001so far our districts have practiced the cdc recommended layers of prevention strategy which acknowledges that schools are potentially high transmission communities and take steps to mitigate these three layers include a high level of vaccination rate for the community the ability to maintain a socially distant environment and the use of high quality good fitting masks for all people and with these layers of prevention in place our schools have remained open students are learning in person and our infection rates have been moderate unfortunately our community has been infected by the latest armicron surge the district covent tracker indicates skyrocketing infection rates on all three campus campuses 10 fold greater than at any other point during the school year understand that without all three layers of prevention in place the impact of oberon would have been dire it
002is not the right time to consider removing any of the three layers of prevention from our schools to that end as we was referenced just a moment ago the massachusetts board of education authored a document stating that schools reaching the 80 vaccination threshold can take steps to remove the mask mandate data for our district has not been made available but the cdc reports as of yesterday that our county is at 71.4 this means we've not met the threshold to remove masks additionally all three of our campuses house preschools students still ineligible to receive the vaccine not likely to be vaccinated until after the school year ends so while our county may be at 71.4 our district community taking into account our preschoolers is not there yet we have a ways to go that means that
003until we have a verified 80 vaccination rate in our district masking is the only layer of prevention that we the community can control can offer as safety for our children for our staff and our faculty on a personal note we pulled my oldest from preschool like most like a lot of you when this whole thing started we elected to homeschool his kindergarten year and halfway through he said mommy i just want to go to school with friends that are not my brother with a mom with a teacher who's not my mommy and then we moved to berlin so my son was taken without warning from his preschool gangly managed an isolated year of kindergarten and then was moved to a whole new place now this is making credit he's thriving he skips to the bus
004every morning because of the independence he feels at school because of the learning opportunity of being in community with others the idea that school would shut down again because of infection rates climbing when we know how to control it it's just too heartbreaking to imagine and let's be honest without the mask mandate that's what's likely to happen teachers and staff will get sick there won't be people to run schools let alone healthy children ready to learn the mask is our first and best effort to control the spread of infection it is what's allowed us to keep our kids in school so far even during the recent surge now we must continue to mandate the mask to keep everyone protected to keep our students learning thank you so much kyle brian connor thank you so much
005i appreciate that thank you thank you i appreciate that because people at home want to hear um and video issues this entire time i think i might have fixed it i'm not entirely sure okay thank you sebastian i'm just a reminder to state your name and your head thank you so much brian connor 36 longleaf road in boylston the past two years have been a challenging for all of us for my family we felt lucky our kids were barely three and one when this started surely the madness would be over by the time they were to head to school or so we thought i watched as masking became a way of virtue signaling profile pictures changed to mass photos and worse people seemed excited to share pictures of their kids in mass early on i
006began to realize mass will not go away so easily i was assured though once there was a vaccine the kids will no longer need mass after all they were wearing them to protect the elderly vaccines came massachusetts led the way one of the highest rates in the country okay the end is in sight but wait the kids aren't eligible the goal post moved a little further now kids are eligible but wait let's get to 80 and then maybe we can drop humanity let's think about why the mandate started mass were a small layer of protection when there was no other options but today every parent here has the option to fully vaccinate their child equip them with an n95 mask to protect them against the virus that has a zero percent fatality rate and healthy
007children with that information in hand do we as rational adults say no that's not enough i still don't feel safe bringing my child to school however if we mandate your child to wear a cotton spiderman mask which the cdc has admitted provides virtually no protection than now and only now is my child safe that type of thinking is irrational and rooted in fear the time to end the mandate is now kids are resilient i agree they are whoever not indestructible mass affect kids i saw this firsthand little coaching t-ball when five and four and five-year-olds were forced to wear masked outside on warm summer days we were following science the practices felt robotic the kids weren't connecting communication with the kids was a constant challenge halfway through the season the outdoor mandate was dropped not
008one kid showed up to the next practice with a mask on the atmosphere changed kids connected and as a coach i could easily talk to the kids the difference was night and day masking kids is a science experiment a failed one there is zero evidence these measures even slow the spread but there is growing evidence of the negative effects british psychologist albert moravian founder of the 93-7 rule states that seven percent of meaning is communicated through the spoken word 38 through tone and 55 through facial expression and body language when you cover a child and teacher's face how much of that communication is lost for the past two years we've made a lot of mistakes and our kids usually brunt the worst of it we closed parks removed basketball hoops isolated kids told them not
009to high-five or hug their friends the time has come to give kids the childhood they deserve for two years we've been told to be patient follow the science now the science is clear unmasked kids thank you [Applause] thank you brian um lisa mayer thanks so much for letting me speak um my name is lisa mayer and i live at 31 ball hill road in berlin um i have a master's degree in food science and nutrition and also certification in functional medicine for years i worked in laboratories and today i read medical research daily as part of the work that i do and i've spent probably over 100 hours reading the mask research and i'm convinced that if more people would read the actual research instead of you know filtering it through the media nobody would
010be wearing a mask there is a hierarchy of quality of scientific evidence and the highest quality of evidence includes meta-analyses and randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews the lowest quality of evidence includes like laboratory experiments mechanistic studies reports and editorials the highest quality of evidence does not support community masking at all remembering that the meta-analysis is the highest form of evidence in 2020 alone there were six meta-analyses and systematic reviews that found masks are ineffective for respiratory viruses and also there was a large randomized control trial which is that you know second top tier quality of data they found no difference in sars kobe 2 infection among thousands of participants that wore masks versus ones that didn't wear masks now i'm not sure why but public health authorities have ignored this high quality of evidence
011and for some reason chose to focus on the lower quality evidence like case studies with incomplete data mechanistic studies and flawed lab experiments um and then the editorials that like reported on them they also got widely publicized so like everybody just believed that masks worked but not realizing this was low quality evidence now to be clear masks do stop large droplets the ones that you can see but sars kobe 2 is not spread by large droplets we know that it is spread by tiny aerosols that go through your mask and they go around the edges of your mask and research does show that um masks simply redirect airflow and that they even create hazardous leakage jets out the sides and around the back of the mask and i have citations for all of these statements
012that i'm making and if anybody else wants them i'll give you i'll give you that too um and you you don't even need to see the citations because you've seen the evidence of this yourself when you're when your glasses fog up when you wear um a mask with your glasses or if you go outside in the freezing cold and you can see your breath everywhere that is happening whether or not you can see it it's happening in classrooms it's happening in here right now all of us are emitting our aerosols and we're all breathing the same air so it really does not work um and on top of that the cloth masks have been shown to increase rates of respiratory illness so not only do they not work you know we know that they redirect
013airflow but then people tend to get sicker when they wear them now n95 masks in theory might seem better because they have a smaller pore size but still if that pore size is larger than the sars kobe 2 aerosol and they can create a better seal to eliminate those leakage jets right but you know there's reality to consider the code of federal regulations stipulates that people need to be medically cleared to wear an n95 it needs to be professionally fit tested and the people need to be trained in proper use is that going to happen in schools or in the community i don't think so um also if you wear them and then an n95 properly um you risk actual sickness and death and um 3m has that on the boxes of their and 95
014masks most research has shown that most people will not wear an n95 correctly and just a tiny three percent gap out of the edge um you know like of the seal of your face renders them ineffective so zero efficacy if there's a gap now people who do wear them correctly have issues um healthcare workers complain of headaches migraines fatigue brain fog um and you know also like facial issues like skin issues but none of this is a good um you know condition to be in if you're trying to learn so in terms of the real world evidence an n95 masked mandy in bavaria failed to prevent a huge spike in cases and everybody was wearing them there outside and inside and you can see it there's a graph there that you can look at now
015on a happier note in sweden i'm almost done okay um oh okay all right in sweden um they never um took kids out of school they went through they went to in-person school through the height of the pandemic and they did not wear masks and they didn't really social distance not one kid out of two million kids died there were a couple that were that were hospitalized they had like just like a handful and they had severe like you know other comorbidities and then there have been recent analyses in schools um one from the uk and one from florida that showed that there were there's no relationship between mass mandates and infection rates so in summary abundant high quality evidence demonstrates that masks don't work for respiratory viruses that spread high aerosols the evidence to
016support masks is not policy grade and nobody should be forced to wear a mask based on low quality of evidence thank you so much [Applause] thank you so much lisa next we have kevin haglund so uh good evening kevin haglin five mill road boylston um i have two daughters first grade and fourth grade boylston elementary i have a whole list like some other people here that i was going to read out about all different facts and stats and everything like that um i'll save the time for that we're going to find one professional that says you know we need to wear the mask for all these other reasons we're gonna have another professional that's gonna say the same thing uh the opposite side that we should that we don't need to or due to i'll
017just tell you how it is with my kids my kids are struggling with the masks um my youngest daughter is having a real hard time learning how to read uh being able to follow the teacher and learning um in first grade my fourth grade daughter is having a similar problem but kids are just having social i feel that my kids are just having some social issues being able to connect with other kids reading facial expressions um i just think that it's time to remove the masks the vaccines are out there if the people want to get them there's masks out there that the children staff can wear if they choose um and that's their choice go for it wear the mask get the vaccines i think it just should be every person's choice um and
018i think we need to remove the mask mandate [Applause] kevin thank you um marie phillips um marie phillips haywood street in boylston dear school committee members and superintendent zangy thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences regarding masking children i'm a public school teacher and i have been teaching a person since august 2020 therefore have had approximately 15 months of experience around children wearing masks first and foremost if masks are not worn correctly they are ineffective correct wearing mask according to the who are as follows before putting on a mask clean your hands with soap and water cover your mouth and nose with the mask and make sure there are no gaps between your face and the mask avoid touching the mask while using it if you have to try to clean your hands
019with an alcohol-based hand rump or soap and water before doing so replace the mask with a new one as soon as it is damp do not reuse single use masks to take the mask off remove it from behind do not touch the front of the mask discard it immediately in a closed bin and clean your hands with alcohol-based hand rub or soap and water are students and staff following these guidelines if not then perhaps masking is causing more harm than good where are students placing their mass during recess lunch or mass breaks are masks being placed in a sterile area so they are clean and not full of bacteria that they are introducing to their face and lungs when putting them back on how many outdoor mask breaks are students provided throughout the six and
020a half hour day especially now in the cold weather every student should be given multiple opportunities to breathe fresh air without a mask i am very concerned with how masks are affecting early childhood students as a first grade teacher regarding auditory processing speech delays and phonological awareness i am especially concerned for children with hearing loss as they rely on lip movements and facial expressions and clear masks cause an increase in sound degradation degradation i'm curious to see if there's an increase in special education in our rti support for students in this district with speech and language delays our student athletes are suffering from headaches fatigue nausea i challenge any one of you to play basketball for five minutes with a mask on your face the athletes are pulling them down over their noses because they
021can't breathe they're pulling the masks down and if they're playing the mask down how are the masks effective there is an inconsistency with the enforcement of mask wearing which also lessens their effectiveness the massachusetts governor governor's office sent a letter to colleges and universities presidents yesterday urging them to end the campus mandates and restrictions the letter darkly warns administrators about a twindemic of covid plus social isolation and decries the mental health epidemic affecting our young people the letter encourages higher education institutions to be leaders to lead the shift back to near normal by rolling back college restrictions and investing in mental health services and they're talking about almost all restrictions and testings the letter says early in the pandemic we made trade-offs and veered on the side of remote learning and isolation overly strict protocols
022that inhibit any level of social interaction are counterproductive at this time now is the time to reconsider these protocols help promote a return to healthy social interactions including by removing remote learning restricting or discouraging social group activities overly aggressive surveillance testing and mask type requirements i am urging you to lead the way in massachusetts public schools and lift the mass mandate it is questionable how effective they are against the spread of viruses they may actually open up more opportunities for unsanitary conditions and they are having a negative impact on the developmental physical and mental health of our students [Applause] i would like to call stephanie faire hello uh just good distance um thank you for this opportunity my name is stephanie fair i live on summer road in berlin we all know that these last
023couple years have been trying once there's so much information going in all directions it can be hard to tell what is trustworthy so today i am just focusing on facts and i did email um a copy of this with all the graphs and studies and everything and i'm sure some of them have already mentioned i will say some may desire that mask squaring be dependent on vaccination levels in the community as has been mentioned in various places but we need to consider the vaccines are no longer claimed or intended to stop the spread of covid or the cdc only to lessen symptoms since this is the case consideration of mask wearing should be made solely on the merits or lack thereof of mask wearing itself the delta wave rose and fell across the u.s and
024the globe in a similar pattern masking was irrelevant to that cycle a comparison was done of european countries as well as u.s states pinpointing when each government began mass mandates it found that mask wearing seemed to have no effect on the spread of the virus for example in sweden where they have never mandated masks their death rate is significantly lower a 2020 stud study by the new england journal of medicine concluded we know that wearing a mask outside healthcare facilities offers little as any protection from infection the desire for widespread masking is a reflexive reaction to anxiety over the pandemic at a danish randomized control trial with 6000 participants found no statistically significant effect of high quality medical masks against sars kovi 2 in a community setting there are many more studies some of which
025i've included in my letter even unicef which is pro mask in general strongly advises against kids under 5 wearing masks and recommends mask wearing for children 6 to 11 only in certain settings they also caution the potential impact of mask wearing on an individual child's learning and psychological development should be considered in the uk even during the delta wave their elementary schools were open without masks a pediatric infectious disease specialist working in london who has worked on their governing policy said the uk has always from the beginning emphasized they do not see a place for face coverings for children if it's avoidable the potential harms exceed the potential benefits and their strategy has worked with the uk just this month being able to drop their covered restrictions including masking globally the tide is starting to
026turn and a growing list of nations have begun dropping mass squaring and all covered restrictions which include the uk ireland france and netherlands denmark's prime minister announced covet 19 should no longer be categorized as a socially critical sickness the who says that europe may soon be able to end their emergency phase due to omicron being a much milder variant and that we need to evaluate the evolution of covid from pandemic to endemic illness recently during the osha hearing supreme court justice sotomayor client claimed false information saying a hundred thousand children are currently hospitalized with covid when in fact that number was under 3 500. if even a supreme court justice can be deceived by false information we should all be looking carefully at our own beliefs to make sure that our fears are based on
027fact we in the us and especially massachusetts which prides itself on being at the forefront scientifically should not be lagging behind when it comes to what we're demanding of our children i'm strongly against requiring masks in schools it has never made sense for adults to be able to shop attend shows eat in restaurants or go to sports games without a mask while children are forced to mask entire days in school and it's time to speak up for our kids and let them return to regular life so thank you thank you stephanie tinashenko hi thank you my name is tina shanko i live at 66 ethan allen drive in boylston and i'm terrified so i'll just start by saying that um i've been a boylston resident for over 20 years my four children three are graduates
028of tohonto and my last is currently a junior i'm a registered nurse and my husband is a surgeon i would like to voice my concerns over masking our children in school it is time to stop wearing masks or at the very least eliminating the mask mandate our children are suffering the effects of masking for long hours each day the science is clear healthy children are not not in exceedingly low healthy children are at an exceedingly low risk for death or serious illness from covet 19. in fact there are more than 150 comparative studies and articles that give evidence that masks do not work to control the virus and they may even be harmful when dealing with an airborne illness or disease these cloth and surgical masks are not the mask you should wear to protect
029yourself even n95s are not fully rated to protect against viruses and are not approved to do so by the national institute of occupational safety and health the first clinical studies done during the sars outbreak showed that not only were these masks hazardous to human health they worked almost zero percent of the time because of moisture liquid diffusion and pathogen retention there's also a possibility of creating long-term health effects when you deprive the body of oxygen for long periods of time the director of osha has actually said using surgical masks as a form of personal protection equipment may lead to adverse health effects not only are they potentially creating physical harm to our children we know there are psychological harms as well children need to see faces it is an important part of social learning and
030communication humans communicate verbally and non-verbally and masks impede both forms masks muffle and distort our words making understanding and learning from their teachers even more difficult our facial expressions are important cues to everyone around us without those cues communication and understanding suffer we have the responsibility to reject these ever-changing narratives regarding masking and their effectiveness and stalking the spread of quote 19. the story has changed from masks don't work damasks may work damascus work and you must wear one no two is better the uk has sensibly ended the mass mandates the british health secretary savage avid stated we must learn to live with copiod in the same way we live with the flu risk is inevitable and heavily subjective dependent upon age and comorbidity nobody has the right to force a medical intervention such as
031a mask onto another we know how to coexist with other bacteria and viruses and we will learn how to coexist with cobot as well the goal isn't to eliminate covid that would be impossible but rather let's teach the students about the importance of living a healthy lifestyle by building a healthy immune system through diet exercise and sunlight this is the best frontline defense among screenable communicable disease i strongly urge the board to make masks optional for students and their teachers with an emphasis on personal choice regarding self-protection and supporting those choices whether it be to remain masked or not i believe in parental rights parents know their children best and what is best for them let us decide whether our children will benefit or suffer from asking our children have sacrificed a lot since the
032on start of covid it is now time to give them their childhood back let them see our faces and breathe the fresh air and i just end with a smile is more contagious than kobit 19. thank you [Applause] thank you tina james frangillo good afternoon hi my name is james virgila i live at 676 cross street in boylston i come here today uh with a lot of notes and i'm going to try to stick to these because i can veer off pretty quickly so i just want to start off putting uh just a few facts right um let's just these are not opinion facts right coven 19 various is a respiratory illness uh the virus is transmitted through respiratory droplets the particle size of the code 19 virus is 0.1 um in diameter it's widely
033known that cloth masks do not filter particles of this size masks must be worn properly to provide protection once a mass gets wet the effectiveness is decreased by 50 or more right now this is my these are my experiences i have four children uh one at assabet uh three in boylston elementary i coach uh football basketball soccer i teach other uh extracurricular activities uh on a daily basis i see many children 10 20 30 40 children um at least half of these children are not wearing a mask properly then by properly that is firmly over the bridge of the nose to under the chin that is the actual definition uh the rest they either have the mask pulled down or they're chewing on the mask my own son my five-year-old shoes on his mask it's
034the most disgusting thing it drives me crazy um the reusable masks they're full of saliva little food kids drawing them they're touching them all day they have holes in them for being chewed on these are not protective all right uh even disposable masks as an adult wearing that for eight hours over the course of a day it's gross uh based on the facts that i previously stated and these use cases that i've highlighted i hope you can understand why i don't believe mast are protective and why parents should have a choice my recommendation as i stated i coach year-round sports and extracurricular activities i believe that our best defense is not a mask it is rather social interaction through sports through activity that's cardiovascular activity which expands lung capacity strengthens the heart um masks actually
035make it harder for kids to to perform these exercises before these activities it's actually very counter to it i've said this to my wife many times and it breaks my heart when i see kids practicing and i see them gasping for air going through practice in the middle of a game i see them pulling them down just trying to catch their breath in between plays it's really an awful feeling as a coach as a parent knowing that we should have the choice that they should have the choice especially for outdoor sports i'm not sure if the school committee is aware of this but as the president of boylston youth soccer we base our our covet response off of that of the school there is a trickle-down effect not just on school but outdoor extracurricular activities
036sports within the town themselves i would love to see the masked mandates lifted and i would love to have a sports season this spring with parents being able to choose if their children wear masks or not most importantly i think as others have touched on are the mental risks of masks um this is just my personal experience that i based this off of but early when i dropped my kids off at school in the morning i i would see mrs sullivan i would see mr thompson i would see other teachers we would wave we would smile that small interaction that kind gesture could change my entire day and i know that i'm i'm not alone in that i know that my kids would thoroughly appreciate those interactions also um my point is that by covering
037the lower half of everyone's face we greatly reduce the ability to communicate interpret interpret or mimic expressions of the people we come in contact with positive emotions become less recognizable and negative emotions are amplified this is not healthy for our young children there are three types of learners they are visual auditory and kinesthetic the most prominent are visual learners which make up more than 60 percent of all learners these children rely these visual learners they rely on body language and facial expressions of their teacher to process information by masking our children this is not conducive for visual learners and it actually impedes their ability to learn within the classroom my ask of the board is that you do that you do not do what is easy but instead you do what is right we have
038forced restrictions on our kids for the safety of adults for too long our kids deserve better than this i ask that you end the mandate and give parents the freedom to choose what is right for their individual children [Applause] thank you james bornella quinn hi um so thanks for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is barnela quinn i live in berlin and i'm the mother of two boys that uh were in the school district for about 15 years uh currently i work as a public health advocate primarily with youth substance use and prevention um so as we've heard tonight time and time again the data is clear that school-age children have the least amount of risk when it comes to becoming seriously ill or dying from coronavirus of almost any other group so thankfully
039vaccines and other therapeutics are available and have helped mitigate the impacts to the more at-risk groups such as school staff and faculty we have many more tools in 2022 than we had in 2020 and our school policies should shift to really reflect these advances since there have been some notable risks associated with children wearing masks eight to ten hours a day the decision to wear them or not really should be a personal choice in fact the who advises several factors in determining whether or not these children ages 6 to 11 should wear masks at all and they include one the potential impact of wearing a mask on learning and psychological development and two the ability for a child to safely and appropriately wear a mask so if there is an at-risk child they should most
040certainly have that choice to wear a mask but this choice shouldn't be a requirement for everyone else especially when that choice has a potential negative outcome on both learning and mental health so three very prominent infectious disease specialists um epidemiologists and professors at medicine i'm sorry at boston medical center tufts university uh medical school and the harvard medical school have recently co-authored an essay that was published in washington post calling for schools to make masking optional they write quote in the beginning this was to flatten the curve and then later to protect the vulnerable intended to be a short-term intervention if we accept that we don't want masks to be required for our schools forever and we need to decide you know when is it the right time to stop these mandates as the omicron
041wave begins to ebb that time is now our students have been made to feel like they are disease vectors while failing to recognize that they also are growing children in need of social interaction for proper development there is a you a youth mental health crisis in this country yet punitive actions that limit social interaction and normal life continue school should be a place for children to feel safe and supported aaron bromash a professor of biology at umass dartmouth who's worked with both governors of rhode island and massachusetts in an effort to reopen the schools um does advocate for covid mitigations but now believes that the minimal reduction in risk that comes from masks is being outweighed by the detrimental side effects that comes from wearing them the omicron wave will soon be behind us i
042urge you to educate our community on personal choice regarding self-protection and support those who want to remain masked it's time that our school staff is allowed to get back to teaching and supporting our students it's time we stop worrying about what others are doing and start focusing on protecting ourselves our children have sacrificed a lot to protect us now it's time for us to give them back their childhood with all that we know about mental health the new omicron virus and the effectiveness of mass we should no longer require a mass mandate for our children in school thank you [Applause] very much natalie adams evening everyone and thank you for letting me speak tonight uh for those of you who don't know me my name is natalie adams and i'm a middle school english language
043arts teacher at tohonto when i began my tenure in 1999 a long time ago i was immediately struck by the safe environment that we afforded students there was an overwhelming feeling that everyone was working together to provide a safe nurturing environment for them as i began to spend time at the elementary schools i felt the same way a student needs a safe environment to learn successfully anything less can seriously impede a student's ability to be successful even if that student has the drive to do so the challenges that all of us have faced in education since covid began have been significant no one could have ever imagined a world where we would need to put in place the practices and protocols that we have furthermore the times we're living in have put a new meaning
044into the word safety i know that people have different opinions on masking believe me i dream of a day when it is no longer necessary but now is not that time the department of elementary and secondary education is the governing body for public schools in the commonwealth and they currently have a mass mandate in place that the district is bound to follow officials at the department have stated that the current mass mandate will be reviewed on february 28th i feel it's in the district's best interest to wait until this review to make any decisions on the masked mandate in our district desi has public health experts that collaborate with their leaders in order to make the safest decisions possible for students and staff new testing protocols are rolling out currently and time needs to be
045taken to see how that goes second we risk a serious public relations crisis do we really want to look like a district that is not acting in the best interest of students and staff do we want others to perceive us as not caring about the safety of others i know that is not the case in reality but removing this mandate could give that perception third many students come in contact with upwards of 90 students on a daily basis making us exposure a significant issue if there is no massive date now more than ever we need to do everything we can to keep our students secure to keep them learning to make them feel that we are safe space let's continue that safe environment that told me that this was the place where i wanted to
046spend my teaching career let's show the students and staff that we care about their well-being in addition to giving parents peace of mind let's make a decision that will benefit all students and staff instead of creating an atmosphere of anxiety and fear thank you natalie tara koziak good evening on behalf of the berlin boylston educators association i'd like to thank everyone for taking part in this evening's discussion i'd also like to recite the latest requirement pertaining to mask wearing set forth by the department of elementary and secondary education which was updated on january 10th it states the mask requirement remains an important measure to keep students safe in school at this time consistent with the authority provided by the board and after consulting with medical experts and state health officials the commissioner is extending the
047mask requirement through february 28 2022 the department will continue to work with medical experts and state health officials to evaluate the mask requirement beyond february 28th a survey was conducted among our membership and the majority of the respondents are not comfortable at this time unmasking in our schools thank you thank you tara we're gonna check the other list is there anyone here that wanted to speak that did not sign up okay um i'd like to entertain a motion to review the district's vast policy we have a second we're gonna organize the microphones okay so we're gonna also open it up um for the board to discuss between ourselves and i'd just like to remind you at this point this is when the board talks to one another and it's going to be tempting to add
048something in her open meeting law it's just the board having the discussion and we appreciate everybody that stood up and read tonight as i said it takes courage and conviction and it was really brave thing to do so i appreciate everybody no matter how you feel about masks i want you to know that your message reaches us would any members like to make a comment or anything about before we start the discussion about how they voted or why they voted i didn't know if anybody wanted to discuss that you don't need to you want me to go first since i have the mic and we can pass pass it okay so um laurie do you want us to talk about why we voted last week the way we did yeah yeah so um last week
049uh i was the only one who's currently present now that voted to not have this meeting i am in favor of sticking with the desi mandate our administrators our teachers are all licensed under desi which is the department of education for the state of massachusetts um us as a school committee we're required to follow state mandates or you know attempt to uphold state mandates um and you know regardless of how i feel about basques i think the right thing to do right now is to stick with the mandate when the mandate is dropped and we can discuss it at the local level these comments are great um and i'm definitely gonna keep everyone's comments and i think we've got at least 20 25 emails right um in mind but i just don't believe that this
050is the time to do that i think we need to you know for the sake of the teachers and the administrators um and the district quite honestly we don't want to open ourselves up to any type of litigation i think we need to stick with whatever deci is mandating um so do you want me to talk about my feelings on masks or do you wanna it's up to whatever you guys think if you want if you would like to you have the floor okay yeah i might as well say everything and then we can pass it that way because it'll be hard to debate without the microphones i feel i feel famous um so as far as the masking goes um i honestly before this meeting and both well i should say before this week
051i was dead set on you know masks are mandated they need to be mandated i think some of the people tonight brought some excellent points as for why masks need to be optional in specific we got an email from somebody who suggested and i don't know if we're supposed to say who but somebody suggested you know perhaps having masked mandates moving forward during surges and then dropping them when cases you know drop below a certain amount some of these ideas are great um i just don't know when or at what point i would feel comfortable with dropping masks um for me um i'm thinking about everyone in the community the teachers the students the special needs students that may not be able to wear masks to school every day so it's really difficult and then
052when you throw in the mental health piece there's no way we're going to be able to please everybody but i think right now i'm not comfortable you know even if jesse didn't have a mandate right now with the amount of cases and the levels of the hospitals and you know based on what the teachers have said i'm not comfortable with removing a masked mandate right now so gloria my concerns on this mask issue first of all for everyone here thank you for coming and giving us your opinion i learned some things tonight that i did not know on both sides of the issue so thank you when i think of the mask issue i think of it through the lens of equity at our january 11th meeting we learned or we were told that some
053of our population specifically the english learners some of you tonight spoke about how language skills are being lost or not coming along as fast as they could be because of the facial awareness and visual learners and that issue i want you to imagine that you're a foreign student and you come to this new school and you don't speak the language you're trying to learn english you're seven years old you're sitting in a class everyone's face is messed up and you don't know what your teacher is saying in your own she's not speaking your own language you're trying to learn the new language and you're trying to read in that language with a mask on unable to see those facial cues in our district the number of english learners we learned a couple weeks ago has
054grown 625 percent over the last few years so to me those kids struggling already with masks throw on top of that you don't speak the language you're sitting in class trying to listen to charlie brown's teachers or parents it's got to be difficult i don't think that's equity we also learned that 17 of students in our district that's almost one in six kids i believe if the math is correct there are what they termed economically disadvantaged which means maybe they don't have all the necessary resources at home that other kids might have at home uh that concerns me i have a first grader at bms and she comes home with her anxiety over reading not being able to read not learning how to read she doesn't like the mask issue she doesn't like having a
055good man she doesn't like it just can't see her teacher but i'm not worried about her because we have the resources to get her the extra help we need we can pay for the tutors we can pay for that extra care uh last year during remote school a lot of people had to pay a lot of extra money for this extra help with their kids that's still going on so i'm not concerned about her she's got the ipads she's got the different games that she can play the educational games i'm sure she'll be just fine i'm concerned about you know you you mentioned we need to consider all students that's equity right all students how do we how do we help these i know the school is offering additional resources for both these groups but
056are they able to take advantage of it i don't know i would like to know more information about that aspect of the situation the learning loss the how are things going along we have the aims web scores we have mcas testing but that's all official data how is it just going in real life how is this how is how is your kids school going that's what i would like to know that's uh my comment for that i think i don't know what we do tonight i don't know if we do anything or what we do tonight when it comes to that point i might have a couple suggestions but another parent that spoke that struck me an email that we received uh i believe she spoke tonight too uh her daughter uh is being afraid
057or fears just taking her mask down for a second just to catch a breath take care of her allergies pick the cotton out of her mouth whatever it happens to be because it's been drilled into them now this culture of fear over the punishment of not wearing actually been threatened with detention whatever that punishment is i don't know what the official punishment is for not wearing a masking school i'd like to know that and perhaps that's something we can change through policy tonight jeff do you know what the as to mike's question what the current disciplinary action is for students who don't follow the mass mandate well we use progressive discipline for any any any infraction in the school so as to what the exact punishment would be i don't know so thank you for
058everyone who attended this evening and who spoke tonight um it is helpful to hear from everyone who's willing to to do so and i think it informs our decision-making um i do feel that the time is now to be talking about this although i don't feel the time to change anything is tonight because there are 15 school days between now and february 28th when we expect deci's going to either extend or change their mass policy however if we just sit here and don't talk about until then we're stuck in a very difficult position then to collect the feedback we've gotten this evening so once again thank you for everyone who's shared emails and spoken tonight it's very helpful as we move forward two other points i just want to make as i listened this evening
059you know i listen specifically for anyone who advocates masks to claim that the disease itself is severe enough in children to be worth mitigating in the first place because i ask myself three questions when it comes to the mass requirement first question is is the virus itself causing snowfall illness in school-aged children then i ask does masking students reduce transmission in the schools and the third question i have is does vaccinating students produce transmission in the schools and that brings me to questions on the vaccination threshold at the time when we were given an off-ramp if a school reached 80 vaccination we had an expectation that vaccination would prevent transmission i think we can see very clearly now from the data that vaccination does not permit the transmission of omicron so i would even hesitate
060to remove the vaccination threshold at tohonto if we weren't also able to do it at the same time at bes and bms because the vaccination itself is not shown to prevent transmission to an extent that that should be the offering so i'm going to have i think some more questions on that topic as we move forward and the last thing i just want to point out you know there's a mental health crisis and someone mentioned i think spoke to the letter that the secretary of education wrote yesterday urging the higher ed community to lead the way towards a return to normal when it comes to this i sit here and i own wpi there's been seven seven suicides at wpi in the last six months the day after the seventh suicide wpi removed all requirements
061to mitigate covet 19. and so that tells me that there's a recognition at that institution that there is not the benefit doesn't away the risk when you look at seven college students who have killed themselves in the last six months this is an institution then the decade beforehand had two suicides so the only difference is covert in the way we're managing it now i'll leave it at that as we continue to consider these issues thank you i'm gonna read what i wrote just so i too stay on track um so i'll be quick i first wanted to thank everyone who spoke tonight for your really thoughtful meaningful comments um i also wanted to thank everyone who wrote into the committee for their really relevant and tactful comments social connection is a fundamental is fundamental to
062humans this is something we all know to be true without having to dig for any data or research to confirm it social connectedness enhances mental well being when kobit was a deadly virus we all faithfully masked up and did our part to protect ourselves and our neighbors we didn't hesitate the covet of today is not the covet of a year ago we are no longer facing a deadly virus and as arnilla explained the landscape has changed and we too must change the vehicle we use to drive on that landscape by continuing to mask our children through a mandate our children are losing that social connectedness which in turn is having a grave impact on mental health i even hesitate to read this because it's so staggering in the first three quarters of 2021 in 38
063children's hospitals in the nation the number of suicide and self-harm cases was 47 percent higher in five to eight year olds and 182 percent higher in nine to 12 year olds than from the previous period these are our babies they're my babies they're your babies all kids need to socially connect with their peers with their teachers with their administrators with their lunch aids with their coaches with their bus drivers with everyone they interact with on a school day they cannot do that with the masks on it is our time to lead and to lead correctly for our children we owe it to our children to give them the connection they need to help them reach their full achievement their full achievement potential as a student in the berlin boylston regional school district thank you guys
064very much i appreciate all of your comments i think everything that has been that needs to be said has been said um i just wanted to speak for just a few seconds to say that we all have opinions about masks and as school committee members we represent what is best for the children our mission that we took an oath to fulfill says to support and challenge all students to achieve personal and academic excellence in a student-centered environment we called into question whether or not academics were being hindered by masks this has nothing to do with how i feel about masks how anyone on this committee feels about masks it has to do with the children and their academics and lastly i'd like to to talk a little bit about the letter that we were going
065to write we wanted to write a letter we discussed it last week we were tired we'd gone through a governance meeting we're humans and i'm not proud of the way the meeting went and i don't think anybody here is the intention of the letter as we discussed on the floor was a slow roll of talking about masking or coming out of a surge right now we know how the school committee operates you can't just show up and make a motion and have it happen so we wanted to introduce the topic and invite the public and have people come in and talk to us about how they felt so i apologize for being in this position but i'm so grateful that you showed up and you read to us and you talked to us and you
066shared personal experiences and to all of those people who wrote emails i you know i tried to write back to everybody and if there's anyone that i missed i'll get back to you tonight but i thanked everyone those emails carry impact i'd like to encourage anybody that has an opinion about this to write to the school committee we want to hear what you have to say those are very important to us so i just wanted to bring that up and that's where i'll leave it right now does anybody have anything else to say on the board i apologize i'm learning on the fly so there's a motion on the table right now to discuss because we moved and seconded it we moved to discuss i think we do need to vote on that motion to
067discuss just to close out that and then consider any additional emotions at this point so my point of order would be that i think we need to have a vote on the motion which was to discuss we vote on that and then we can move on to other motions okay so okay he's great at this um so right now we're going to vote on whether to discuss or review um the district's math policy so all in favor any opposed okay the motion passes and we will review the district's mass policy so i look at the calendar and i look at what our original intent was which was to take the time between now and the expiration of the current extension on february 28th to review the mask policy and to to potentially send a letter
068and do things like that i sit here now on february 1st and i look at our calendar coming up and i wonder if we should be scheduling a meeting for march 1st which would be the appropriate time to review any change that desi makes we do have a meeting scheduled on march 8th but i'd rather personally do that sooner rather than later so the 28th is a monday students will come back from february vacation we'd know at that point what desi has decided in terms of requiring masks from that point forward and on march 1st we could discuss what we might want to do and hopefully jesse would give us enough time to consider with the administration the new recommendations they make and whether or not we should be changing anything on our own so
069my motion would be to hold a school committee meeting on march 1st as we would in the other school committee meeting and have this on the agenda so motion to hold school commitment meeting on march 1st 2022 with an agenda item to review any update from desi related to the mass requirement i'll second that thank you megan any discussion what i just said is anyone um i know you're not gonna know the answer this jeff but is that enough time for dusty to come out on the 28th and then for us to even have any understanding of or is that too quick i mean today this mandate extends to the 28th so we don't we don't know we expected at that time there'll be another decision from the department it could it could be before
070i mean every single extension seems to have come a week or two before the expiration i mean at least that's what it has been i mean for the past how many extensions have we had i know three four um right thank you megan but who knows does anyone have anything else to add you know i think one of the things coming into tonight's meeting that i was cautious of was putting any burden on the administration should we have decided to remove the mass mandate tomorrow and i think we know that there are considerable financial and legal considerations that would come into play if we were to act in defiance to jesse so as i sit here tonight on february 1st i'm supportive of giving us another month to hear additional feedback and to understand destiny
071might do and be able to be in a position to make some kind of decision on march 1st and to partner and work closely with the administration from now until then we do have meetings scheduled for february 8th and the 15th at which point this could be updated and prepare us for the march 1st meeting anyone else have anything to add so we're discussing right now to add this meeting on the first and there's a lot of passion and emotion in the room right now on both sides after hearing from that is there anything else that we might want to do related to mask policy i believe our official the district mass policy is simply to follow dc guidance so dc guidance as well later i think someone read it earlier um everything from when
072and who to wear a mask punishment for not wearing a mask uh is there anything we want to do based on what we heard tonight talk to dc ask dc for something else i don't know i'd be interested in discussing some sort of action i don't know if everybody agrees or what they feel that would be sorry am i doing action in terms of uh with death or the community either way is there anything else we want to do i mean we heard from a lot of folks here we don't know what dc is going to do they say they're going to review it and give another update right they've extended it every time for 30 days three or four times already our letter last week was asking for additional data do we want to
073do something like that ask them for something something we're recording this meeting show them what parents want parents want more answers parents want to know why you know kids are hurting mental issues health is there anything you want to do you want to gather up what everybody said here send it off to him be like listen if you're going to extend it again give us some more concrete answers if you're not going to attend it again okay fine make it optional and that benefits everyone i'm just uh we're here to discuss changing not changing making amendments to the policy is there anything we want to do for that mike i would i would support something of that effect um once this motion is voted on or whether we're gonna have a meeting on march 1st
074to do so so if a question whether there's any more discussion on that thank you thank you thank you adam that one actually um so everybody's had their chance to speak on this particular topic i guess we will take a vote all in favor say aye aye opposed the motion passes we will have a a meeting on march 1st in response to what deci tells us the 28th on the 28th with their guidance and hopefully they come out with it sooner does anyone else have another motion that they would like to put forward i would like to move that we discuss language to ask dc to watch this meeting and respond to these parents or or include some additional information that these parents might be asking in their next announcement regardless of which way they
075go so for christie could you i would like to move that we discuss sending dc a letter regarding this meeting parents opinions who spoke who emailed and now we can discuss that here's the point of order for efficiency state this evening like we moved to actually send a letter and then we will odd matches with the specimen secondly yes anyone have anything to add regarding that idea which is very creative mike i like it i mean i think my idea is clear i don't know that it's gonna do anything or if anything will come of it but sitting here tonight and doing nothing after hearing these people give up their night to speak to us like this doesn't seem like it would be the right thing to do i think the original letter we were
076intending to send to desi was seeking information on the data that supported their mass mandate i think that we learned in the interim that other districts have done that and received varying levels of response and so i think that became somewhat of a point at the end of our last meeting i think that moving to draft and send a letter to desi potentially as early as the 8th the meeting next week but we can review that and then send it off and make a lot of sense um because we're probably going to need his group to vote to approve the letter as written too should we um test the chair with red miller wow that sounds so great um you know mike you you raised a really interesting idea which was with the letter to
077have more impact to send along you know letters from the community as well which i would guess we would need permission to do before we were no but those are public records yeah i was thinking that either the emails we received uh a lot of folks had written notes if that was different from their email if they they wanted to share them or we could simply the meetings being recorded so we could always do that anyone have anything to add just one thing for the people that sent emails and people here i would say we definitely need to get people's permission because some people might say no i don't want my name on something that's being sent to desi that would be the only thing but i think most people probably would but i just
078think to cover ourselves probably the right thing to do is before we include people's names just make sure they are okay with it oh okay so so christy for because you don't have she doesn't have a microphone um she's clarified that because once you send an email which i was not aware um until earlier uh it does become part of public record so legally we have the right to do so but i would suggest if anybody doesn't want that sent they should reach out to us prior to you know are sending the letter i would almost say that we should proactively reach out to those individuals who emailed us making sure that they're comfortable with us including it in our letter it's still a public record and someone could request to see that public record
079but it doesn't necessarily mean we have to send something someone doesn't want us to put out there yeah i'm just thinking of one person specifically that said they didn't want their email read so understandable it's a good point maybe to solve this we could uh i'd volunteer to write the letter lori if you're a little busy uh just simply send the recording send a couple of uh excerpts from the recording quotes what not we can discuss that once it's written next week at the meeting you can also get the recording transcribed pretty easily and put the recording through a transcription thing that you're able to have everything written up to if you wanted to imagine that technology adam has access to something like that we can work on it yeah perfect so we'll so we'll
080plan to mike's gonna draft the letter we'll plan to discuss it next week and hopefully finalize it so we can get it out the door next week any further discussion well i guess we're going to move on to a vote all in favor i suppose the motion passes we will mike is going to write a letter and we will be reaching out to people to ask if they would like their letters included that's something i will take on so we will be doing that and does anyone else want to make a motion okay at this time i would like to tell you that our next meeting is obviously going to be february 8th um where we will discuss the letter february 15th we have a budget meeting and um oh and i almost forgot february
081i'm sorry the first day um and march 8th was supposed to be our regular meeting but we moved to have another meeting on march 8th i'm sorry march 1st so many things yes pretty much every tuesday except for february so could i have a motion to adjourn second second the meeting has ended and thank you the motion passes thank you for coming to our meeting it is officially ended