‘Tyrants don’t stop.’ State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, BEA parents urge district to defy mask mandate
A large crowd of people piled into the Bald Eagle Area High School auditorium Wednesday evening to discuss the statewide mask mandate in schools, with many — including a state lawmaker — asking the district to defy the controversial order.
During the special school board meeting, state Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, R-McElhattan, said “a mandate is not a law” and asked board members to “stand up against” the governor and “tyranny.” The governor and acting health secretary didn’t have the authority to issue the mask mandate that went into effect Sept. 7 for all K-12 school buildings, she said.
She asked the school board to “hold the line” and make decisions based on “liberty and freedom.”
“If it was about science, we would not have had 109,000 people crammed into the Beaver Stadium. This is not about the science. ... This is about power and control over our kids,” Borowicz said.
She continued: “Tyrants don’t stop, so if you comply here, compliance to tyranny breeds more tyranny, period. And what you’re trying to protect will be lost also. The only way to stand up to tyranny is to stand up against it, have we not learned that?”
At least three lawsuits have been filed challenging the state’s order, which Gov. Tom Wolf said was necessary after most of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts did not impose their own mask mandates. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends universal masking inside schools to keep students safe for in-person schooling.
Twenty-seven other people spoke during public comment, with the majority asking the board not to enforce the mask mandate — allowing parents instead to choose if their child wears a mask — and to keep the schools open. Earlier this week, BEASD Superintendent Scott Graham wrote there was a possibility of temporarily moving the high school and Wingate Elementary to remote learning, due to the number of COVID-19 cases and quarantines.
During the board meeting, Graham said “anecdotal evidence” shows the district has had substantially more cases this year than compared to last year at this time.
“If you remember, we didn’t have two cases at Wingate until the end of September last year. We have had nine and possibly a tenth case in a six day period. At the high school, we’ve had now close to 20 cases since school started, we have 170 students on quarantine,” Graham said.
He said all of last school year, they had less than five cases that could be traced back to being caught at the school. That has not been the case this year. Graham said they’ve seen one student case cause up to seven other cases within the school.
Despite that, they’re not going to shut any school down at this point, Graham said.
He said the pandemic has been politicized from the beginning and understands the frustration with the mandate. Though they haven’t had any serious COVID-19 cases with students, the district has seen “somewhat serious cases” with the staff, he said.
Another point of contention with parents was contact tracing and quarantines. Several parents said quarantine should be only “for the sick” and causes healthy students to miss many days of school.
Jodi Rice said among her four kids, they have had 19 instances of contact tracing. Together, her kids have missed more than 200 days of in-person instruction, not including when the school district was remote. One of her kids alone has missed more than 80 days due to quarantines.
“I would recommend that you tell the solicitor to get ... creative because that’s what those lawyers are good at. Tell him to find a loophole. There’s got to be something. ... We have to do something. The mask mandate and the contact tracing are destroying our lives.”
Graham said they’re trying to find a way to reduce the quarantines.
“I’m going to be looking at ways where we can see if legally, we can cut down on the number of quarantines that we’re doing, because it’s not sustainable for anyone,” Graham said.
Board President Tina Greene said if the student who is found to be positive isn’t wearing a mask, then those who are wearing a mask around them will be a contact. But if the student who is found to be positive has a mask on, those who are masked around them won’t be a contact.
Greene suggested that parents find a “workaround” to the mask issue.
“I don’t want my kid in a mask either, but I want him to play football and I want him in school, that’s really important to me,” she said. “There’s all different types of styles of masks, I can tell you which one he’s wearing, I can tell you where it came from. I can tell you it lets a lot of air in.”
The next BEASD school board meeting is set for 7 p.m. Oct. 14, with a work session and/or executive session held at 6 p.m. (if needed), in the middle/high school auditorium.
This story was originally published September 23, 2021 at 3:55 PM.
