Insults, slurs and false claims: SLO County residents, school boards debate mask mandates
Looking out at the crowd of more than 100 people crowded into Lucia Mar Unified School District’s Board of Trustees meeting room in Arroyo Grande on Tuesday evening, district Superintendent Paul Fawcett praised the attendees for their commitment to participating in “the democratic process.”
A few minutes later, Fawcett could barely complete a sentence without being interrupted as some of those community members shouted “tyrant,” “coward” and a host of other slurs at him.
Fawcett was presenting a slideshow detailing the southern San Luis Obispo County school district’s COVID-19 plan. He outlined the federal and state indoor face mask guidelines the district is required to follow.
After Fawcett’s presentation, Joshua Whiteside, an attorney with San Luis Obispo-based law firm Lozano Smith, gave a presentation defining the legalities behind why the district was required to implement an indoor mask mandate.
Whiteside, as well, had a hard time getting through his presentation without several people interrupting him with insults and shouts of protest.
Those two presentations set the mood for the rest of Tuesday night’s meeting, which at various times devolved into shouting matches between attendees and speakers while Lucia Mar board president Don Stewart repeatedly banged his gavel in an attempt to bring order to the meeting.
The community has become fiercely divided around the issue of mask mandates imposed by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a COVID-19 safety precaution for schools.
Two other San Luis Obispo County school districts — San Luis Coastal Unified and Templeton Unified — held public board meetings Tuesday during which they discussed the indoor mask mandates for schools.
Atascadero Unified School District was scheduled to hold a board meeting on Tuesday evening as well, but it was canceled because the district reportedly did not post the agenda at least 72 hours before the meeting, which is required by California’s Brown Act. That meeting has been postponed to Aug. 10 at 10 a.m.
So far, each of the districts has said that it will follow the state and federal mask mandates as required by law.
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California schools must require students to wear face masks
Public and private schools in California must require all students to wear face coverings while indoors, according to the CDPH guidance, and school staff must wear face coverings while in the same room as students.
The CDPH guidance is enforceable by law via a state public health officer order issued on June 11. The local public health department or schools may impose stricter COVID-19 health orders or guidance if they choose, but the state public health officer order is the overarching law.
The CDC has issued an order mandating face masks on school buses, which the California Department of Education has interpreted to be a requirement under federal law, Whiteside said during his presentation at Lucia Mar’s board meeting on Tuesday.
Whiteside expressed some frustration over the CDPH guidelines, which were initially issued on July 12, during his presentation to the board.
“Notably, this was amended last night without any announcement or warning like a lot of the guidance that we’ve been getting from the state, and without much feedback or acknowledgment of some of the concerns that have been expressed by the community throughout this month since this guidance was initially provided,” Whiteside said of the agency’s guidance. “This has been the standard, expected behavior from CDPH.”
Those amendments “reflect updated universal indoor masking recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC,” “clarify modified quarantine recommendations” and “refer to CDPH vaccine verification recommendations,” according to the CDPH’s website.
San Luis Obispo County Public Health Officer Dr. Penny Borenstein supported the state’s mask mandate in schools in a previous interview with The Tribune, saying that it is important to protect unvaccinated kids.
“It is true that, in classrooms, transmission of disease is low,” she said. “But that has been able to be the case because of these protective measures.”
In its guidance, the CDPH says masking is the best and simplest way to effectively mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in schools.
“SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is transmitted primarily by aerosols (airborne transmission), and less frequently by droplets,” the guidance says. “Physical distancing is generally used to reduce only droplet transmission, whereas masks are one of the most effective measures for source control of both aerosols and droplets. Therefore, masks best promote both safety and in-person learning by reducing the need for physical distancing.”
Contentious public comment during Lucia Mar school board meeting
Prior to Lucia Mar’s school board meeting, roughly 350 people gathered outside the district offices to protest the mask mandate and call for the recall of three board members The recall effort was launched in May.
Several people brought signs saying “Let our kids breathe.”
Although not everyone could fit inside the board’s meeting room, most tried.
Many community members spoke during public comment to express their disdain over the mask mandate and frustration that the district plans to enforce it.
One woman, Lauren Williams, held a sign that said “masks are child abuse” while she spoke during public comment.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Williams listed several organizations and corporations she said donated to the CDC Foundation. The CDC is primarily funded by appropriations from Congress, though it does receive gifts and donations to “help support a range of CDC programs,” according to its website.
“These are the voices that you’re allowing to obstruct our children from breathing in school,” Williams told the school board during public comment. “Shame on you. Our children have to decide between education and breathing in America? Give me a break.”
Other speakers against the mask mandate, some of whom were from outside of the school district, cited a retracted, debunked study that claimed wearing face masks can cause physiological and psychological effects and potentially have long-term consequences on health.
Originally published in the journal Medical Hypotheses in January, that study was retracted by the publisher, Elsevier, which said “the author’s hypothesis is misleading” because “a broader review of existing scientific evidence clearly shows that approved masks with correct certification, and worn in compliance with guidelines, are an effective prevention of COVID-19 transmission.”
The study also “misquotes and selectively cites published papers” and uses unverified data, speculative statements, the Medical Hypotheses editorial committee said, and the author falsely stated his association with Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.
Other people who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting said the school board is violating their civil liberties by mandating masks be worn in schools by kids.
“I speak tonight as a United States Marine Corps veteran; I swore an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies both foreign and domestic,” Josh Frantz said during public comment. “My hope is that you don’t find yourself in that latter category.”
Frantz cited California Civil Codes 24171 and 24172 which, in essence, protect people from being medically experimented on without consent.
“If you continue on this path, I just put you on notice that I publicly will hold you in contempt,” Frantz said. “I will hold you responsible for not upholding the Constitution if you continue on the path that you are going for violating the law.”
Primarily, speakers against the mask mandate wanted the freedom to choose whether their children wear face coverings in school.
Some show support for state, federal mask mandates
The few people who spoke Tuesday in support of Lucia Mar’s enforcing state and federal mask mandates often had a difficult time commenting without being drowned out by shouts from mask mandate critics.
Joanie Fugitt, a parent and teacher in the Lucia Mar district, said she supports the district upholding the mask mandate.
“Of course we miss the smiling faces. I won’t deny that it is hard to teach phonics,” said Fugitt, who is the wife of a Marine Corps veteran. “But my first duty is the safety of my students. If we need to wear masks for a little while longer to accomplish that, then I am willing to do so.”
Fugitt left the podium to loud boos from the crowd.
Francine Nicole, a parent, was the final person to speak before the school board took a 15-minute break to let people cool down after many audience members angrily shouted insults and protests at her.
During her comment, Nicole pointed to the mask she was wearing and said it’s not abuse, “it’s child safety.”
“We know mask wearing will keep students healthy, safe and supported,” she said Tuesday. “This mask represents safety, respect and concern to others.”
Nicole cited recent statistics from the American Academy of Pediatrics that show COVID-19 cases in children in the United States have recently seen an uptick after declining over the first part of the summer.
This past week, about 72,000 cases were reported in children in the past week, a substantial increase from the week before, when about 39,000 cases were reported, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The school board meeting returned to public comment after the 15-minute break.
After public comment ended at the Lucia Mar board meeting, board trustee Dawn Meek spoke at length about how she is against the mask mandate but worried about the school’s liability risk should it not enforce it.
“It’s not you versus us because we’re trying to focus on the kids,” Meek said during Tuesday’s board meeting. “I feel like there needs to be a balance between taking care of our employees and making their workplace safe, and making them feel okay about going to work. I think that it needs to be a choice.”
In the end, Stewart asked Fawcett, the Lucia Mar superintendent, to closely monitor the COVID-19 metrics in the county, the changing guidance from the state and report back to the board.
Templeton school board debates mask rules
At Templeton Unified School District’s Board of Trustees meeting, also held Tuesday evening, board members heard more than an hour of public comment and then discussed the mask mandates at length.
Opinions expressed by the public commenters at the North County school district’s board meeting largely reflected the sentiments expressed at Lucia Mar’s meeting. Most public speakers supported mask choice.
Members of the national organization Moms for Liberty showed up and several of their members gave comments demanding the district not enforce the state mask mandate.
In a statement to the board, Templeton district Superintendent Aaron Asplund carefully laid out his position on the matter and how the school district staff must, in essence, stay in its professional lane.
“We’re educators, we do the work of educating students and thrown into this context has become an unprecedented conversation around how do we manage a public health situation in the school environment,” Asplund said during Tuesday’s meeting. “We, the staff of the school district, can’t claim to synthesize everything that’s out in the universe relative to the science, the alleged science and the political layers to it.”
Asplund noted that “this is somewhat uncharted territory for us to keep our bearings during a public health crisis, so where do we keep our bearings is an essential question because we don’t presume to know better than the agencies that specialize in public health.”
The sentiment was generally reflected by Lucia Mar Unified and San Luis Coastal Unified school district officials.
This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 3:14 PM.
