you know and i and i want to speak

014from the heart the last time i wrote something down i might have said the already and i gave the eulogy of my parents you know i did both my mother and my father this is a eulogy right now that i am speaking to all of us we are literally heading into the new normal which i personally not partaking it i trust my immune system i spend a lot of time and effort and gain knowledge in that field i choose to raise my son the way that i choose to raise him it honestly gets to the point where and i bet a lot of us would say it's a really bad thought but maybe we could just live in separate places so some people can exist the way they want and others can exist the way

015they want but this is middleborough this is just one town and we all need to just pay attention that we don't get even further apart from each other and cause more issues and find out answers like i put out there of how we're going to figure out who's who all right and i just will finish with i knew in my soul and my gut right i have this gut instinct that told me this was going to be the year so i was fortunate enough to get my son out and he'll be attending online public school i'm so thankful for that because i want continuity throughout his year i want him to know what's happening in september and how he's finishing in june and all these poor kids are gonna ride this roller coaster all year

016they've already lost a couple years in my opinion this is year number three well we are losing these kids to suicide could go on and on and on thank you everybody for attending i appreciate you giving me the time and um let's go forth and try to drag more of our friends into this educate people and let's work together on this right thank you thank you you adjust this a little bit because unlike the previous gentleman i'm not very tall my name is andrew craig my daughter will be entering kindergarten here next week and i got a few things to say unfortunately for you all frankly i'm a little disappointed in this town that this is even coming to this vaccines are important for people who have health conditions poor immune systems etc etc i

017get it my mother's fully vaccinated i caught covet 19 from her for my second time back in may okay why does the vaccine percentage matter at all and this is a direct question for you i prefer an answer that you can at least pass up why does a vaccine percentage matter if you can still catch this virus while you're vaccinated i would like that question asked and i would like to know and i'm sorry if i'm coming across confrontational some of you in this audience know me that is my personality it just is what it is these people on this board of education are unelected unelected i don't know if you all know what democracy means but the whole point of it is that the power resides with the people us you are our elected

018representatives i see you nodding sir in the blue shirt and i'm sorry some of you are teachers in here this is going to come going to come across real rude i don't care about your licenses at all you took an oath or whatever it is when you take to come onto the school committee you took this role knowing that you are our representatives stop putting your personal nonsense ahead of what we elected you to do which is represent the feelings and what we want i understand some of you have worked a very long time to achieve very high goals and i respect that i am somebody i work in the refrigeration field i have my licenses and things from you know various government bodies of which there are too many and i have to tell

019my customers and the people that ultimately end up paying my salary because they pay my boss no i'm not going to do this because you know what it violates what's right you need to do the same thing you need to stand up to these unelected people who don't know us they don't represent us i'm sorry but middleborough massachusetts is not the same as any of those hell holes and yes they are hell holes i work in them that you named earlier that were taken into whatever it was called i can't remember off the top of my head receivership okay this is not randolph for instance okay does anybody know how many active covet cases that are currently in middlebar massachusetts 20. would you like to know the approximate percentage of the population that that represents

020point zero zero three we have an educated person over here why are we actually let me scratch that why are you you allowing some unelected person who doesn't know middleborough to make a decision when there is less than a point zero five percent i'm going to be super generous with my numbers of the population who is currently infected and here we are back to the vaccination rate how many of those people are actually fully vaccinated do you know i'm asking a direct question no well that's a question sorry how many of the people currently infected the covet 19 in this town are fully vaccinated i don't know okay so vaccines really don't matter do they when it comes to infections look i'm not an anti-vaxxer i've been a member of the united states military for

02114 years i've been injected with more vaccines than i could possibly count okay they work they're important for people who need them i'm 33 i drink way too much i don't take care of myself physically unlike you know the gentleman over here but somehow i've been able to beat covid19 twice 15 months apart twice my wife who is a severe asthmatic who is technically part of the back up here a little bit technically part of the at-risk population she didn't even know she had cove until she got tested because she had a little bit of a stuffy nose i understand this virus is serious for people with health conditions i'm not denying that i know people who have died from it and is terrible but our children are not dying from this virus and if

022you are a teacher and you are at that risk and you're not willing to take that risk find a new job on the board of education i took a moment took a couple hours today actually to look up the actual mass code and look up the board of education not a single one of them is a doctor a medical doctor i know some people who have doctorates they are very protective of the doctor but they're not medical doctors there's a couple union presidents god only knows what that has to do with anything about education since teachers unions are among the biggest wastes of taxpayer money in the planet why are they making medical decisions for my child do you know anything about my child any of you do any of you even know who i

023am besides potentially mr lynch who may have seen me once or twice in his life none of you have ever seen me do you know my child do anything about her do you know what happens to her when she's forced to put on a mask do you know the psychological reaction it has on her no you don't so here's my question is there a medical exemption for children who are exhibiting psychological issues with the masks i'm not that's a real question you guys got the directive i was only briefly able to look at it is there a medical exemption for children who exhibit severe psychological issues to the masks there is a medical exemption yes okay okay but it requires my child to release some sort of medical information correct you need a note from

024your doctor okay so now we're back to the bullying aspect of is my child going to get bullied because she's the one not wearing a mask because i happen to not agree with this and she happens to have that medical exemption because let me tell you something i was laid off for two months when this when this nonsense happened at first last year and you know what it caused severe marital problems with my wife and i and it caused us to have issues that led to my child developing some some problems when it came to the issues of masks so does my child now have to not wear a mask when everybody else does because science for somebody i want to know what is the science behind this what is this person where does he

025get the right to make this medical decision for children that are not his and where does he get the authority to make it statewide for communities that are not at risk for covid this is nonsense and i fully expect you all to stand up and do what's right [Applause] good evening my name is richard um my girlfriend and i recently moved to the town a couple of years ago um if i'd have known what was going to happen when we moved up here from florida i i i would i would have never came back to my home state i i can't believe what's going on and i can't believe that like the first gentleman said there isn't more concerned parents here because it's not about uh what you guys are are doing i understand what

026you're doing you're following orders that's all you're doing somebody's telling you what to do and they're instilling fear into you fear of losing your job and they're you're allowing them to steer your moral compass doing the right thing and teaching children the proper curriculum is all that we're looking for we teach our children at home right from wrong we know what's best for our children not any of you none of you you don't get to make decisions for my children i do that and my fiance does that this country is about choice i have a choice everybody in this room has a choice there's consequences to every choice that we make and i think you guys are making a bad choice in in trying to reinstate these mask mandates a mandate is not a law

027a requirement is not a law it's not and for you guys to to sit there and say that there was a decision already made i was a little late running uh to this meeting so i kind of missed the beginning but this country was founded on choice we have a choice and i know that i will not mask my my stepdaughter for her first day at kindergarten it's not gonna happen i don't care what you tell me i'm not gonna mask my third grader i'll drive them i'm not gonna put them on the bus they won't let them on the bus without the mask i'll drop them off without a mask i'm not doing it that's my choice and if and if you guys are going to send them home then all it takes is

028about 20 to 25 percent of us to withdraw our kids every one of them is a dollar sign it's about ten thousand dollars in tax money i have three kids two of them are coming to school the things you're teaching our kids you're instilling fear you're teaching them division masked or unmasked vast or unvaxed that's crazy and and the fear and anxiety alone that comes with covering a child's mouth and restricting their breathing it's it's a medical fact that carbon dioxide poisoning causes irreversible brain damage on on young developing brains it's a medical fact that on the side of the mask box it says it does not protect against a virus so why would we cover their face they have a 99.99 chance of surviving if they contract it that means they have a better

029chance of of getting hit and killed by the school bus coming to get them than they do of contracting or spreading covet 19. i promise you this if you guys do if you discriminate against my children and send them home because they're coming unmasked whether you like it or not send them home and i'll just withdraw them and i hope that all the other parents hear me and think the same thing withdraw your kids because there goes their funding there goes their tax money anyway they're talking about not getting it if they don't instill the mandates i'm getting real tired of this i got laid off over a year ago i've had nothing but time to research and read and i've gone down some crazy rabbit holes but what i'm speaking up here is the

030truth everybody has a choice and and use it exercise it do it now i don't have any more to say because i'm going to get emotional but thank you hi there good evening hi i'm michelle madden my son boston madden is a middle schooler or a was a middle schooler here in middleborough um i withdrew him this year uh i withdrew him because of you know attending all of the online school committee meetings reaching out providing data providing um you know voicing concerns about choice uh about inclusivity of of people who didn't agree with the mass mandates it was very clear that it fell on deaf ears with you guys it was very clear the fact that it fell on deaf ears was even made more clear when people who voiced their personal opinions and

031their personal agenda on social media it was made perfectly clear that not only were you not advocating for my child you are advocating against him and so with that i made the decision with his dad that we pulled my son this year because i had zero faith in you and i had zero faith in desi and i was right we we all were right that you weren't going to include the children that didn't just fall in line so i want to speak to something that um the other gentleman talked about which was bullying my son was bullied last year because we did decide at some point because he also does um suffer from anxiety due to the masks that we were he was going to wear a mesh mask and and in doing that he

032was bullied by his peers because he wasn't wearing the the mask that everybody else was wearing and he was also bullied by his teachers he was he was singled out he was made to be an example of and that happened within his classroom i also would like to let you know that you have some teachers within your system especially in the middle at the middle school who um used the their mask break their given mass break according to deci's guidelines they the kids get a mass break every hour but one teacher in particular used it as a reward or punishment system so that if you didn't actually follow rules you lost your math break for today so it's really great that you guys want to mandate these things but how are we dealing with rogue

033teachers who use it as their own punishment system and how are we using it to add to the inclusivity that we all want for our kids we've got the buddy bench we've got all these things that are actually used as inclusive tools to make everybody comfortable but we sweep under the rug the fact that my son was bullied because he decided to wear a mesh mask and stand up for himself i'd also like to point out just four and i'm really psyched that that there are parents watching at home who couldn't make it here today because there's a whole bunch of things that they don't know they you know they don't know that you can send your kid in without a mask there's literally nothing you can do about it you can't send them home

034you can't give them detention it is on page nine of the deci guidance of school mandates for masks that you can actually not have any repercussion to sending your kid without a mask that that's not true it's on the deci website let's let's be clear and this is part of the problem the part of the problem is when people say say these things they're not true but it's on the desi website no no it's not i i have a doctor it's not straight from their website it's not on desi's website that says we can't do anything to make it clear any child if the school committee because of the mandate any child who comes to school without a mask will be sent home because that's what we have to do any child who tries to

035get on the bus without a mask will not be allowed on the bus so then i would like to add to that point if that's the route you want to go but it is on the desi website check it out page nine again it's on the desi website um i i would like to add the fact that homeschooling what we're talking about here is that they're worried about losing their funding because they want to stand they don't want to stand up to desi but if you pull your kids they're going to lose their funding so they're going to lose the funding on our terms or their terms so i understand that it's really really hard to homeschool your kid and not everybody has that option but there's tons and tons and tons of local pods

036there are homeschooling teachers that were really willing to take your kids and teach your kids so that your kids don't have to come in and deal with this and if we pull the kids you're going to lose your funding and and that being said not only do you lose the funding what i love is that i signed up for a commonwealth program so not only do you lose the funding but you also have to pay for my kid to go to the commonwealth program so not only do you lose the funding you're going to lose more funding so my i guess in the end i would like to ask you a question and it does feed back to what all these other folks have been saying about you know the vaccination and what is coming

037and what is pending because i know that for sure some of you are certainly provacs you've made that perfectly clear but i am proudly unvaxed i will remain unvexed my child will remain unfaxed and i will not put a mask on my face or his face that being said this year he is pulled from the school system but i would love him to go he enjoys school he loves coming to school being with his friends he loves the environment of school but going forward and since he's already dealt with the bullying how are you gonna deal with the segregation that you have coming your way like literally segregation which is something we already dealt with the 50s i thought we had taken care of that problem but it looks like it's coming so i'm wondering

038and this is an honest question for you guys what exactly do you have what is your plan what is your plan for the segregation how are you going to include all the children who do not and will not abide by this mandate into your system thank you um i would like to respond to one of your um statements because it kind of uh you know i understand that most people in this audience are upset i get it um but the fact about the funding piece for me personally doesn't matter okay i think it is uh somebody saw the gentleman before you said it's your choice i agree you do have a choice to put your your child into the school that you think is best for them and personally i think you should do that

039i'm not trying to tell you you have to enroll your kid here or there you know i'm not worried about the funding we're not paid okay we're volunteers and you know for me i have two daughters in the school in the high school my personal feeling about this mask mandate thing is two things one is personal the safety of all the kids right that's that's what i want and but the funding piece is not um i'm not considering it i don't know about my other board members but i don't think that's true well when you opened up this and i i will let you continue but i just do want to make this the point that you said when you opened up this discussion sir basically the reason why you're going to be like backing

040this mandate is due to funding i i just outlined what so your outline was we're going to back this mandate because if not we lose funding all right so then you can't say that funding doesn't matter because if funding doesn't matter let's do it all right let's do it i was just think from my perspective from your perspective okay i'm not i am not taking into account the funding okay the second thing is the vaccine percentage um look i i'm also going to agree with you about that like that came out of like nowhere right and i don't think that right now tonight i don't think any of us is discussing whether vaccines are good or bad or whether the people should be having the vaccine or whatever i think the only thing tonight is

041the mask mandate that the department of secondary education put down well part of the mass mandate says that in in the future when the chi when 80 percent of the children are vaccinated the vast children can remove their mask but unmet vaxxed children cannot so this goes right back to your mask mandate which is what are you going to do when the vax children can unmo remove their masks but the va unvax children can't that's segregation that is pending it's coming our way and you obviously have no clue what to do about it well okay so yeah again i don't believe that's the discussion tonight we are not going to decide that certain people should should be masked some people should not be masked i don't think that's under the on the table at all

042it's coming on the table it absolutely is coming on the table we will have to deal with it okay so we're going to have another meeting about that okay i'll see you then all right thanks thank you hi my name is jessica i have a student in the middle school and the high school obviously because i'm standing here wearing a mask i'm coming at this from a different perspective than the previous speakers i would like to start by defending the school committee yes they are elected officials but they are elected to a position that comes with requirements like any other elected official we elect a president who has to follow the laws set up by the constitution they're supposed to we elect we elect excuse me listen we elect excuse me yes we're gonna have

043a conversation we allow people to speak i don't want people commenting from their seats i said that before i want to make this an opportunity for people to say what they want but that comes with everybody to reading each other with respect so that's what we're going to do thank you please continue i sir but the people up there on this stage here tonight have been elected to perform in the role of a school committee member but it doesn't mean they have a free-for-all they have rules they have to follow that they go into that position accepting that in their role they have to follow the rules that are set out in their position so they do not have the choice to go against those even if they personally feel different that's what being elected

044into an role means they can have their own personal opinions all they want but if a mandate is set out by the state then a mandate is set up by the state and in terms of the funding question there is a huge difference between losing the funding for 25 of the students coming to the system and having the state control our school loss of money is loss of money loss of control is different one of the things that mr young mentioned is that the state would then determine the budget for the school and the town would have to deal with what is left that means if the state decides a certain percentage of money needs to go to the school to bring the school up to the standards they want to be met then the

045town has less money for all the other things that we want in our town that's how budgets work teachers you were just somebody just said that you don't have to follow your licensure many of the teachers in this school system do this out of a passion for teaching and i would hate to have somebody saying i'm not going to follow a mandate mean you lose your licensure and you don't get to do what you love to do helping our children learn so i do not feel like asking you to go against your licensure is fair for anyone to ask you to do we also had the the statement that schools don't get to decide things for our children that's not true schools decide what your graduation requirement is schools decide in order to graduate from

046high school you have to do x y and z or you don't get your diploma schools decide that unless you have a medical exemption you have to be vaccinated against measles mumps rubella all the rest of those things and have done so for years polio all of those things you have to be vaccinated against in order to be enrolled in the public school system this is no different it's new it's scary but it's new we don't know as much as we know about those other diseases but it is not a brand new process this is something that has been done before looking at the overall benefit to the entire community i agree that saying that only vaccinated people can take their masks off does draw a line so what is a potential solution the school

047system doesn't apply for the 80 exemption and everybody continues to wear a mask then there's no segregation then there's no that's an option you don't have to take your masks off then nobody knows if you're worried until the state passes different rules for the safety and benefit of our children nobody is saying that this is forever they are no they are saying they'll evaluate again in october and i'm sure in october i am sure in october they will evaluate again they are looking at the numbers they are looking at the spread they are looking at the percentage of people who are sick and in hospitals and the icu beds and who is dying and who is at risk that is what they're doing as they continue to do that they will continue to evaluate we

048will get new guidance and we'll follow it that's what they're asking us to do so i just wanted to take a moment to commend you for listening for being respectful for following the responsibilities of the offices to which you were elected and to thank our teachers and the principals for doing everything you can to make the best of what has been a terrible situation and facing things as they have come at you with optimism and encouragement for our children and making the best out of whatever you can so thank you [Applause] hi my name is emerson kearns i'm 15 and i am newly enrolled at middleborough high the last 18 months have impacted everybody everyone has their own story about how this pandemic has affected them not just through lockdowns restrictions and isolations but also

049individual family circumstances separate but equally important from the pandemic alone our family is no different and we experienced our own personal tragedy that would have been hard to deal with in the regular world but extraordinary challenging in the current circumstances for the first time in my life i needed more support than my family could give me and was very lucky to find a counselor who was able to help me navigate all of this as i struggled with feelings and emotions that were hard to handle sometimes i became overwhelmed my counselor barbara taught me to use deep breathing to calm myself but when forced into a mask as a condition of my presence in school that strategy became null and void i began experiencing panic attacks the world felt as though it were collapsing around me

050my heart would beat out of my chest and my lungs could never seem to fill with enough air despite having a doctor's note allowing me to remove my masking class i was more often than not kicked out of class so i didn't infect others infect them with what my anxiety my grief my anger rather than being shown compassion empathy or understanding i was shown the door further restricting the few hours i was provided in a classroom setting last year a few weeks ago during a heart to heart with barb she taught me one of the most important lessons she taught me how important self-love and self-care are that these things are not selfish she told me that putting myself first and doing what is best for me is self-love everyone has valid reasons for making

051decisions that are in their best interest and the messages we are being given that we are selfish for not wearing a mask or taking a shot in order to attend school is not only manipulative and coercive but adult sanctioned bullying of children [Applause] we live in a society where we preach inclusiveness while justifying reasons to exclude those who form different opinions we can be respectful of everyone's individual choice without being responsible for them my individual needs and right to an education are not any less valuable than any other child just because i want the right to make my own health decisions [Applause] the fourth amendment guarantees me the right to bodily integrity i should not be forced to violat violate that in exchange for my civil right to an education my life and my education

052are equally as valuable i am worthy [Applause] hi i don't usually speak at these things and i was actually watching online at home but i felt compelled to come to the meeting because i um because it's important and i wanted to share my opinion um so first of all that was really brave of you so congratulations on sharing what was important to you that was impressive for a 15 year old it really was um but i come at this from a different vantage point um and i feel like the collective um does outweigh the individual and thank you school committee for doing all that you do for the children um i really appreciate it i have a 10 year old and i have a 14 year old and i am thoroughly impressed with the middleborough

053school system i am thoroughly impressed with the care my children get in school i am thoroughly impressed with the education they get but i also realize that i'm a participant in this and i have a contract to abide by the rules in order to participate in this um public school system and part of that is i have to abide by the rules that i will make sure that i abide by vaccines and all that good stuff um may not be making a lot of sense but i'm also a nurse who has seen the firsthand effects of covid most of my patients weren't children but this is a really serious virus and it does affect children as well we all have statistics that we could google and so i'm going to present mine the american academy

054of pediatrics just put out an article this week that stated that in the past week um in the 50 states i believe i'm not sure all 50 participated but there were 180 000 new cases of kovid in children just in children and it's on an uptick so we've got 180 000 new cases of covet in children in the last week per this article the article also states that 0.03 of children die die die from covin so if we were to do the math on this that's around 550 kids so for me that number is high enough one kid is too much that if we all have to wear masks i'm not saying that we don't provide services for kids who have an issue with that have a challenge with that and i'm certainly not about

055segregating the children but one child is too much to die guys i mean what if it's your kid right are you willing to take that risk that yours is the one kid that passes from this when it could have been prevented by six feet separation and a mask i just asked this because i know i'm not willing to take that risk so that that's just the thought that i want to present to everyone i think that do i want my child to wear a mask in school this year i really don't i really don't because it does impact him too and impacts her but if we can still have them in school and have masks on i'm for that and everybody's healthier and children don't die i'm for that so thank you for your time

056[Applause] um good evening superintendent lynch school committee members and chairman mr young my name is ashley oatway i live on miller street and i have i have one child entering second grade in middleborough public schools this will be his third year entering the public school system and has yet to receive a normal education i am in attendance and have prepared comments to express my disappointment in the board of education in the state of massachusetts and furthermore this school committee the board of education has granted commissioner jeffrey riley the ability to force a mass mandate on the least affected members of our community to provide themselves a political security blanket and line their pockets further from big pharma lobbyists holding our children hostage until they can reach a benchmark they promised the pharmaceutical companies coercing parents

057to give their children vaccinated in hopes that maybe someday they can take their ineffective masks off the superintendent this superintendent and school committee have gone against their own operating protocols as published on the middleborough public school website in that they represent the needs and interests and of all students in the district and that you will advocate for the middleborough public schools in public education instead you've decided to concede power to power hungry bureaucrats in a cowardly fashion and claim you have no power or choice in the matter truth being told that you just don't want to lose your covid funding and any incentive bonuses that the administration may receive i understand that you are elected and you don't receive compensation for your time here but our administrators do i implore you one second just to

058be clear um i've been on this committee now seven years no administrator has ever received an incentive bonus so when somebody says that i feel it's an uh i have an obligation i mean i certainly could be wrong but that is a standard in anyone who makes money and comes in under budget in any business it's not a standard in education enough okay i could be wrong so i apologize for that that remark okay but i implore you to see the lunacy in making children in masking children to stop the spread of cobid i'm not going to provide figures because it's widely available data that more children have died in the flu season of 2018 to 2019 than have died in the past 18 months of cobin the deadliest virus to ever touch our children

059it is a tragedy for a child to die of any circumstance we took advantage of no mitigation strategies when the flu is killed killing children so why now because we have lost the ability to consider costs to benefit beyond a singular covid focus masks are hurting children the environment that the board of education is asking you to enforce is hurting children there is testimony from pediatric psychologists deans of esteemed universities and epidemiologists alike from around the world that have spoken out time and time again that masks are ineffective in the mitigation of copin 19 and are harmful to children and this is so well known that the european cdc specifically advises that no child under the age of 12 should wear a mask regardless of vaccination status this mandate is completely unnecessary the cdc concluded

060in a study in december themselves that masking mitigation strategies provided no significant benefit many families in our community are seriously considering withdrawing and homeschooling risking financial ruin for their households others are considering civil disobedience in creating what would be a very hostile environment for all both options could impact the public school systems greatly so i ask you superintendent lynch and school committee members to do your due diligence to seek counsel to scrutinize the supposed mandate look into options that allow you to make good on your promises to us to represent our needs and interests thank you for hearing me and thank you in advance for taking the initiative to do your research take what we've said here tonight seriously and i look forward to the improvements that are made to the quality of our children's

061education and health and well-being during their time here in the middlebury public schools [Applause] hi everyone i apologize for bringing a noisy baby but i was watching this at my house um i i struggled with child care this evening my husband is coaching football he decided that yesterday um so i dropped the middle two children off with him because it was about 15 minutes from ending and uh brought this little guy with me so again please excuse the sound effects what i want to say is i was i am genuinely shocked at the hypocrisy of the things that people have been saying here tonight um i keep hearing people talking about segregation and people being you know oh you have been vaccinated you haven't been vaccinated and pointing fingers and i am so surprised that

062nobody considered the alternative in terms of optional masking does anybody think that the kids who have the disabilities the kids with diabetes the kids with asthma the kids with health problems might feel a little bit identified if they're the only ones that have to wear masks does nobody think that maybe that would be socially uncomfortable as well because i'm with you in terms of the 80 benchmark i think that you know who knows when we'll get there and i'm with you that i don't like the idea of doing something that visually shows somebody's personal health information so you'll know if they're wearing a mask then they didn't get vaccinated i get that i agree with you on that but so why should we have optional masking and then all the kids with health problems get

063identified i mean to me those two things are one and the same so i'm not really sure where nobody got off thinking of that part of it but i'll leave that be so i just don't i just i i'm very confused why everybody's getting mad at the school committee right now when their hands are tied i mean first of all this is for your children's safety whether or not you agree that it is that's what it's for i mean do you put a seat belt on your kids i mean it's not different it's not different at all because you know what i don't drive drunk around but it doesn't matter because if somebody else makes the choice to drive drunk around they'll hit me and my kids and will die so it's not just about

064your choice it's about everybody's choice and i'm sick of you guys interrupting while people are talking just because you don't agree i've been watching i have been watching and every time somebody says something you guys don't like i hear the i i heard the other woman in the mask over here interrupted several times nobody interrupted the man in the orange shirt very eloquent by the way thought it was a great speech but it's disrespectful so cut it out and it's disrespectful to not care about the kids who have those needs because you know what you're all gonna sit here and say well i saw this masking one and i saw that masking study well guess what it proves that the person who's infected which by the way we know that children are mainly asymptomatic the

065person that's infected is better if they're masking not just the person that's receiving their air you're more effective if that person who has the infection is also masked so if you don't know that you're sick because you're asymptomatic then you're passing it on without knowing it and that's why even though we have vaccination rights there are still pockets of spread because the vaccine isn't 100 effective it's 94 effective and it was made before the delta variant so therefore there are still people who are getting it asymptomatically and they have no idea and they're spreading it and i'm sorry but i don't want my kids to get sick and i don't want your kids to get sick because if they have to go to the hospital you're not going to sit in the hospital with them

066because there's covered rules and i don't think that's fair to anybody so if the small inconvenience of putting a piece of fabric over our face is going to prevent our kids from getting sick i think it's worth it i've dropped a bunch of links in the in the text if you guys want to check out the studies that have been done on social emotional learning the studies show that whether it's masks or sunglasses they they occluded the face in several different ways that children were still largely able to discern emotion because our kids don't just rely on our mouth they rely on our tone of voice they rely on our body language they they rely on a lot of different things and they are able to deal with it and the studies also show that

067it does not affect your breathing unless you have severe copd and if you do again shut your mouth thank you if you do have severe copd the lung american lung society said that you should wear a mask and get a vaccine so you want to know why i keep touching it because i'm yelling at you people for being so rude and disrespectful no it's insane no conversation from the audience absolutely insane i don't i've never seen half of these people at a school committee meeting before and i do a lot that i would see you guys so i'm glad that it's so important to you your freedom is more important than other kids safety but i'm sorry it's not it's really not and if we can prevent one kid in middlebury from passing we can

068prevent one kid in middlebury from sitting in a hospital on a ventilator alone then i will do anything for that and i don't understand why everybody else wouldn't feel the same i really really don't so if you want to check out those links i put them in the youtube thing on the facebook you're more than welcome to read them they're scientific studies peer-reviewed not from fox news or anything like that and i will happily be more than willing to share even more with you if you'd like to come find me later i'm easy to find have a great night um i'll let you speak in one second i i did want to bring something up that i think is important um there's been a lot of conversation here tonight about the vaccination rate and vaccines

069i just want to make sure everyone understands the board of education gave no authority to the commissioner about anything to do with vaccines and i think that's important for everybody to know it has nothing to do i know what he said he wanted for rates i know what he said he wanted to do that's not the authority they gave them his authority is only to allow universal masking in schools up until at least october first that's it so i i want to make sure people are worried i know a lot of people have talked about the vaccine and and the rate pieces that that hasn't been discussed at a board of ed me so just to be clear sir oh good great sure okay um i just want to things are getting a little heated

070here and i'd like to have a call for civility um i understand uh a lot of what you're going through 15 years ago i was in your seats middleborough was doing something i disagree with uh i would not be here today if that thing didn't happen um but we have a process we have the quorum uh we should not be yelling back and forth please keep it civil um i learned the hard way who's the first gentleman to speak i think he um i believe that gentleman did mention like i hadn't been to these meetings right so like that's how i felt i was not involved that was 15 years ago i ran for selectmen i've been on finance committee now i'm on school committee because i'm so happy to see everybody here i think

071everybody here don't i'm glad you came and i'm glad you're sharing it's brave to get to the microphone and say your pieces i appreciate it but we need to keep it civil we have a process we're playing it out and we just need to make sure that we're being respectful okay that's just something we can't allow to get away from us tonight okay we will hear everybody's peace all right thank you mr chair no problem so sir go right ahead hi my name is adam carboni um one of the things i want to kind of state first and foremost is everybody's caught up about the vaccination rates 80 all of this okay i think whoever basically works for the state for their pr should be shot and fired because they said the quiet part out

072loud if that was their intent i think it did nothing to service their their their ambitions or motive that being said i agree with a lot of people in the audience in the fact that i don't think that there should be the the separation between the students and calling people out you know we have hipaa laws for reasons we have a lot of things put in place to protect our children from being singled out being called out you know the last thing people in an adolescent space whether it be middle school to some extent elementary school it starts but in middle school in high school the last thing the kids want is to be different or to be identified as different you know i think kids are probably a lot more comfortable with it now

073than they ever used to be with things that we've been putting in place over the last 20 years or so um i think one thing that i do differ with a lot of the audience audience on is what the solution is to that problem okay if you've ever been to a court case you've ever been involved everybody is going to pull their expert witnesses from this side that side i have a doctor that says this i have a doctor that says that okay at some point you can find an expert to see anything that you want and we are all google medical experts at this point after three years of dealing with this um i think that to some extent you know what whether you agree with the risk or not risk you know that

074is ultimately what this is coming down to a large portion of the audience doesn't agree with the fact that that their covet provides a risk maybe we can you know what i have my own reasons why i think that is people have brought up mainstream media people have brought up all different sources as to why that may be you know what we are pretty much although the audience here doesn't represent that i don't think i think we are probably pretty much divided 50 50 in most of this you know we see that in our elections where people come out we see all of that stuff people have different opinions a couple of things that i want to kind of identify so honestly personally i will state the fact i am vaccinated i felt safer that

075was my personal choice okay i have five children i have two that fall into a category that they are not able to be vaccinated i have three that fall into a classification that they could be vaccinated honestly personally i'm in the probably the camp is a lot of parents right now is the fact that you know what i'm uncertain about this vaccine it's a new vaccine it hasn't had 10 years of approval i remember the fact when we were going through these same conversations for our youth about the hpv vaccine and there was a lot of problems with those original vaccines and they found those out over a course of two years of study so i'm in the same fearful case but where i'm at is i'm not in a case that i want to

076put my children out into the world unprotected especially my little kids yes there's a a minute risk okay and however small you know what i'm not putting my i evaluate risk every day with my children okay i'm very unlikely to give them any risk i'm gonna do whatever i can wherever i can to protect my children no matter how small the risks are is okay i know how you guys feel a few years ago my children you know what i was dissatisfied with the the what i was getting from the middleware public schools i was there i made the choice we took our at that point it was three kids home okay we homeschooled them from third grade till sixth grade okay i know what that's involved that is a choice okay and that is

077a choice that anybody can do and there are great resources and our town has great resources for people that choose to do that okay the point that i want to get back to is people have talked about the fact that the country was founded on choice i actually i disagree with a little bit of nuance on that the count the country was founded on freedoms okay the freedom and we all know them okay the the young lady eloquently spoke about one of them okay but it has been tested time and time again before the supreme court that your freedoms end when they cross another person's freedom's boundaries that's how it's defined that's how it's been stated in by the supreme court it's been held up again and again okay and everybody talks about let's just

078make it a choice okay guess what when you're making a choice you know what there may be very responsible parents but i know from being in this school there are also very irresponsible parents and their choices affecting the safety of my child or my children and possibly infecting those children are not a risk that i'm worth taking so that's why regardless i'm actually happy that the state made this choice okay because what it did is it took the fight that was gonna happen at the front of the school and made it a mandate so that we're not being on the news do we really want to be the ones on the news showing up on the first day of school having parents dragged out is that's what's best for your children think about that that's

079all [Applause] go right ahead man please hi my name is jessica i'm a middle bar resident business owner single mother and i'm just going to share my personal experience so this is willow she was born two pounds in february of 2020 february 19th at south shore hospital ten days went by i had visitors i had people in and out of my rooms business as usual then everyone's wearing masks and then everyone is allowed no visitors and she has to stay in the nicu the only people in the hospital are the kovids and the babies here she is we made it out alive my six-year-old was being taken care of by strangers as well because she wasn't allowed at the hospital my baby was getting taken care of by strangers and we were we are fine

080there was no babies infected in the hospital there was none of that so from my personal experience we can keep promoting the fear and all of that but the chances of it happening are slim to none the the st the science isn't backed yet the science has not been determined yet um and if we're talking about health when they give these children their lunches in school are we gonna are we gonna mandate those are we gonna make sure that these kids are eating healthy lunches too are we gonna make sure that they're not um doing things to also hurt their immunity or are we just gonna make them wear the the face diapers and not see their beautiful smiling faces because people are scared to catch a cold i mean this baby is the most

081immunocompromised person probably in this room right now so we all have our diseases or fears or things that you know can make us not want to do certain things but we life goes on so instead of these children being taught and exposed to an indoctrination of you need to do this in order to get this is is abuse is manipulation is exactly what the 15 year old girl said and sometimes we as adults need to learn from our children instead of tell our children to learn from us because right now i don't see many people standing up for the children and it's very sad for me to raise children as a single mother business owner during clovid having a baby in the nicu alone because people fear they're gonna get sick but yet are not

082eating right our smoking cigarettes are doing exactly everything that that first speaker said so if we're gonna mandate this and make it a health thing then it needs to be all around and that's really all i have to say so thank you [Music] [Applause] hi my name is stacey um i have three children that have gone through a middlebury school system i want to take this opportunity to explain why we chose my husband and i chose to buy a home in middleborough we chose to buy our home in middleborough because we unfortunately lost our six-year-old niece to an asthma attack she died on christmas day she was a student at mcc at the mac i'm sorry and the community while just came around they were overwhelming in the support that my family received during that

083hard time christmas day my i can't tell you how many people showed up to the house with food and gifts my 15 year old nephew um and now i sit here in front of this community who is divided divided by hate and fear and i am disgusted at the fact that this is what this has come to i pulled my kids from school last year we homeschooled them it was the hardest thing i've ever done and i give so much credit to teachers and to to the whole school environment for all that you do for our children but i want you guys to to really just kind of open your eyes what is this mask mandate protecting our children from there has not been a single child in massachusetts who has died from this virus

084not a single one do you know and and i'm sorry but i have to say this one microcon of covid is 40 000 times smaller than a single strand of hair how is this mask going to protect our children who aren't even at high risk of contracting this virus from this virus and how is this going to protect our children while they're eating lunch or taking a sip or on their mask break please explain that to me mr chairman so the the one thing that i note i wanted to start with is that i do actually think that we're all kind of fighting for the same thing but on different sides the one thing that i appreciate and people have said this uh already today is that um i i do think that the passion

085that we're seeing here is something that we should all be really proud of i don't see anyone who thinks differently from me as an enemy and i would hope that the same is true for you guys um but i don't want to let stuff like what you just said fly by without us kind of correcting that and that the piece about the size of the viral particle i mean that's already been studied and proven it doesn't travel by itself why it travels on uh respirated particles that are bigger than that and can actually be affected by mass i believe it's correct the mass can't protect us they do and that is studied and proven at this point and i will tell you right now that when i say studied and proven i don't mean that

086i'm you know searching on you know a news website or something i mean that you know just go to the nih pubmed repository and just google it how about the fact that saucy is that his name like the almighty doctor has already stated that these masks aren't helping the cdc has said these masks aren't helping how about the uprise in upper respiratory infections that are coming down because of people that are breathing in their own bacteria how about the uprising tuberculosis that's been dormant in people's respiratory systems for years but now they're they're active cases of tuberculosis how about that that's science that's facts if you're looking for a response i mean i believe that the the science is very well studied at this point that masks do help kids do get sick kids do

087die that's the facts 400 kids or not quite from the american association of pediatrics thank you have died of this and i know i know the the response is usually well that's a very small percentage but like someone else mentioned is is one kid okay and then when you talk about the 4 000 cases of misc that have resulted from an infection with covid and then when you talk about the fact that and i'll reference a specific paper so you can call me on it if you think i'm wrong bunsen so a towel was the first one that really came out and there's been probably 60 citations on that one paper since that long covet in kids is a real thing where kids can actually suffer from symptoms for up to four months after an

088asymptomatic infection things like fatigue headache heart rhythm problems i mean i think when we're talking about those are all also risks of the carbon dioxide poisoning that they can which has also been debunked i'm sorry it's not true it's not true there was a there was a letter there was a letter that was sent to the school committee that referenced an article about co2 poisoning what i have to say i appreciate everything thank you very much i'm all set good so i just want to finish my thought so there was a letter that was sent to the school committee that referenced a paper that proved in in the words of the letter that co2 poisoning was an issue that kids would be affected with when wearing masks and when i clicked on that link to

089see the result of that the the paper had been retracted due to improper data due to improper testing procedures a machine that they use that wasn't even the right machine i mean that has been disproven it is it's not a thing thank you [Applause] go right ahead hi i just i had a couple thoughts just in response to you there's actually one randomized control trial study of cloth masks that was done before 2020. so when you're looking at things that are in 2020 that don't have a randomized control study there's a lot of bias in them and they're low quality studies that are a lot of retrospective cohort studies so when you look at randomized controlled trials and understand that that's the gold standard and there's one there's 14 on masks one that included cloth

090masks and it showed that the cloth mask group actually had the highest rate of infection they also took those masks so the infection is the end point that you're looking at in the study not whether it absorbs so like when the cdc does a study and they put two masks on mannequin heads and say they uh you know absorb more things well guess what two rags is gonna absorb more than one rag that theory i'm pretty sure is gonna play out and the things that mannequins don't do or breathe so the studies that the cdc is putting out saying that mask work like double masking is better than single masking and they're using a mannequin head and not an infection rate as the end point of the study is a low quality study and that

091is what the cdc is putting forth however the studies that were provided before that are randomized control trials that have a control group showed that the infection rates higher so it didn't do anything and most of the other i think there's 14 including that one they didn't show that surgical masks offered much protection either so when you're looking at infection rate as the end point there's not a lot of science to support it not quality science low quality science sure so i mean that's the difference so you need to look at the quality of the science and it would be helpful if you did it before 2020 because i think a lot of what cdc is putting out is quite biased um so and that study by the way looked at filtration which is not

092the end point of the study but they did compare filtration between an n95 a surgical mask and a cloth mask and it showed that the cloth mask actually had almost zero percent filtration quality it can't all it can do is absorb moisture you can't filter anything and because there's a force behind your breath the force when it hits the barrier goes in the path of least resistance so once it hits that barrier that force drives your air out the sides and up here so you sir in the beard having that beard there keeps that from being tight fitting so that more air can go out so if you really believe in the mask you should probably should have shaved your beard quite a long time ago because you can't even be fit tested for an

093n95 mask i know because i have been multiple times and the emails i got for the men please do not come unless you're clean shaven because you cannot get a tight fit so i think if you're going to preach you probably should maybe shave so um i just wanted to clarify and the n95 being niosh rated filtration has about 95 and it all percent filtration and it only protects the wearer it's actually designed to allow the particles out so they're not trapped so it doesn't do anything as a as a source control it assumes you're in a contaminated environment so that means you when you're walking around in your n95 you are protecting you very well if you're clean-shaven um but you're not protecting anybody else and the same thing um so and i think

094the surgical masks according to that the filtration that they studied was about 37 which is better than the zero percent the cloth mask got and once it's damp which is about 20 minutes which in healthcare which we're prior to this we were to change it every time it became damp which from your breath is about every 20 minutes which is not what's happening in society and in the community once it's damp it's not absorbing more moisture and then you don't go from patient to patient to patient because you would be cross contaminating so if i went in to see this patient and i got their germs on the outside of my mask or my mask my germs came out of my surgical mask and were on the front and i went to the next patient

095i would be bringing this infection to that patient yet we go from the bathroom to the launch room to the classroom to the playground they fall on the floor they pick them up this is not this is not whether mask work or not children aren't capable of handling them in a way that control they can do with infection control measures in mind um so sorry that was a sidebar that's not even what i'm supposed to talk about i just wanted to respond to your comment that studies have been proven that masks are effective low quality retrospective cohort studies show that masks work but not gold standard randomized control trials okay the other thing that was a little misstep was i noticed that some of the school committee members corrected some of the speakers when they

096misspoke um you know about what desi guidance said or you know but nobody corrected the lady in the blue shirt over there when she commented that you cannot attend school unless you're vaccinated so i just was giving anybody on the school committee an opportunity to correct her on what the current law in massachusetts and whether you can attend school with the full complement of vaccines that are required i was asking the committee for an opportunity because they wanted to correct some other people that misspoke regarding jesse guidelines or whatever so i was wondering if anybody on the committee could correct somebody regarding the massachusetts state law on whether you can attend school not being fully vaccinated mr chair may i speak it is my understanding that a medical exemption or a religious exemption are under

097law must be abided by and at no point until the not too distant past did we ever ask anyone what their vaccination status was so that's a huge problem for me and and i do i do agree with you that it is an issue and we should not be asking people thank you so i appreciate the correction because we don't want to spread misinformation or if you were in the knowledge of that information it would be disinformation i guess since those are the buzzwords this year misinformation and disinformation so i want to make sure everybody knows that children are allowed to attend school under medical or religious exemptions for uh all some or or one vaccine they're allowed to do that and nobody gets to know what their private health information is because it's protected

098a child with hepatitis b can come to school and their status is not divulged the only person that has access to that is a nurse a child with hiv all their medical statuses are protected and we are on a precipice of of violating medical you know privacy and that's really scary and i know you don't want to talk about you know jesse has only granted them to require masks but they very publicly made it aware that they attached it to masks vaccination rates um and that is a measure um to pressure and bully people into doing something they want to do there's a legal process to add vaccines to the scheduled list requirements to go to school and that process starts with an approved vaccine which doesn't exist then it has to go to asip

099asip has to recommend it then it has to go through the process within our own state which the governor violated last year which is why he had to repeal his mandate for the flu so to because they cannot do this currently they are using a measure outside the law to coerce people to incentivize getting this vaccine because you can get your mask off and that's not okay and the school committee when there is something that is wrong you need to speak up i understand your hands are tied but when it is unlawful we need to fight back sorry that was a lot before i actually got to my written stuff but i i i'm sorry i just there was a couple things that happened and i wanted to clarify some of those things and return

100some of that so last year this school committee adopted an anti-racism resolution whereas schools have the responsibility to equip students with the civil right of obtaining a free and appropriate public education and it is the responsibility of each school to ensure we create a welcoming community for all students whereas every district shall provide professional development on diversity equity and inclusion and so forth and so on and it was resolved that middleborough public schools guarantee that racist practices racist practices are eradicated and diversity equity and inclusion be embedded and practiced well i would like to point out the diversity does not begin and end with the color of our skin in order to provide equity and inclusion to all we must recommend recognize all types of diversity including but not limited to ethnicity religion age gender

101gender identity orientation medical status diversity of thought and opinion on on these grounds i motion that desi guidance be rejected in its entirety which i understand that's probably something you can't do but we need to fight back it lacks in that it lacks practices in line with this resolution as the guidance in its essence is discriminatory and segregatory by establishing a practice which creates two separate policies based on an individual's medical status and age by creating a two-class system in which some are afforded rights and privileges while others are held to another standard based on their age medical status religion and or race speaks to discriminatory practices of the past in which separate but equal was considered satisfactory replace black and white with vaccinated and unvaccinated and we have established a system of medical apartheid

102the same erroneous propaganda that blacks jews slaves inherently carried disease and filth that would make others sick led people to accept these practices and remove these groups from equal access to society it is being repeated here and now by stating that young children or otherwise healthy individuals are vectors for disease that they do not have in applying punitive measures is not only erroneous it's discrimination we need to send a clear message message to the government and desi that discrimination will not be tolerated here in middleborough we certainly cannot begin to teach our children but we will not repeat the sins of our past through educating them on the history of discrimination while simultaneously adopting and enacting the same discriminatory practices the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs with which one's own behavior

103does not conform is the definition of hypocrisy and we need to teach by example as only 28 percent of the black community has been vaccinated this would unfairly impact this population certainly establishing a racist practice within our schools the racist history of medical experimentation on black americans no doubt contributing to this mistrust of the medical establishment it would further persecute those who would vaccination conflicts with their sincere religious beliefs it would otherwise use a parent's right to make decisions for their minor child based on their understanding of the risks and benefits individual health histories cultural practices and duty to act in the best interest of their child slaves were masked as a means to dehumanize silence and separate freed slaves were forced to carry papers to prove their status and gain access to certain aspects

104of society such as travel and education and this was repeated in nazi germany with yellow stars papers and displacement and ghettos slaves black americans and jews likes were experimented on by the medical establishment in the name of science for the good of the whole the atrocities of world war ii were so egregious that the establishment of the nuremberg code which has been adopted by the us and has extended to general principles of medical practice and medical ethics states the voluntary consent of the human subject is essential this means that the person should have legal capacity to give consent should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice without the intervention of any element of force fraud deceit duress overreaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion and should have

105sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable to make an understanding and enlightened decision use of cloth mask to prevent viral transmission has not been supported by one single randomized control trial is which is the gold standard for studies they have been given emergency use authorization by the fda because they are unable to establish the ability to prevent disease and are by federal definition an experimental product if those studies were proven then the fda would have guaranteed that and those masks could be labeled but they can't be labeled to do something that they have not been proven to do more importantly there is not one study that examines the long-term adverse effects of having children wear a mask for eight plus hours a day five days a week

106180 days but there is significant concerns for how this will impact them not only physically but emotionally psychologically developmentally and cognitively the government has had plenty of time 18 months to study the adverse effects of mass wearing but they have not spent one dollar doing so to prove that it is safe there is not a study that shows that there is not an ill impact on their health their mental health their physical health rhode island just did a small study that showed that babies born during this pandemic scored 22 points lower two standard deviations lower on cognitive tests we don't know why because they did you have to set up the study differently all we know is the data part okay so there is not a study that shows it safe so you can keep

107saying that masks are proven to do something which they're not proven to do but you can agree that you followed such and such science and i can say well i like this science but neither of us can say that there's a study that's been done that shows that it is safe for children to do long term eight hours a day five days a week 180 days of the year none so i think we can agree on that for sure um education should be the great equalizer but it is being weaponized to consent is to give up your civil right to participate to not consent sorry is to give up your civil right to participation in education schools are being used as tools to dole out punishment for not accepting medical interventions for which is not

108their role or their expertise teachers should not be held accountable for enforcement or persuasion of medical interventions which a cloth mask is minors are not situated to make fully informed medical decisions school districts teachers bus drivers should not be responsible for administration and monitoring to many children whose breathing is restricted or has undergone an experimental shot to which has not been established what the adverse effects are what to monitor for and how to treat to require masks or shots for a free and appropriate education that all children are afforded as their civil right would remove their free power of choice through the use of fraud deceit duress overreaching ulterior form of constraint or coercion this holds true for staff that these measures of the condition of employment violate the nuremberg code and their civil right

109to equal employment opportunities the only solution is to uphold the resolution that diversity equity inclusion be embedded and practiced is to guarantee that choice in all matters including but not limited to wearing a mask and taking a shot otherwise people enacting such policies are hypocrites and racists so the true character of society is revealed and how it treats its children that was nelson mandela he knows very well what apartheid is and i think we can do better here in middleborough [Applause] go right ahead um dave doherty middle um whispering pines drive it's funny i got up here to say this before that but um nuremberg racist apartheid i just i'm sitting over there in the corner i'm looking at all the administrators i've been involved in the school system for 15 years with four kids

110in the school system i just hope all the emotion here tonight can stay here tonight and that the bus drivers the principals and the teachers can be left out of it and i'm asking the people that are very emotional tonight that we not involve the bus drivers and push the issue that we not try to push kids into the school with masks there's a mandate that's being talked about right now don't put those people who are doing a great job in the middle of this keep it with the school committee keep it with whatever other methods you need but i would like to leave these folks out of it that's all i have to say [Applause] you've been waiting a while sir cigarette yeah it's all good uh walter sisliano uh i just wanted to

111say a couple things that you know if we look back over the last 18 months and you go from the beginning it was all right let's we need to all kind of go home we got to figure this thing out we need to stay away from each other right and then over time so i got a lot going on here so stepping back you uh you know the main thing was let's make sure that the hospitals can handle the you know the the mass rise of people going in there when when they're getting sick so they need to make sure we had ppe there and uh what was the other ppe and all the ventilators right so the ventilators we needed a lot of those so we have all those now uh and you know

112here we are to the present day in in science is showing that the vaccinated people can still be infected with variants or potentially it was even the original covid if it's still around uh so so those are science facts that you can still get infected if you've been vaccinated and you can still pass the virus on right so when you start talking like october and things like that what does that really matter there's no way to stop this virus we have to learn how to live with it so if people that have you know weaker systems whatever the issue is whether adult or child is going to have to learn to live with the virus it's not going anywhere does that make sense it's not going anywhere so we have to learn how to live

113with it so why does like october matter why does employment you know want to push people to go get the vaccine it supposedly makes you not get as sick if you get the virus so that's on you right so if you get the virus because you didn't get vaccinated you're the one who might get more sick okay so that's the choice you made not to get vaccinated you may got really sick again it's on you you may not have whether you you know decisions for your own children that's again that's that's our decision not the school committee not this dese group all right so there i went i went a little rambling on some facts and where we are today my last thing is i have a question for you guys can this township have

114a vote where we can either comply with the desc or not comply we vote township if they decide to put us in receivership so be it the town votes if we have more than a majority we move forward not complying if we have a majority that wants to comply then we comply can we do that we can't do that why is that it's not allowed under the law that you you can't laws can be rewritten too right it would have to be written at the state level it can't be written at a local level so basically right in our taxes that again that fund the the state level you know i don't have a right to not pay taxes i have to pay taxes right right but we don't have to do what they're telling

115us to do we can make our decision here as a township and live with it it doesn't work that way we can make it work that way why don't we vote we can't vote to opt out of we would essentially as a town have to opt out of the state okay let's make let's let's let's do that well there's a process to do that that doesn't no but for real though we can't just sit back there's people on both sides here i understand and they're passionate on both sides and we need to be respectful to everyone but at the end of the day the virus isn't leaving us in october means nothing other than people get more aggravated again so so just to be clear and and to put it as simple as possible um

116what we're doing so tonight it has nothing to do with vaccines okay has nothing to do with the vaccination rate has nothing to do with that has to do with the mass policy just to be clear uh the commission we vote on the mandate today so right now for middleborough there's a mass policy everyone has to wear math that's it starting tomorrow but we then can we vote you guys out when can we do another vote on the school committee so we can have some people stand up for us again you can you have all options right yeah can we do an emergency meeting but you can't you can't do that even if you put it in your school committee they couldn't do oh so we just we're just going to have to just take

117it on the chin here yes and unless this the state legislature decides an alternative path okay is anyone putting pressure on them because i know if there's no way for me to do it i've already written my legislation they don't even reply i've written the governor several times he doesn't reply so you guys are the next body that we need to stand up for us or we could have a vote um thank you mr maybe get you guys out and someone that will i want to speak for myself and i think teresa just said the same thing we have so we have gone to our representative we've voiced our concerns we've voiced our opinions we've voiced your opinions we've presented them with facts that we've been given at least i have and i want to

118speak for what teresa's conversation has been with them so i would encourage you guys because this is not our doing this is something it's a law that we have to follow our opinion our voice our coming to you and saying no we're not going to wear a mask is something we cannot do so if you feel that you don't want your kid to wear a mask you do want your kid to wear a mask want them to be vaccinated not vaccinated whatever your choice may be you can voice your concerns to us and we will listen that's our job that's why we're here but we can only do so much so i would encourage you to not only attend these meetings but to write to our representatives to email them to call them to have

119conversations with us like many of us up here have already i know personally i received probably 30 or 40 emails or so the last two weeks from people i'm sure some people here have emailed all of us if not just me um i've tried to respond to all of them i've asked your questions to the representatives that we have and they're doing their job so i'm putting as much pressure as i can on them and like i said i don't want to speak for other board members but i would assume that they're all doing the same so i would encourage you to do the same as well yeah and that sounds great but nothing's going to happen but the more people that put pressure on them the more things will happen so can we have

120a vote in this township that's why you're awesome if it's another night even if another night can this town maybe it's outside the school committee can the town vote on whether or not the town thinks the students at large should wear masks or not it would be a non-binding vote so what rights do we have as parents to send our kids to public school you know we the people remember that yep you you have to if you want to send your children to public school they have to wear math no that's not true we don't have to comply and we need to vote it's not a one-way it's not that's not democracy where this one clown in the state gets to make decisions who doesn't even have the credentials to make those decisions he can

121pound sand i'm i'm just telling you guys have you guys actually like do you know what the town stance is if we had a vote do you know what the town's stance was at 60 percent would not want mass 40 percent do we know so how would you guys advocate to those people how would you even have that conversation hey the majority of our township is fed up they don't want masks i think by people coming you guys are just accepting on the chin right by the people who have contacted us and i gotta tell you you know a lot of it is it varies at times you know we get different people sending us different things um some quite a few people have wanted the mask mandate in place um some have not quite

122a few people have not um so we've gotten material from everybody over the course of i would say since we announced that we were doing this okay well it's not acceptable when this virus is not going away the kids are not wearing masks in 2022 and 2023 and 2024. they're not so we need to put our foot down now mr chair yeah um i agree so hi let's pick up the phone call let's pick up i i understand that that i personally cannot change the mandate and i understand that that's not gonna change anything tonight but if i had a vote i would vote against it and the reason i would vote against it is mainly because they're tying the vaccination rates to the masks and i will not i will not support anything that

123pits people against each other this is what are we watching tonight we're i'm listening to all of this tonight this is what we're going to see in our schools if we continue this i will not support it for my children i have a sock it doesn't even make sense who's a 15 year old who's going to go into school and he's going to be masked for however long because he's not going to get vaccinated i have a 10 year old who has to think about this and has high anxiety and i have to think about her i'm a parent first and i will not support a mandate and and this gentleman from dsc the desc right he can't protect my kid from a school shooting he can't protect my kid from other diseases that come

124around and we know the mass only work somewhat they help slow down the transmission i don't know what's up with these things i got a loud voice ah so anyways it doesn't make sense and for us just to sit here and take it on the chin when we all know you can still get the virus when you bend back you hear that vaccinated people you can still get the virus and that's cool that you got that you got vaccinated i'm totally cool with that no big deal like that's what you want to do but i want you to understand the facts and the science you can still get the virus so get over the vaccine and get over your mass pony up that's it i don't mean to be so like uh forceful here but

125seriously we need to wake up and we need you guys to advocate for us and if you're not gonna it's gonna be a short tenure and i know you guys are all volunteers so it's all good but seriously we need people to stick up for us do it [Applause] hi nick o'rourke i live locally on wareham street um so one thing i'm vaccinated and i know i can still get the virus thus the mask around unvaccinated people that's pretty common sense we all know the risk is not a cure it's a vaccine we're not here to talk about a vaccine i know that just humor me for a second though has anybody here ever had smallpox show our hands not the same but in 1905 there was a supreme court case jacobson v massachusetts it

126was about a smallpox vaccine that jacobson said violated the fourth amendment of the constitution that you have a right to make health choices for yourself and it was decided that no you don't not when the public health is at risk there's actually a statement that was made from one of the justices at the time i'd like to share he said that such action had a real and substantial relation to the protection of public health and safety liberty secured by the constitution of the united states to every person within its jurisdiction does not impose an absolute right in each person to be at all times and in all circumstances wholly freed from restraint there are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good what i find really disturbing is one that

127a lot of us here don't seem to get that and two that that common good is the lives of children stop please [Music] again stop so now that has to do with vaccines so to do with masks last year in july of 2020 chief justice roberts a conservative justice for those of you keeping track of the politics behind this upheld that decision in regards to masking mandates saying that maths a mass mandate is fully legal and constitutional if it's for the common good which it is now why i bring that up is because there's been a lot of talk about well i don't agree with mass i do agree with mass it happened the mandate's there i don't know if any of you up there would like to come rob a bank with me but

128if you're up for breaking laws then break the mandate right but it is constitutional and legal please again not while other people are talking so that's that's my point i don't know why we're still debating the mass mandate it is out of these people's hands we've been going on for what two and a half hours now and these people have families and homes and lives to get back to and we're fighting about something that is out of their control they just want to discuss how to make this as easy for the kids as possible and how anybody can stand up and you know basically have the same energy that you would with like the target cashier who's not taking your coupon and say well maybe you should take it or whatever like it's just it's

129a really weird sort of energy but yeah anyway that's what i had to say it's fully legal i don't know why we're even debating this i think it should be just move on and try to make this as easy for the kids as possible thank you [Applause] hi i don't want to take up any more of your time tonight i just heard some really disturbing things that the vaccine doesn't work has been proven in every study that it's 90 percent effective yes it doesn't save everybody but it does make the the virus less serious in most people if that's i have five grandchildren and i'm i'm just disgusted with people who say that all the kids don't get it yes they do look what's happening in florida and texas right now there are kids in

130the hospital filling up hospitals in florida and texas because they're not vaccinated in middleborough is the florida of massachusetts we're the lowest well in the bottom five of vaccinations so we're we're due well you think that's good but when the the kids start going to the hospital then you can give me a call this this virus i agree this virus is not going away because it keeps on mutating and it's new variants all the time and if we think by not getting a vaccine and not masking that's going to help it isn't it's going to allow the the virus to spread and there are going to be new variants and there's going to be eventually a variant that the vaccine doesn't cover it covers this one to a great extent and i wish you would

131bring the hammer down on these people that cannot let people speak i have to hear comments from this guy over here and this one down here i wonder i see some kind of a medical expert and i think that's what you should do well stop the school committee should bring a medical expert to these meetings so that they can explain what's going on a real medical expert not somebody sitting in the crowd that launches fox news or something i want a medical expert that comes before the committee and he comes before the public to give the facts there's no reason that we should listen to this baloney on both sides i want to hear the facts on what's going on if you can tell me there's nobody up there qualified i'm not qualified she's not

132qualified no one else in this room is there are experts in this field there we are an hour from mass general i can get somebody down here tomorrow if you want to get some experts in this field then let's bring them in let's not listen to all this baloney from all these people that don't know what they're talking about [Applause] this woman over here dealt with over 70 coveted patients i know i live with her and she did that while we had my sister-in-law dying of cancer in our house on chemo immunocompromised so you want to point fingers and say you don't know she knows nothing try again sport supreme court case that upheld the five dollar fine that jacobson refused to get to pay not get his vaccine okay you just dershowitz yourself now

133did the commissioner when he passed down this mandate did he require all mail staff faculty janitors bus drivers to shave their faces clean that's a question no no okay so now all their masks are done so are you gonna say you know the 16 year old kid that just spent all summer growing his goatee you're going to make him shave so that his mask works no and that's the problem this gentleman that still has mask on while we're sitting in here he pulls it off wipes his face grabs it adjusts it what do you think kids are doing they do the same thing only they're going to be picking their nose and wiping it on the mask and touching their friend like the masks do nothing it's like an infant swim diaper it looks cool

134but it doesn't do anything and it's been proven and the fact the woman that said the page nine on deci you can refuse you absolutely can federal law says anything under eau authorization you have the right to refuse that's fact so the mask you can't send a kid home if they show up without a mask because they are eau authorized they have the right to refuse that is why the military is not shooting any of the soldiers up with this one and this one and only vaccine eau they have the right to refuse just like my aau baseball charter they were told four times they're going to revoke it because i refused to mask my kids games practices guess what two years not a single sniffle and what happened to our charter nothing we're still

135playing because it's a mandate it's not a law if you guys keep saying it's a law i suggest you take civics class again it has not gone through the proper process to become a law and you guys need to start teaching civics again in school civics civics i keep saying law it is civic go back and forth again please hey i'm just saying you know what go ahead he got his rant i'm actually speaking truth civics it will teach you what how a law becomes made i got a 15 and a 12 year old that don't know that stuff they've learned in the past couple of years fighting all these mandates yeah they now have a crash course in civics and it shouldn't be that way they should be goofing around and and for them

136to now say throw masks on now what about all summer we've been to three different states playing softball this soccer teams that are traveling all around the country baseball team little league world series none of those kids are masked now we come back to school and we got to put a mask on why this guy has no clue what he just mandated down what he did is what everyone else is saying you're creating a two-class system and you're bullying kids for something that doesn't work so when my kids show up without a mask you need to know that federal law says until they have a full fda approval to stop a virus that the box says they can't it's eau they have the right to refuse to wear it and you can't do a thing

137about it just like page nine of desi so medical professional dealt with tons of covid big fat guy around hundreds of kids all year long no mask didn't get a single sniffle 20 years of being stupid now the past 20 i've been eating good i haven't gotten a cold and she's come in from covid patients not scared doesn't affect anybody including my sister-in-law that was on chemo with severely amused compromise the compromised immune system she didn't even get a cold cancer got her not covered so stop with the mass crap all these kids have had sleepovers dances barbecues softball games baseball games now they're going to come and sit down you're like oh you need to wear a mask it's too too dangerous cut the crap i'm done with this stuff october 1st is the

138two-week deadline remember that march 17th i do because i got off a chair left when they close the mountains because skiing is dangerous doing something healthy is dangerous outside that was two weeks ago more than two years almost two years now right so october 1st you think that's the deadline you guys are soft [Applause] hi my name is heather lee bowens um just a couple things that have already kind of been reiterated but um you know i'm i'm totally okay with if you want to vaccinate your kid or if you want to master kid that's totally up to you but we shouldn't just respect people that make the personal choice to mask we should also respect people that make the personal choice to not mask that was something that was put in desi that those

139that chose two masks should be respected for their choice but it wasn't put in there originally in the documents that people that chose not to mask should be respected as well which is unfortunate um and just like other people have said you know if it says right on the side of the box that these masks do not protect anyone from covid i just can't it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out like why are we forcing our youngest population to put these mass on if it's right there on the side of the box that it's not going to keep people from getting coveted that wear them it it just seems crazy to me that we're willing to put our kids through that for something that's plainly on there my son has a disability i

140don't want to speak for all families of disabled children but we fight for exemptions for our kids we make sure they get exemptions so um that's really important one thing that is very sad though is that my daughter she could get an exemption for the level of anxiety that she has about this but she won't even if she has an exemption because she doesn't want to look any different than any of the other kids because she has seen kids get made fun of and get bullied just for the kind of mask they're wearing not even necessarily not wearing a mask and she won't even you know make herself feel better with her anxiety by not wearing one because she's afraid of that with that being said my son who had a medical exemption last year

141every day came home from school with a mask on they put a mask on him in school even though he had an exemption to not wear one that's concerning extremely um also the october 1st deadline we all know is completely arbitrary we know that the goal post is constantly moving by authority figures um the state and desi just keeps things vague to give people false hope and it's it's nothing's gonna change they're gonna keep going on with the directive that that they see fit not that's necessarily good for our kids um i also just found out today that the miaa just to let everyone know uh that they will be requiring mass on our kids uh for any fall sports that practice or game inside uh in case people didn't know about that um in

142which most fall sports are outside but things like volleyball are not i'm assuming um also our children have a right to a free education regardless of if they can or want to wear a medical device on their face um as far as i know most people know that um and i really hate when people keep bringing that you know um is it okay for one kid to die you know this thing like that but you can do that with anything you can literally say that with with anything so people should stop utilizing that to try to make other people feel badly um i mean the flu typically kills a hundred kids a year and no one's yelling about masks every single year when a hundred kids a year are dying from the flu i i've

143heard no one ever say that right um now we homeschool my family as a whole um and i'm so happy and lucky to be able to do that um we do utilize the school first bed for two of my kids um what people were doing last year as one woman came up is not homeschooling it was crisis schooling these people did not want to have to do this and they were put under immense pressure and it was really unfortunate homeschooling is not as hard as most people think and if anybody wants to talk to me about it please find me or message me homeschool families in our town are more than happy to help others that are looking to strengthen their own families by homeschooling so again my name is heather lee bowens so if

144you need to talk to me about that please do i don't come to these meetings very often the only one i know up here is mr lynch by name i've lived here 47 years i can say this don't like the vaccine don't like the mask all that stuff that's where i am but i also see the fact that even though our kids have to wear masks at school might be a unpopular thought they're not requiring n95s in my job scope i deal with mass chemicals requirements gentlemen earlier talked about shaving your face i absolutely understand that if you don't have the proper mask in the proper way it doesn't do the right thing they're asking our kids to wear masks they're not requiring and 95s they allow homemade every other mask that they wear it's

145a face covering you know doesn't follow the mandate they do allow a little bit of leeway now all of them are up here i commend you i've watched your facial expressions i see how you react to certain things that are said um kind of gives away how you actually feel about it some of you have spoken out um some of you have not i can understand that i'm not great on a mic shaken up here right now but plain and simple we have something that we are letting divide us they can't really you're asking these people and all of our teachers to literally screw your job go live in a box they're here to teach our kids they have to follow certain rules i understand that yes i like to stand up against the rules

146but i also understand you have to kind of play the game whether it's politics whether it's anything else we all have to play the game and we all have played the game we've gotten flu vacs we've gotten polio we've spoken about before many other we've done it this one is new this one came upon us this one became so political that many people just got on their own side i'm on my side i know where i am but i understand how to play the game pardon me we we have to do what we have to do to survive we have to do what we have to do to get by we have to get out vote we have to do everything that we can to speak up our sides that's what we're here to do

147tonight but we can't smash them because if you watched if you have watched or if you do watch their faces and their expressions i'm pretty sure they're kind of on the side of no masks but their hands are tied do they give up their homes do they give up their lives do they give up everything that they have built themselves to be because they don't agree it's a hard fight and it's a hard fight for everybody we can all be hypocrites we can all say you should give up your job you should give up your position you should give up your thing if you don't believe what we believe but would you do the same are you going to go hey my job's requiring me to wear a mask i'm not going to go into

148work today i'm not going to take that that job you have to make that choice with discretion because if you don't then we all fall apart we're all living in boxes we're all nowhere then our kids don't have houses don't have roofs don't have education so we have to give them and i'm not going for against mass that's not what this part of it is we have to give them the ability to do what they can do what they're allowed to do to keep their jobs and their lives but also provide education for our kids we all make those choices some of us suffer for those choices some of us gain for those choices it's all about how it works for you if it doesn't work for you then choose to do what you want

149if you want to homeschool if you want a private school if you want to outside school whatever you want to do do it but don't smash them for doing everything that they can to teach our kids i know some of what i'm saying is not popular life goes on i can deal with it but plain is simple we all have choices they're not here right now to change this mandate they're here to hear us don't smash them don't abuse them just kind of think about it from many different perspectives if you look at it from one way you're only going to see it from one way if you look at it from multiple versions multiple views you will see different things in different aspects of how this all works with the voting and all that

150stuff that he was speaking like there he is over there um speaking about earlier yeah we could vote you out if if that was the thing but then what happens then we get a bunch of guys that do the wrong thing or do this thing that we don't agree with or do this that we don't agree with what we have to do as a community is get behind the people that are in place push to them what we believe and hope because we put them there that they will push that forward they can only push so hard we can only push so hard each individual only gets a little bit if we all join and we push and we push we might but don't don't smash them for not being able to get what we

151want that's all i have to say thank you guys thank you for listening thank you scott bradley oh i got to move it up a little bit i think there we go um just a couple things i this is the first time i've been in the school since it's been built because no one was really allowed to come in last year and you guys did a great job it's very beautiful and i just wanted to thank you for that before i don't thank you um whether a student should be disciplined for failure to wear a mask is a local decision so i would like to know [Music] what your decision is going to be about that because it seems to me that the decision whether to discipline is in your hands if you don't discipline

152anybody for not wearing a mask then what can happen with that um my daughter's going to be a senior in high school this year and i just hate you know she spent her whole junior year with a mask on only had half of a sophomore year basically and i really don't want to see her going through her whole senior year with a mask on which i know that's going to happen if nobody puts their foot down she also has asthma but and she could get an inception but she doesn't want to be different than anybody else so she goes through the whole school day not being able to breathe um i know a couple of you guys from another um situation we had in town here where we were told that something had to happen

153and uh ultimately didn't um not not really by any by our choice but uh we had a backbone uh at the time and i'm not sure where that went and i know this i'm not saying that you don't have a backbone i know your hands are kind of tied but that part of this seems to tell me that you guys have a choice on the discipline part and those rules probably aren't written yet i'm sure you have to write them is that correct i would i would agree with you um so that's a great amount of leeway there but here's the butt part if you read down there it says the first thing it tells you to do is consult with legal authority oh who would that be we have you have and and so

154in order to comply with the order as i said before kids who don't come with mass will have to go home well if they come with a mask but what if they take it off you don't have to wear them because it gives you the choice yeah it gives you that it says it right there you have the choice i i understand what you're saying semantics what i'm telling us is everything's told us that we have to comply with the order right and the way to comply with the order is to send the kids home i think the state's being held hostage by the uh teachers union is what i think what was that the state is being held hostage by the teachers because this is coming down about the teachers union but i don't

155think this has anything to do with the teachers union it has to do with the governor and um department of public health and the commissioner made a decision um whether or not people agree or disagree with the cons decision it was made um again i want to emphasize this part the piece that we're talking about is the mask piece right sure is just so everyone knows there's a mask mandate as of tomorrow everyone has to comply with because you send it out it's how you craft your your piece for everybody okay um and so that's what we're doing tonight it has nothing to do with the vaccination rates i'm not having that i'm not having a discussion about anything to do with vaccination rates but what about what about the discipline part of it because

156you're gonna have to make that decision pretty quick here well no but i think the point is he can put whatever he wants in a memo he doesn't have the authority to run the vaccination rates until no but i'm talking about the discipline part of this right it says whether to discipline right or not is up to you guys right and our past so whether to don't discipline anybody so what happened with our past um policy was and just so everyone understands it and this is the past policy we used if students are in violation of this policy the building principle will consult with the parent guiding to determine whether an exemption is appropriate or the student may be removed from the school building for in and that was the in-person piece um violations of

157paul um it was about kids went home um this had a piece about um until they they would be removed from in-person learning until a time when they can comply with the requirement the requirement is listed lifted right but you can set the new i mean this is a whole new thing you could set a new policy [Applause] right and what i'm telling you is when you do a policy and make a policy you run it by your legal again illegally it says whether to discipline is a local decision whether right and what i'm telling you means you can or you don't have to what i'm telling you though is when we set up our policy as one in the past this policy isn't set yet no the policy says about i i know what

158this says but what i'm telling you is when we when i run by our lawyer what a policy should look like she comes back with the idea that it needs to send kids home to comply you don't have to vote on you could vote to say no to that i would disagree with them scott because if you're going to not listen to your lawyer then i think you're in trouble well but who's going to was as a state have someone here watching you i i i would say there's going to be conversations from the state about how you're applying your order and what you do as there are with other orders i'm just saying that's my personal opinion scott i think you have a lot of leeway that you could you could probably work with

159that's all i'm saying so thank you scott to make some people a little happier i said it's probably more of a majority of the town that would rather not have masks i would say knowing middleborough um very well is that mr chair i would say the whole town doesn't want masks well i'll be honest but you know what i mean yeah the whole town doesn't want masks but there are a lot of people that are and you know i agree with them too if you want to get the vaccine if you want to wear a mask be my guest please you know but if you don't i think you should have the option and not just because you know you have asthma and you have to breathe through the mask all day and choke which

160is what my daughter's been doing for a year and a half but because you don't want to because you think it's not for whatever reason i think whoever made this decision i know it's not you guys but anyway i'm done but thank you thank you [Applause] yeah i definitely break it if i did that so my name is carol langley you guys can reach me at carol langley 745 at gmail if you guys have any questions when i'm done speaking um i don't envy your position you guys are stuck between a rock and a hard place i get it i'm curious if you guys are willing to fight to stand beside us and fight these mandates deci is out of control this isn't about masks this isn't about covid this is about control it absolutely

161is we've been fighting vaccine mandates and the loss of religious exemptions since way before coving way before coving desi mandated masks until 80 percent of our student population is vaccinated it's not even okayed for 12 and under october come on that's like two weeks anyways dessie is responsible for making decisions on behalf of our children's educations right they're writing the rules you guys lose your license if you don't comply right so these guys decided to essentially mandate a vaccine that covers the alpha virus which is the original wuhan virus right and we have a delta variant that's a problem right now and these guys are making decisions on behalf of our children's education that's concerning you guys have options and so do the parents of middleborough and we need to step up and we need

162to get this done i'm the mother of two vaccine injured children i'm also a nurse imagine being a registered nurse who's filed a federal lawsuit a vaccine injury petition in federal court stating that her son developed autism from vaccines that's what i did i took that stand and i did it alone i'm i'm warning you i am warning every one of you in the event there is a vaccine injury and there will be there absolutely will be children are going to die from the vaccine it's going to happen and you're either going to fight and prevent it or you're going to mourn the loss of the kids who died and you know what some people are going to do it no matter what you want to wear mask do it you want to get a

163vaccine do what you want to vaccinate your kid absolutely we are free people we're americans people fought for our freedom don't don't give it up and we need you guys to step up but you don't have to do it alone have you considered reaching out to other school committees and other administrators in teaming up and taking a stand against desi i don't want one of you guys to take a stand i don't want one of you guys to lose your license i want you to team up and fight we can help you you don't have to do this alone and neither do the parents of middleborough our kids are entitled to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment the fate pact and leap or whatever that is none of that mentions

164masking or vaccines our kids are entitled to a free and appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment and masks we know are restrictive you're wearing one you know it they're uncomfortable they cover our faces the kids can't read facial expressions they're awful they hate them they interrupt the learning our kids have a chance of death or disability the the death or disability risk is 0.02 in the event a child even a high risk one um it gets covered the delta variant is less virulent but more contagious what does that mean that means more people are going to get the delta virus and less people are going to die that's the truth are you aware that a kentucky judge actually recent recently ruled that mass mandates are unconstitutional did you guys know that i'm actually

165asking i'm curious i'm going to take that as a note because nobody's answering okay um that jessie's um mask mandate also actually violates 21 different laws in the nuremberg codes it's the truth all of them so um this is gonna be a problem no matter what for you guys you guys are either going to take a stand and it seems that you guys feel like all of middleborough is against this mandate so maybe instead of like arguing with you guys and fighting or whatever maybe we should try to be teaming up with you guys and say all right how are we going to handle this as a community because we can do that and obviously there's a lot of strength here in middlebury and obviously parents are willing to take a stand and fight because

166it's not fun getting up in front of people and and speaking into a microphone like that's not what we do right it's we just want to go home make dinner go to bed we're tired so anyways i am very curious to hear what your positions are but i'm not asking you to state them publicly because i get it um i wouldn't ask i can't vaccinate my kids you know those people who are like high-risk and can't be vaccinated that everybody's always whining about that's my family that those are my children i would not ask you to risk your child for mine i would never wish what happen to my children on anybody and the vaccines that they were injured by are a hell of a lot safer than this one this is an investigational vaccine

167it's dangerous we don't know what happens when we give five-year-olds this vaccine we don't we're gonna find out are we gonna find out on your kid or not that's up to you are they gonna wear a mask or not that's up to you i'm um scott just spoke i believe um i am a little bit disappointed um in the response to you know we have options as far as what are we going to do when kids show up without masks we can kick them out all right well parents you also have options you don't want your kid to wear a mask send them to school without one let them send them home if more than 20 i think it's 20 isn't it more than 20 of students are out are absent during a day this

168kid knows what i'm talking about um you guys don't get credit for the day you want to extend the school year until the end of june no you don't but is that true am i am i wrong no that's not true that's untrue all right my bad in any event um i would not ask you guys to risk your children for mine um and there are i hope you'll stand up and fight for our kids i really truly do i encourage you to do so i encourage the community to reach out to the school board and and really try to work together and let's take a stand let's get this the different public school boards together those who are willing to take stands the individuals who are willing to stand and fight beside us um

169nurses we have liability insurance right you guys have insurance too or surety bonds right right i'm asking what's the question what was the question sorry do you you guys have like nursing we have malpractice insurance and you guys have a surety bonds yeah we do okay so and it's kind of it's not really equivalent but kind of um you guys are going to have to fight no matter what because they're like once the parents of middlebury realize that they can go after those and they will sooner or later they're going to um it's going to happen so you're going to fight to protect your surety bonds that you have to have in order to practice or you're going to fight for your license and you really have to like you guys are worried about your

170licenses i'm worried about the one in four children who have considered suicide in the last year those are really really ugly numbers there's been a 600 percent increase in the the amount of prescription um antidepressants that have been ordered since the onset of the pandemic this is huge the public and why is desi making public health uh ordering public health issues why are they addressing that like this is a dph thing what does destiny have to do with any of this it just this it boggles me it absolutely boggles my mind that the people who are responsible for making or i don't even know how to say this for like mandating or dealing with our kids education on a state level mandated something that doesn't work for the virus that we're dealing with right now

171this does not make sense it doesn't i don't know that's my story good luck guys thank you thank you thanks [Applause] good hello thank you for being here i'm also shaking um i would like to know more about how the decision is made to do testing pool testing rapid testing and how that decision is is made um and what the protocol will be if that's um decided already i'm going to talk about the guy yeah i can speak to that sure thank you deci has a policy where we can do instant testing and if students are have close contact and if they test and they're negative then they can stay at school there are pool testing pieces that are also in place but we are not participating in that right now we are simply participating

172so that we don't have to send if we have close contacts so we don't have to send all those kids home we can test them quickly and with parent permission test them quickly and they can stay at school if they test negative if they test positive they have to go home and and go through the process of getting a more detailed test that's how i understand it right now those applications were just due in last friday we did put an application in last friday and we did hear yesterday our coordinator of nursing is here we did hear yesterday that we were accepted into the program which is basically the test and stays program the alternative is according to the department of elementary and secondary ed we would have to participate in contact tracing those students

173would have to be sent home so this is an alternative what this is going to do this instant test uh is going to allow us to keep kids in school if they test negative and thank you um and so the parent would have the option how would someone either sign up for that or withdraw what does the process look like for that i think what will happen as it happens you'll be contacted as a parent saying would like to test your child with this instant test if you decide that's not the case then your child will have to go through contact tracing protocols okay and thank you very much and what is the um are there any applications to apply to hold vaccine clinics at school once the vaccine is approved and how will that

174work we don't have any vaccinations scheduled but you could walk into any pharmacy in the community and and have a vaccination they're open obviously that your doctor your p your pediatrician whatever doctor you have can can do the vaccine i believe compass medical and a few other places have those um we have not held a vaccination clinic there is a state clinic that can go around and come to towns that is something we can discuss certainly in the near future if we want to hold those vaccination clinics as optional we have had the bus in town uh the vaccination bus has been in town middlebury twice i believe um and uh it was an opportunity also for anyone to go up and get the vaccine so uh we'll continue to be vigilant about that and

175so there would be an additional meeting to discuss if that would be an option and what the protocol would be for that i think if we held a vaccination clinic that would just be an announcement that we would be holding a vaccination clinic but it would be something that would be optional for students and optional for parents it would most likely be on a weekend uh and again it would be something that if you want to show up to it with your child or yourself then you could do that but it's not it would never be a requirement from the school system okay and that won't be held um during school hours um at the school no i don't i wouldn't say we're gonna do it during school hours or we'll do it it would

176be after school hours yes okay um i'm just curious um as many people may know here there's a law being heard by senator becker roush to change parental consent and the age in which someone is the right words to use um qualified to make those decisions and so i have just concerns about um children that are at risk that way um for instance if someone had an anaphylaxis reaction and if this bill does pass and the parent isn't informed what there's no liability with that what what would happen you know that's my concern as a parent that would all be your conjecture at this point ma'am i've i don't i'm not familiar with the law i'm not familiar with i have not heard about that um that's not something we would even deal with at

177this point okay okay thank you for your time i really appreciate it [Applause] thanks um it's past my bedtime um i i promise i'll keep this short i i actually threw out what i was originally going to say as i heard people speaking here so a little bit of anecdotal a little bit excuse me sir do you mind coming a little close to the microphone sure thank you very much a little bit of anecdotal a little bit of stuff that's happened in the past few weeks that affects my children being able to attend the middlebury public schools um and i'm tired so i'll keep it short i swear um i've lived in this town for almost 10 years i've been mostly pleased with how middleborough has been accommodating to my kid i have a disability

178you can't tell i hope he does too and middleborough has been accommodating for him um i'm not wearing a mask for myself i'm wearing the mask for him because he's high-risk enough where the doctor said if he gets coveted he's probably going to die um so we've been doing the remote school as that's been provided for us um and i've been vaccinated for him um people in this town i've found over the past 10 years are mostly polite they you know say excuse me when they need to get by um they sometimes tell me to go back to my own country and uh that happens a little bit too much um that that that can be seen as bullying i guess um maybe some racism but that's been my experience in this town not from

179the school but just the people and i i'm sitting in here and i'm seeing how just covet existing is dividing the community where people are very individualistic they're very concerned about themselves obviously no one wants to get coveted no one's to be seen as someone that's going to give covet to someone else that's almost insulting for some people but it's something that can happen there is some timeless transmission um and i've spent my kid's entire life trying to mitigate his risk so he doesn't have to go to the hospital as often he gets the flu vaccine every year um but sometimes he'll get a cold that sends him to the er um he has kidney damage um and having the remote option was really great for someone like him because we didn't have to worry

180about mitigating cobit risk while also trying to get him an education while also having to try to deal with people maybe bullying him because he was wearing a mask or whatever else people are concerned with anyway i have ptsd i've been a strangulation victim wearing a mask is incredibly uncomfortable for me and i i'm just wearing one for him and i'm wearing one for people who don't know that they might be a high risk for covid they're just some unknowns i don't want to be responsible for anyone getting sick here even if they don't like me um anyway as apparent having a student in the middlebury system all our options have been removed at this point for having our kid have a public education through middleborough um that don't involve sending him in person to

181school and segregation laws and such were provided to protect the minorities the people like him that have a disability to guarantee that kids with disabilities can have a public education at the same level as everyone else um but that right now um middlebury public school with the things that i've seen here is a very hostile option for my kid i can't just send him to school and you know they're they're it's a really bad situation um anyway a couple of weeks i know there's the option of homeschooling and you know if you care so much just quit your job and do it and i've done that um i didn't want my kid attending daycare when the cases were so high and i quit my job we were late on rent um missed a month or

182two but you know i kept the youngest one home from daycare so he wouldn't get covered and when the cases went down i put him back in daycare and they were very lacks about rules and stuff so he got covered and i had to manage keeping the kids away from each other which is impossible they they're like two peas in a pod i had to manage keeping them away from each other for two weeks and i stayed with the youngest in the bedroom quarantining and i i didn't get covered i was uh i guess the vaccine worked and we only have one bathroom so it was a shared bathroom so i guess forcing the kid that had cobain and forcing my son to wear a mask worked because as far as i know he hasn't

183gotten coped yet um but we're still kind of in that waiting thing and we're taking him to the doctor tomorrow and stuff it's not fun to deal with okay like there's people saying you know you must put your foot down some kids are gonna die but you gotta live with it but it's my kid that's gonna die okay and i i hear people say well the entire town is against it and that's where i stand and i guess i was never part of this town you know the way you people treat others here as long as you fit into a certain people group um and sometimes they're nice to your face but other times maybe they're having a bad day and i'm walking along with my shopping cart and they say main things or they

184say things like you know the entire town doesn't want to wear a mask or doesn't want their children to wear a mask and i live in this town almost 10 years um the place i live in is hard to find something they must deliver stuff but like i don't feel included i don't think my kids feel included and you know my kid's 11 years old he listens to npr he knows what's wrong with him you can't tell that he has you know issues when you look at him he's just a normal kid but he knows and he hears what people in town say he's heard people say that he should get coveted he's heard that you know at some point people die so it's acceptable obviously for him to die because he's going to die

185someday anyway right right damn it that's all i gotta leave [Applause] i'd say he's part of middlebury i hope he doesn't feel un unwelcome i'm steve class of 2001 i appreciate you guys being here it's been a long time you guys are very patient listening i really appreciate that i think what scott one of the older gentlemens was trying to ask about was basically the laws without enforcement are just words on paper so i think he was trying to get some kind of reason some kind of formulation of what would happen i get they get sent home but what happens after 20 cent homes what happens after 30. is there protocol in place for that that's been discussed explain what you mean in 20 and 30. well it said the discipline disciplinary action would be

186decide could be decided locally and so you'd send the disciplinary action is that they'd be sent home if they didn't comply with the mask so they'd be sent home how many times do you get sent home before it has some sort of impact on performance presence number of days how many times have a student miss class would have performed this problem well the idea is for the building principle to work with the parent to try to get the child to stay in school whether it be a medical documentation or a sincere religious belief there can be an exemption not from um from asking no mass can't help us to say a religious belief they don't have sincere i'm sorry sorry medical documentation i'm sorry about that right now there's no sincere religious belief against the

187mask at this point but it's medical documentation i'm sorry that's my bad but basically when a child gets beyond a certain amount of days obviously it impacts them we want children to be in school it's important the children be in school we would just explore options with you whether it be homeschooling or virtual schooling or any of those other options that are available to you if you go on the department of elementary and secondary ed website go to students and families and there's a scroll down menu it'll give you options of things there are free public schools virtual public schools that you can go to and students can attend but if there's a mass mandate in a mass policy that says students need to wear masks while they're in school then we're going to have

188to hold that policy for all students so is there a set number of times the days that you can be saved there's a set number of times generally i believe it's uh i'm going back to my principal days but i believe it's 16 days 18 days 10 18 days 10 or 18 days okay 180 days before other things kick in perhaps gosh i think that's what people were trying to figure out where where that line was drawn in if that policy set in place going forward into this school year if it's been crafted if it's been written yet yeah we will do everything we can to keep kids in school that's that's that's our job that's what's most important to us whether they're masked we want them masked if there's a medical documentation then there's

189a medical documentation but if if if we have a mask mandate then students who come to school have to be masked and we have to hold that line for all students okay i appreciate that that information and then uh mr cecilian i think what he was trying to get to is that the virus is not there's always the comparison to polio there's the comparison to measles and mumps and pbj allergies and all those things but it is something that will likely be around for a long time so when we when the people out there there's been a lot of passion here in the in the room but there's also been a lot of indecisiveness or indifferent people that are outside of this room that fall maybe more into the middle and for those people i

190think i just wanted to project out or speak to them that the mass it's not just a mask we talk about the october first date hitting an 80 threshold and they say mass won't be around forever that will be reevaluated but it almost sounds like when kids ask for ice cream on the ride home at eight o'clock and it's maybe it's always the the key word the parent says oh maybe we'll get ice cream so october 1st maybe the mass come off uh and so for those for those people it's it's not just a mask it's it will go on potentially indefinitely and then the other part of that i guess is that people that say the mass won't go on indefinitely if you hit 80 percent then they say well we don't want to

191be identified due to hipaa my child this my child that's so the mass then may remain to prevent segregation so i guess i'm just speaking out to those people that the mask is not just a mask it's a it's almost a mask in perpetuity with the moving goal post with desi the moving goal post with everything so those out there may be watching on tv wondering what the fuss is it's just a mask i would i'm just trying to speak to them that it's not just a mask and it's not just temporary it will likely go on indefinitely so as we get to october 1st i guess i'm interested in what the new policy will be for the school what will change and what plans are in place as we go forward to deal with

192something that will eventually be around for at least the school year or longer that's all i just want to piggyback on him because this is my husband um i didn't want to speak i have three kids second grade third grade fifth grade all in the school system and a baby at home but as i was sitting here one of the teachers in our district private messaged me and she wanted me to share this she said my classroom thermostat read 96 degrees in the spring i'm sure it was probably much hotter than that with the humidity index we were all in mass and had no escape i literally had the kids lay down on the tile floor and i put on a netflix movie it was inhumane i'm shocked no one passed out it's just ridiculous

193because it all sounds great with mask breaks but the reality is there are no mass breaks because the kids aren't even allowed on the same playground equipment without masks i tr okay i can't say anymore um she also said last year we couldn't have parents and because of covid but it really was so bad the kids were great with maths and they are more resilient than us but it was not a healthy environment for anyone she's a beloved teacher the town loves her and that's her opinion and i just wanted to share it also if i send my kids to school in flip-flops and slides i know it's in the handbook that they're supposed to be sent home but they aren't they never have been two girls love fashion love nice shoes they're not good

194for the playground they've never been sent home because the teachers i'm sure just like don't wear them tomorrow they turn a blind eye find eye and the kids wear them again and again and again all year why do we have to comply like why can't we say okay i see it's under your chin i'm going to look the other way why that's all i have to say thank you hello i'm finley and last year it was terrible i got sent to the principal's office nine times because i had to do a normal human behavior breathing which isn't that acceptable it's a question sorry can you say that again is breathing acceptable absolutely so why are people being sent home for breathing it's another question no i guess i'll bite i guess um i i don't

195feel bad at all for saying that i think the reason that people are sent home for not wearing a mask or for wearing a mask doesn't prevent the exhale particles that kill other people i i don't see that as being a negative but i would also like to say i really appreciate you being here and you speaking your piece on this and i think it's really important to hear from you who are being directly affected by it i also have another question if someone else is masked and i'm not and they're afraid of getting covered from me even though they're masked does that mean their mask does not work [Applause] i'm 12. still another question sure i mean uh i think the reason why and i think the particular study i'm going to look at

196is byzantine right out of our own mit that shows that and i'll clarify if that's the correct study or not after this i'm sure someone will tell me but the efficacy of mask to prevent the transmission of this increases when both parties are wearing masks it's never 100 i don't think anyone would make that assertion so why do we have to wear masks if it's not even 100 at all but the idea is not you're not eliminating it completely but you're lessening the rate of transmission you're slowing down the transmission and one thing that i my personal feelings on this i think the schools are being unfairly targeted uh for um measures thank you i was a little i was upset last year when they were close you know schools had to jump through hoops

197but yet people could go to bars and hang out for six hours without masks on so i think it's unfair what they're doing i agree with that okay and i agree with what you're saying um i think the key thing that i saw yesterday morning was 70 icu bed capacity i believe that's what's behind this okay it's the amount of beds that are being used intensive care unit for the state is up to about 70 percent now and i believe that's what's behind this but i'm just saying the the mast they have studies that it's reducing the transmission you're not preventing it but you're just reducing that likelihood to answer your question all right but if it's just reducing it you can still get it and with the vaccine you can still get it yeah

198so what's the point of getting either oh i can answer that um so my wife went to the hospital with kobit fur and she was had a fever for two weeks she actually had to get treatment for two days in the hospital in terms of care so i know something about this um the vaccine never said they never said it was going to prevent you from getting it that was that there is more risk in getting it no than what the vaccine excuse me okay the vaccine does is it lessens the effect of what happens when you do get it okay it lessens the symptoms it doesn't prevent transmission in fact they know that people with vaccines can get it asymmetric um asymmetrically hey symptomatic thank you um i'm not a medical professional i'm just

199trying to play one on tv and uh i just play one here yeah no um so the asymptomatic people can spread it and there is a small percentage of people including children that will go to the hospital and die and when they start to fill up the icu beds is when they start to worry about the stuff okay mr chair could i also just say um i i would i would love for you to continue to to stand up and to advocate for the things that you believe in uh i am so impressed um with your courage uh to stand up there and find maybe maybe we don't agree on on all the individual things but i think you're a very very strong very brave uh kid and i really appreciate you being here thank

200you sorry i'm just popping back in because he's mine but um i just wanted to start you were saying that i agree with you this the the intent of this vaccine never claimed to prevent getting this virus and that's hugely important because we have sent a messaging that everybody needs to get it to protect their neighbor so if you can't get it and you can spread it then the only benefit to taking it is for the person who takes it because you cannot create herd immunity with something that does not stop symptoms or prevent spread so people get confused when they talk about herd immunity because herd immunity requires you to stop to actually prevent somebody from getting the illness and so they apply this this idea of herd immunity or the ability to eradicate

201something to this thing that doesn't do that so when we send messaging that it's um some sort of altruistic behavior to get the vaccine or to wear a mask to protect others there's no science behind that so altruism or calling somebody selfish or using fear to tell a child his breathing is going to kill somebody is the wrong message mr i can't see from this one with the blue not you this guy sorry when you say that to a 12 year old child that the reason why he gets in trouble for breathing is because his exhale could kill somebody is fear messaging that is inappropriate from adult to a child because he is right he has the human right to breathe and to tell him that he when he needs to breathe or can't breathe

202no human can tell another human that they're not having trouble you cannot mask train somebody it's psychological conditioning to override what their brain and their need and their body is so we can't teach that and we certainly shouldn't use fear shame or degrading behavior or that they are a threat to breathing and i hope that that comes across to all of your teachers prior to this school year because i'm not very tolerant of fear shame or bullying by adults to children but thank you i'm sorry i've had a long time good evening i wrote notes because if some people know me i like to go on tangents and i'll probably talk to you about how i like tacos and it's not tuesday but i would eat tacos on a wednesday um anyways i just would

203like to say um thank you to the school committee and superintendent lynch and everyone for hearing everyone's opinions um and being able to voice their opinion um i felt compelled i was watching i had been watching it at home and i felt compelled to drive 40 minutes from westport to stand here and just um give a voice to the children i guess and not i'm not going to point fingers and i'm not here to say what's right what's wrong i'm just here that um i care so deeply about my students and what what they went through last year wearing masks is not what i ever want to see students have to go through again um i work with the youngest students in our district and again i'm not here to talk about vaccinations anti-vaccinations i'm

204also not here to say anything about negative about wearing masks not wearing masks any of that i just i'm standing here because um i just i was able to see what it was like for students to wear masks and i'm a specialist in communication and communicating with a mask is not completely effective and again i know it's your hands are tied um i'm kind of just here to voice for people at home to hear and just um i just don't ever want to see my students go through that again um i know kids resilient man they are really resilient and um it just wasn't great for them socially economic um socially academically or behaviorally again i'm not going to i'm not pointing fingers here i think i love middleborough i i really love being here

205i think administration and everything and the schools everyone is amazing um i think that you have a very difficult job and and you're just doing what is being told from your bosses you know kind of and that's fine um again i just felt strongly to come out here tonight and just try to speak for my young students and how last year impacted them and i i just i would hate to see that happen again um so anyways thank you thank you great i'm gonna go brianna because she was waiting over in the car um hi uh my name is brianne and i graduated from middleborough high school in 1998 and one of the classes that i took while at middleborough was a civics class it was citizen rights and responsibilities citizenship in a democracy so

206not only did we learn about our rights we learned about the responsibilities that we had to others and that's something that i feel like so many people are dismissing when they're coming up here tonight another thing that i wanted to mention was that the altruistic benefit of vaccines is that you're less likely when you catch covid to be in the icu so you're able to free up icu beds for other people who do catch covid who wind up in the icu but people with strokes people who get in car accidents so that's also the altruistic benefit that you provide when you get vaccinated thank you all right thank you very much i just want to be clear i want to make sure everyone's had a chance who hasn't spoken so i don't believe you've spoken

207ma'am so please um my name's becca um i don't really have anything to say about the masks i just have a question um if i decide to homeschool my second grader and then at some point the mask date mandate is lifted am i able to send her back in school no problem am i gonna have to jump through hoops to get her back in or no hoops necessary i can just call and say i want her back and she'll be back in we'd contact us and we would re-enroll her no matter what time of the year it is if it's in december okay thank you um mr chair yes go ahead i just want to bring up one thing that uh thank you for the question um we they did roll back the mass main

208date toward the end of the last school year um i believe that when things look better in terms of the icu bed you know all that stuff all the people in the hospital i believe they will roll back the mass mandate i think it's a hugely unpopular mandate and i don't think it's forever i honestly don't think that we're in what i believe is a second wave this delta variant you know it's hitting it's hitting people i think a couple of states alabama they're 100 icu uh texas hospital is making decisions now on who to treat right they can't treat everybody so there is danger out there i mean it's not like it's not it's not like this decision was made in a vacuum okay there are people suffering right now and a lot and

209um i just want to say that i don't think this is forever i believe that you know the mastery date is going to come in it has come down starting tomorrow but it's not i don't believe it's going to be years yeah it won't go away october 1st i believe that right october 1st won't happen but you know sometime during the year it could happen thank you i do want to say one thing ma'am you mentioned homeschooling um i just want to make sure you understand and everyone out there understands and if they want a home school they still have to go through the school and have a conversation dr melanie gates handles the homeschooling piece so there are some responsibilities on your part that you have to deal with the school it isn't like

210you can just do it on your own there's pieces that you have to do so i just want to make sure parents know that and have conversations with the school so they take care of everything they need yes it's on our website so thank you i just wanted to make sure that piece because i know some people think it's easy and they can just do it on their own and don't have to do go ahead man hi my name is kristen i have kids at three different schools here in middleborough last year every school enforced the mask policy differently um are we going to do that again or are we going to have the same rules for all the kids that's a question i think we'll have a policy that's consistent we'll try to be

211consistent but it allows individual principals to make decisions based on the situation and that's what the policy does read and and and that's how the principles have worked they deal with individual students with individual situations so some kids might get segregated in the corner of the room again if you don't feel that the mask is sufficient at one school but my other two children can wear the same mask to different schools and that'll be okay no i do believe that we'll try to be more consistent this year perhaps last year was the school systems first dealing with this also and if if we have a mask that's not an adequate mask we will be contacting parents asking them to provide a an adequate mask or we will provide a mask for that child uh or

212the parent can take the child home is my mask going to be adequate you all know what it looks like well if it's if it's see-through and it's breathable through then then no it won't be adequate i don't believe and we'll have the nurse and the nurses determine what is adequate what is an adequate facial covering it has to be it has to be adequate it can't be just a a a whole um it's not a whole well so so we're going to play this game again and all of my kids are going to get different treatment with the same mask at different schools is that how it's going to go we'll try to be more consistent this year okay as a math that's unacceptable it'll be unacceptable district-wide i'm reconsistent too because not one

213of my kids is going to wear a mask at school this year at all so i'm not sure how many days you're going to allow them to go to school before you kick them out or how we're going to play this game but i'll just homeschool them and that's fine and i'll figure it out but i hope there's parents that stand with me and we can just figure this out together because they're not going to wear a mask and i don't understand how somebody can stand up here and speak about civil duties in a mask because they think that they're good but then they can go to huge sports complexes that are filled with basketball players and parents nobody has a mask on including these people standing here tonight with masks on and they think

214it's okay like it's hypocrisy don't stand here and tell me you want your kid in a mask and then they're going to play on my son's basketball team without a mask and think that's okay either put him in a mask all the time or take it off and let's stop playing this game [Applause] i just wanted to say that i appreciated heidi coming down here i don't know where she went she must have left already um but as a parent who has students with communication issues as a parent who has students with social issues as a parent who has kids with academic issues and a mental health issues i would just like to say that i'd rather have them in a mask any day than have school shut down again because that was the worst

215thing that could ever happen and i do believe that most of the problems that our young people are facing in terms of depression in terms of mental health issues is more so from the isolation than from masks and again i i mentioned it before when i was very angry um that i i have read studies about it and i did share it on the facebook live feed so if you are concerned that there are no studies regarding that you're more than welcome to look into it and uh i really hope that aby's son is healthy and i will do anything for his son just like i would do anything for any of yours thanks sir i'm going to let you be the last speaker on this so go right ahead i'm not very good at

216this i don't usually get in front of other people and talk i just want to know one thing i know my mother's in the hospital where she is the nurses have to be vaccinated i know you said it's nothing to do with vaccines here does the teacher's staff have to be vaccinated at that in middlebury uh as of this year no are they going to have to be um i don't have an answer to that question because to be honest we're going to start contract negotiations so it would have to be contractual so let me ask you a question come october when they move the goal post what are we going to do as middlebury so as i understand if what the commissioner's idea is the 80 revolves around students and staff right so what

217are we going to do when they move it to vaccination i know an er doctor who is literally put five please speak in microcontroller five young children to icu for heart attacks over a vaccine that's still under investigation and we're going to go off of 80 percent of children and and and teachers that we care about we're going to just going to go off of that what are we going to do when they move that goal post closer what are we going to do what is middlebury going to do you can obviously hear what people have to say here what is your what is your two cents what are your thoughts i i know there's a few um members who have already voiced their opinions and teachers as well what are we gonna do are

218we gonna get together we're going to group together we're going to do something or we're going to let them keep moving the goal post mr chair yeah i will teresa [Applause] what are we going to do are we going to stand together what are we gonna do i mean there's obviously this gentleman over here with the white hat he says what about the people we don't want anybody to die what about those five kids heart attacks five children heart attacks after getting the vaccine what are we gonna do that's crap that is crap and if we're going to keep listening to what cnn says every single day i have a family member who sits home and watches cnn every single day and gets brainwashed every single day and think she is doing the greatest thing

219in the world for getting vaccinated i hope nothing happens to her i hope nothing happens to any of the children of the school the committee anybody but we've got to do something stand with me let's stand together there's a lot of good people we were at the state uh we were at the we're in boston today this lovely young lady right here we're in boston picketing for our children because this can't keep going on if you guys can't do anything and ladies i'm sorry if we can't do anything at this level what level can we what are we gonna do from here what goes from here who is our in who's our in between we've already said that we're gonna email the the state what is that done so far that's done nothing my mother

220had a stroke she's she's in a rehab they want to vaccinate her what is that gonna do for her health she's barely holding on by herself never mind giving her some poison i refuse so what is what is what is your goal what is you what are we gonna do what are you gonna do we speak to you like somebody said earlier we elect you so what are we going to do at that point at that table up there what are we going to do mr chair yep i think it goes back to what i was saying earlier i mean you guys just said you were up in boston today picketing that's what you should be doing that's what anybody who wants their voice again for against vax not that whatever that's what you should

221all be doing and i appreciate you coming here appreciate everybody coming here and voicing their opinions and their um facts and their statistics and all of that but like i said before there's there's not much that we can do our hands are tied we have to follow the mandate so if we don't want to then like i said before we need to be reaching out to the people that do control that so are all of our representatives our senators everybody and we need to do that collectively as a community it can't just be two or three school committee members and three or four parents it has to be everybody so that's what i would urge you to do i would urge you to keep protesting keep going to boston i wish i could be there

222with you if i could bring my two four-year-olds that are crazy and i'm sure people who watch the videos online saw then i would go with you but i can't so i email i call that's what i do so i would really encourage everybody to do the same do what they can do do their piece and other than the governor who else will we uh email them you can email our all of our representatives i know i've had multiple conversations with um with representative oral i've had multiple conversations with um senator keating you can email both of them they've emailed me back multiple times and typically pretty quickly um i've gone to um pachico yep okay and what are they saying and they say they're working on their end and that they're pushing for what

223the communities that they're in charge of want but i don't know if they have enough voices that they're hearing from the chairman had mentioned earlier that you guys have luis but what about the lawyers on our end what about the lawyers that stick up for our children is there such thing in between some sort of an advocate for the for the for the state well i think that's our job that's why you elect us so that's why like i've said i think a lot of us have reached out to people because we've gotten information from the community and what they want all right thank you yep thank you well thank you um mr chairman i have a bunch of questions from the virtual world um i think some of them have been answered but if

224you just kind of want to briefly summarize um so the first one is punishment for not wearing a mask and then what are the exceptions for students with special needs anxiety asthma things like that right so they um so individuals may be excused from the requirement for the following reasons for cdc guidance the individual has trouble breathing is unconscious is incapacitated cannot remove the mask or face covering without assistance in addition mass or face covering will not be required for anyone who has a medical behavior or other challenge making it unsafe safe to wear a face or mask covering a written note from a physician is required for a requested exemption parents may not excuse their child from the face mass requirement by signing a waiver and that was um and what i'm speaking of

225now is it was essentially our policy last year um is there going to be any social distancing during lunch at this point social distancing is we do it if it's possible under our current conditions in the building that's a cdc recommendation so there will not be what we saw last year we're not that's we're not doing that we're not taking our gyms away we want our gymnasiums to be clear so that we can have physical education classes in gymnasiums our gyms will not be cafeterias um unless this thing gets a lot worse and and things change and conditions change um but it is of our opinion that we are going to continue with our class with our cafeterias when students take mask breaks when students eat snacks or when students eat lunch they can take

226off the mask indoors students can take off their mass outdoors at any time so that social distancing piece is has been reduced for this year so it doesn't affect our classes as deeply in terms of widespread but we'll see what happens as we move forward as mr stevens mentioned earlier in the summer back when we rescinded this back in june we rescinded this policy and we moved on we had a fairly successful summer we had a very successful summer with our programs and we did very well unfortunately the delta variant created a situation in massachusetts where decisions were made the governor was saying he wasn't going to require wasn't going to require and then whenever he said that he's going to require all state employees to wear mass we sort of had the feeling at

227the school level that he was going to come forward with something for the school this all happened in the last week and a half two weeks and that's where this new recommendation the governor made to the commissioner to petition the board of education to come up with the mass mandate and re-establish it but his the commissioner has said and i've heard him say uh that if things free up in the community and and the delta variant uh subsides and goes away and and the metrics change then he has every intention of changing the masking so uh hopefully we can get back to that point we were last june where we were able to rescind the policy so that we can do that again um it's not something that that all of us want to deal

228with on a daily basis believe me i would much rather have sort of the the situation that we had this summer we had a lot our numbers were much smaller so we didn't have a real good positive big sample size of putting all the kids back together but i think that's the fear right now when we put all the kids back together and they're the delta variant exists somewhere that they'll be widespread uh and we don't want to get involved in that so okay that's that i think that was the justification that i heard um if a student gets sent home is it going to be um like a suspension it is not a suspension it would not be a discipline it would be progressive we would try to work with the family and try

229to work with to try to figure out what the cause and why it is and and uh if it's a medical or or something that can a 504 can be developed we'll work with the family to do that um and we'll go there but if it's a mandated policy by the department of ed and it's a policy by the local school committee um which obviously is mirrors the the policy from the state that we we would not have the students in school um do we have to comply with the mandate yes yeah why is there no remote option we have been instructed again by the department of elementary and secondary ed that we would not have a remote option this year we want all kids in school uh in school every single day that's that's

230the idea that's why the masking is put in place so that we can continue to have kids in school every single day great yeah i think it's important on that question we're you were able to have kids in remote and hybrid due to an exemption that they gave us yes and they gave to all the schools and in may they took over they took that back we had to apply for an extension basically um so this idea that the remote option was only like a special circumstance that was only last year um and then the last one i have is the test for is the test that we're going to be giving out with the um there's a close contact if the parents are okay is that a pcr test like an instant test it

231is an instant test okay and then um is there a close contact testing or are they going to be asked to quarantine they will be asked to if they're a close contact they'll have to be go go home and quarantine for a period of time in accordance with cdc regulations unless they take the rapid test unless they take the rapid test if they take the rapid test and it's negative then they can stay that's that test and stay policy that they're putting in place that if we didn't use we'd have to immediately call the parent and have the student go home and if it's okay can i piggyback on that um do we know how how long that test takes to get results back very quick um mrs magnesco's here but i think it's it's

232a very 15 15 minutes thank you thanks and then um just one more i'm just scrolling through real quickly um are you going to be reporting weekly cases again on the district website we are going to reestablish the district dashboard the dashboard on the on the um on the district page so thank you those are all the online questions thank you thank you does anyone else have anything they wish to say yeah greg oh i meant down here greg go right ahead no no i was pointing out one answer i'll give it a quick shot like i said before i don't really come to these meetings very often i appreciate what you guys do one thing i noticed tonight if half of what he just said was said before everything else half of the bad

233stuff wouldn't have been explain your position before you allow everybody to just bash you i think it would show your point and how you feel about it i know you guys don't want masks in the schools but it would have shown everybody else how you feel you guys just sitting there just taking the bashing i think it was uh was the word detrimental word i i did try to explain that at the beginning i understand but by stating some of the things that you just stated would have eliminated a lot of the everything tonight i i i don't even have a word to describe everything i watch tonight do you agree okay so i think next time we have something to this magnitude please show your position show how you feel about it we understand

234that you can't do everything that we want you to do but at least show your position so we as a people and i'm not just speaking about me i'm with you hold on a second not just me because i don't look down on you guys but as a people we don't look down on you we see your position we understand it i think it would be approached differently from the masses does that make sense thank you thank you greg you're right okay thank you um i purposely did not want to state my position because i felt like tonight was about you telling us what your positions are and i didn't i mean i think if we sat down and said well here's how i feel here's how we feel and like like we've already made

235up our minds then i don't think that would have been good um for the for the prom process the tonight to me i was here to listen like you know somebody else said oh he shook his head he didn't shake his head i mean yeah sometimes you can i i disagree disagree whatever or agreed with people but the process is important to me you guys have to be helped that the gentleman left the guy 15 years ago there was a casino fight we were not allowed that was the last meeting i was at um i'll be honest we were i was in the opposition group and i think it was funny because we had the same orange shirts uh at the meeting but the the thing i railed against was we were shut down we

236tried to give our position okay i had reasons i didn't want the casino there were my reasons but they were important to me and my family and no one would listen we continued to get gavel down gavel down shut up you know be quiet you can't talk we heard that at every selective meeting we went to you can't talk and i know mr young uh for 20 years now he feels very strongly about the process he had this meeting like the first person said we were expecting this meeting to be canceled because the mandate came down already it wasn't really our vote no this meeting had to happen we had to hear you guys you guys have been asking for the people on the comment section have been asking for this meeting i think it'd

237be very unfair to take that away and i don't agree so i i guess i politely disagree with your um i really wanted to hear and i changed my mind about one thing tonight okay that i didn't really think about and that's the vaccine part i really think it's a bad way that the the um commissioner put in his memo about the vaccine rate when that really shouldn't have been a part of it 80 if he wants to mask up all the schools to slow down the spread that's what he should have said but putting that target it's like he's trying to change people's philosophy on the vaccine by peer pressure or bullying right that's what somebody said yeah and i i actually i think i learned something tonight from listening and i try to

238keep an open mind i understand that completely um i appreciate your comments and i'm glad you're here like i said i mean i i understand the open mind i i like to look at things from many different perspectives anybody that ever knows me knows that i can i can literally fight against myself as the devil's advocate um [Music] but watching what i watched tonight i think i kind of said it earlier you guys are getting smashed up there and you guys are behind what you believe you're also protecting what you have to protect and i don't just mean your jobs your money i also mean our kids i also mean our schools again i've lived here 47 years um yeah i went to bp sorry but um just you voicing the fact that how you

239feel would give these people and us i should say a feeling of connection [Music] and without that connection everybody attacked if there was a little bit of connection at the beginning i think it might have been a little bit different of a meeting granted i think you still would have heard everything that everybody had to say it just may not have been aimed the same direction they may have chose to aim it where it needs to go instead of at the people in front of them you guys were the people in front of us you guys are the targets you're sitting up there you're lighted everything's aimed at you if you had opened up a little bit not all of it but just a little bit just about how you feel and even with how

240he was stating what the state requires what we have to do everything like that i think it would have taken the target off of your backs and put it where it should have been and where it should be is at the state level at a higher level and i think it would have been able to we would have been able to come together as a community with whichever way we look at it vaccinated unvaccinated mask no mask whatever way you want to feel we would have been able to aim that at the people who can make the choices i'm not saying you can't make a lot of choices you can make someone i understand your hands are tied state does what they do i work in a union i'm tied from above i get it

241but if we don't know where to aim we're going to aim at the closest target and we're going to shoot that's what everybody kind of did tonight pro or con that's what everybody did tonight if we know what your position is we can then say okay they're with us they're against us they can still fight if they're against you they can still say what they want to say if they're with you they can back you instead of everybody aiming at you the people who back how you feel and back how you think it should be will fight with you and join and just go at where we're supposed to go my lack of meetings opinion as an outside guy thank you guys thank you [Applause] sorry uh superintendent lynch i just have one quick question

242um that i wasn't sure if administrators were given clarification on the deci goal post of the 80 is that statewide or is that in individual communities it's individual schools individual schools so if the high school attained it they would supposedly be able to remove their masks from the vaccinated students but nichols potentially would not that's what the commissioner said and again i i say it that way only because that's not what the board of registers the board of education voted on so that hasn't been voted on by them yet okay thank you very much um anything else from committee members then given that the given that the commissioner has put down a the mandate as of today the chair would entertain a motion to reinstate our previous pulse so moved um well i'll second it

243but i have a question um didn't the old policy have a lot more in it than we need to have no it doesn't it actually doesn't it's stuff is it is it can you read that sure i can read the whole thing if you want this is the just the policy so it's ebcfa face coverings middleborough public schools is committed to providing a safe environment as schools reopened during the kobit 19 pandemic according to public health oscar where it's one of the best ways to stop the spread of violence and just so everyone knows this was this is directly from masc from the mass association of school communities yep the best ways to stop the spread of the coronavirus and to keep members of our school community safe is to use the face mask or

244face coverings therefore in accordance with guidance from the center for disease control department of elementary and secondary education and master public department of public health the following requirements are in place until further notice a face covering that covers the nose and mouth must be worn by all individuals and school buildings on school grounds and on school transportation even when social distancing is observed face coverings are subject to the same requirements for being school appropriate as defined in school handbooks individuals may be excused from the requirement for the following list of reasons per cdc guidance the individual has trouble breathing is unconscious is incapacitated cannot remove the mask or face covering without assistance in addition mass or face coverings will not be required for anyone who has a medical behavioral or other challenge making it unsafe

245to wear a face mask or face covering a written note from a physician is required for the requested exemption parents may not excuse their child from the face mass requirement by signing a waiver additionally face master face coverings will not be required when appropriate social distancing is enforced during mass breaks while eating or drinking during phys ed classes while outside exceptions to this policy under certain circumstances such as for students with medical behavior or other challenges or unable to wear mass must be approved by the building principle in consultation with the school nurse or board of health face shields or physical barriers may provide an additional alternative providing alternative in some instances a student's mass or face covering is to be provided by the student's family staff members are responsible for providing their own face

246coverings however the district will supply disposable face coverings for individuals who arrive at a building or board school transportation without one if students are in violation of this policy the business building principal will consult with the parent slash guardians to determine whether an exception is appropriate or the student may be removed from the building for in-person learning until such time as they can comply with the requirement or the requirement is lifted violations of this policy by staff will be handled in the same manner as other violations of school committee policy visitors in violation of this policy will be denied entry to the school slash district facility this policy will remain in effect until rescinded by the school committee and then it gives legal references from the commonwealth of massachusetts to cover the order center for

247disease control and prevention considerations for rare mass mass elementary and secondary reopening guidelines commonwealth and mass mascot and masc the source is 220 2020. so this is the same renewal as previous thank you mr chair please to be clear um we would be reinstating this policy but if we were to hit an 80 vaccination rate and be applying for this exemption that the commissioner riley has stated we would be discussing further our own district policy regarding face masks and whether or not we would allow unvaccinated to remain masked and vaccinated to remain unmasked so as far as i'm concerned um whatever bar the commissioner set or i would take that back whatever bar that border education set um for people to remove facebook my understanding school would have to apply we would have to approve

248the application um so that's one okay and secondly if you will um there would be a bigger discussion about that so in my mind for example um to some of the points that people made this committee could decide not to seek the application and keep the mask in place until such time that all masking is removed it wouldn't have we wouldn't have to tie it to vaccine rates thank you so that's that's my how i view it this is solely on the masking because again the commissioner did not get approval from the board of education to establish that rate um as of yet the only motion that i saw and i read had to allow face coverings throughout the commonwealth okay okay thank you um one thing that before we got some guidance sent to

249us within a half hour probably of of this meeting and it had admittedly just come to us it was no one's fault except for probably desi's that we didn't get it sooner but one thing that was that i felt really passionate about was hearing about the absolute decimation of music programs last year as a result of these masking guidelines i felt really strongly that i wanted to try to avoid that and so granted some things have changed just in the last few hours but in our policy here so i did see and excuse me for grabbing this but i did see in the um the guidance that just came out that let's see please just give me a second here [Music] i'm not quickly finding it oh here it is mass may also be removed

250indoors when necessary to participate in elective classes such as the use of wind instruments and band when traditional masks cannot be worn districts should consider additional mitigations such as the use of instrument masks masks with a slitter hole cut for the mouthpiece and or bell covers along with physical distancing or outdoor classes is feasible and the only thing i want to make sure of is since we didn't specifically carve it out in the mask policy i wanted to make absolutely certain that we could allow for those activities to happen with very similar to what the teachers did last year with the the special masks and the bell covers i just want to make sure that we can do that yeah we would be consistent with the with the mandate that came from the border yeah

251with the objection i would also add to this with will not be required under the listing of um the implementation of the desi mask requirement august 25th 2021. so it covers all those other pieces do we need a motion to add that i would accept that as a amendment all right i'd like to make a motion to amend the original face covering uh policy to add in the desi memo which would allow art music to have you know unmasking uh if you know appropriately second so that we're just voting on the just on adding other questions on the additional language from the desi memo does that does that include uh in addition to the music programs uh drama as well i believe so yeah i believe so because that was paul correct me if i'm

252wrong but drama the way drama was able to operate end of last year was the performance could be mask-free but the rehearsals oh okay i thought that they could be unmasked for certain things okay what was actually on the cobia it's okay so we can find that out i mean we have a meeting tomorrow yes uh and would we be able to later on would we be able to a man make more amendments to this yes yes so we we could adjust accordingly um as things popped up or it didn't pop up if you were you mr chair yeah i just it does say mass may also be removed indoors when necessary to participate in elective classes fantastic so that is in here and if we include it in this policy then it will be

253policy any further discussion about the amendment of including this list from desi as of today than seeing no one oh okay sure can you hold on one second because i recognized her then i would definitely get to you chair i believe i heard in the policy it stated on school grounds still being included so is that implying that masks would be worn outside for the policy no it specifically says outside is allowed okay i just thought i had heard in the reading of the policy on school grounds that's all yeah i think the original mandate was school grounds but the new deci memo only includes indoors sergey right i'm very sorry i know we were already done with all this can i can i just suggest something can we make some sense of this though

254you guys just said i don't want to see any kid go without drama i don't want to see any kid go without instruments but we're going to make sure the kids show up with bass on and they have to be sent home if they don't but if drama is here you can take your mask off can we make some sense of this we we this is the same thing that's been going on for two and a half years now or a year and a half whatever it is we have to make some sense we can't just let people throw rules around that don't make any sense we are literally gonna say that this kid has to wear a mask but this will because he's doing drama he doesn't we have to make some sense of

255this this is absolutely insane am i alone well i think we're trying to make sense of it to be honest with you sir i think we're trying to make sense of it to make sure sir you told me earlier that the the vaccines didn't matter but she just asked you teresa just asked you she said so you're telling me that we can apply for something if 80 percent get vaccinated now there was a woman up here earlier that said the vaccines will not stop transmission so if 80 people are vaccinated why is the mass gonna make a difference no just just to be clear yeah and theresa you can tell me if i'm wrong what theresa asked me was if this had anything to do with applying for the waiver for the 80 percent for

256the waiver right i said no but why are we going to apply for a waiver if 80 percent sure that's not what i'm saying it has nothing to do with the vaccines and nothing to do with the way no i know but with the fact that they put that as a goal post they've put that as a goal post right they're convincing people that 80 get it and then they can take their mask off right but what i'm saying is that goal post hasn't been voted for and and we haven't come to that but they've already mentioned it and we're all just going to go along with it we're going to keep picking up little pieces here one person who mentioned it and that's the commissioner right and it hasn't been approved yet but there's

257already an application for it no there isn't there is no application for it there is nothing she asked my point right my point was that i will not support that right that's that's what i'm clear on and i would i wanted to make sure that we were voting to reinstate a mass policy that did not tie anything to them so that's all it has nothing to do with that that's what i was putting on sir we'll have a whole separate conversation when it comes time for okay thank you no no problem so any questions about the amendment which is to take over the put the desi letter in seeing no one else in favor say aye i opposed um back to the emotion with the amendment now that we reinstate the policy any further discussion

258on that seeing no one all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed it's unanimous it's unanimous for both um so i just want to wrap up um this way um and i appreciate greg you know one of the things i'm most proud of um when i came to this board um was there was there was only a public comment section people couldn't participate from the audience in school committee business and one of the things i'm most proud of is my fellow board members listened to me and continued to listen to me about that this is an important step to the process and for me greg's absolutely right it came out of what we went through 10 or 15 years ago and so i don't view it as people hammering us i view it as

259people advocating for their kids and given the opportunity to say what they want to say because we are elected officials and we should be able to take that now i will put the gavel down when people a little go back and forth with each other because that's not what this is about this is about conveying to us what you think and we'll continue to have those um and we'll continue to do that and we'll continue to let people be able to do that because that's really the process that we want and that's what's important in milburn so i appreciate everybody who came tonight everybody who said their piece i hope i hope they didn't feel rushed because you know you have some some places that allow you two minutes some places that allow you a

260small amount of time that's not what we wanted to do tonight we wanted to be able to um listen to people um i hope everyone understood that our hands are tied because it's at it's it's at the state level um i also hope that people understand again even though people said it over and over again that it is not true that your kid your child can't be sent home because you don't they don't have a mask on that's what will happen again the principals will try to work with parents try to help parents out try to figure out if there's a reason why kids should be unmasked and is there a medical reason or a behavioral reason that needs them and and we want them to do that and want them to work with people

261um and so i will also say that some of the some of the reasons that people mentioned why they didn't want their children to have mass are probably those reasons and are probably should be consulted with the principles and had a conversation about how to get that done and how to deal with that um but again as much you know thank you for everybody for coming tonight um i know it can be loud and can be boisterous and that's fine but you know that's what democracy is all about you know i maintain that democracy is a contact sport um and so you know everybody and messi everyone needs to participate and the one thing i'll say to everybody who's there greg and i are two people who were not participating in town government when an

262issue arose for us and that's why we're here tonight because we participated in it was about we did lots of other things along the way but it was about hey you know you have to be a part of it and you have to you know it's it's never the fault of the individuals who make decisions if you will if people don't express their opinion to them and so that's you know one of the big things is it's our responsibility to make it so that people can express their opinions um and that's that's important so i appreciate everybody coming i say thank you and with that i'll close up the meeting for tonight we do have another meeting tomorrow so i'll take a motion to adjourn every second second all those in favor say aye opposed

263unanimous thank you everybody see you tomorrow [Applause] you