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MSAD 58 board declines to revote on masking policy

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STRONG — The MSAD 58 school board heard nearly an hour of public comment with regards to masking policies during the Sept. 16 board meeting. More than 50 parents, grandparents, guardians, and district employees appeared at the meeting, held at the Strong Elementary School.

Petitions, both supportive of universal masking and of optional masking policies, were offered to the school board.

Currently, MSAD 58 has an optional masking policy.

School board chair Kim Jordan was not present at the meeting. Julie Talmage ran the meeting. Talmage asked that, in the interests of running an efficient meeting, each individual limit their comments to three to five minutes and only speak once. More than a dozen individuals gave their comments to the board over the course of an hour.

Adam Masterman, a Freeman resident and employee of the district, asked that the board revisit their decision from the previous meeting. He stated that best practice recommendations from the Maine and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and from the American Academy of Pediatrics say that universal masking should be observed to help limit the transmission of COVID-19 within a school setting. He stated that no child has died in a school fire in the United States in over sixty years, but that schools still perform fire drills regularly to help ensure safety and prevent possible deaths; he felt that masking policies followed a similar logic.

Masterman also asked why the school physician had not not involved in the decision making process.

Sue Pratt, former MSAD 58 superintendent and grandparent with five grandchildren in the school system, asked that the board reconsider their decision.

“Let me tell you why,” Pratt said. “I want my grandchildren to be in schools. I want them to stay in school.”

Under Maine DOE and Maine CDC guidelines, the practice for handling confirmed cases of COVID-19 are very different based on whether universal masking is observed or not. Pratt guessed that if there was a single confirmed case within the school, the entire building would have to close down, because universal masking is not currently required.

Dr. David Dixon, a resident of Strong and the school district physician, said “The COVID virus doesn’t care if you’re young or old; it cares if you’re alive, because then it wants to kill you.”

Dr. Dixon said it makes sense to him to restrict access of the viral particle to the nasal region, by use of masks. He is not in favor of mandates, but if mandates are required to protect the children, then so be it.

Wendy Warnock of Avon said that she knows two doctors personally who do not support universal masking. She has not been able to find studies that support masking; there was one that indicated masking did not block viral particulate, but that it was removed on a technicality. She advocated that the school board maintain the policy put in place for optional masking, saying that the policy provided the ‘least restrictive learning environment’ for her child, currently enrolled in Mt. Abram High School.

Jeff Seaburg of Phillips said that he has observed maybe ten percent of students wearing masks, and maybe thirty percent of staff, indicating that the majority of families and staff members within the district are okay with the optional masking policy.

Johanna Prince, the principal at Kingfield Elementary School, said she strongly supports an indoor universal masking requirement and that she regrets not speaking in the previous meeting. “You hired me as the leader of this school, and my job is to protect the most vulnerable students and staff.”

Prince added that under the current operating procedures from the Maine DOE, universal masking simplifies the process and reduces the number of students who have to be quarantined in the event of positive cases.

Another parent from Phillips, who was not clearly identified, said that mandates were unconstitutional and without due process of law; that mask mandates deprived Americans of their liberty, and that requiring masks for children was nothing short of child abuse. She stated there are medical studies that show the negative effects of masking on children.

Luisa Stearns, of Phillips, spoke on behalf of more than 180 families within the school district who valued the opportunity to choose whether to mask up or not. She said she researched the effects of masking and had found studies from the NIH, the CDC, and the New England Journal of Medicine that did not support masking as an effective method of preventing COVID-19 transmission. She read a quote attributed to the former U.S. CDC director Robert Redfield in a FoxNews interview in August 2021, with regards to school policies and masking requirements: “I’m of the point of view that this has to be locally decided as opposed to a general mandate. Particularly in the absence of data.”

“If masks worked, we wouldn’t be debating over that,” Stearns said. She asked that the school board keep the optional masking policy.

Andrea Poole, of Phillips, said she felt that the increased cleaning protocols, along with the focus on good hand-washing and hygiene practices, was most likely the thing keeping kids safe, rather than masks. “Please, please, let my child still breathe freely,” she urged.

The board heard public comment, followed by the COVID-19 update from Superintendent Todd Sanders. Sanders said that the nurses in the district did not recommend the use of at-home testing or pooled testing at this time, but that they did strongly recommend universal masking.

Currently there are two confirmed cases in staff members. Both cases were community exposure and the individuals did not expose anyone at the school level. There are fewer than ten quarantining students or staff due to close contacts and community exposure.

The school board did not have a masking policy item on the agenda that required a vote; while board members could have called for a vote to change the policy, no motions were made to do so. The policy remains that masking is optional within MSAD 58.

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