Chariho School Committee Policy Subcommittee votes to rescind its masking policy

"...the thing that I worry about the most is the safety of the students. You have people coming in [to schools] with face coverings, and you can't see who they are. You can't identify them."

A slight majority of Chariho School Committee members are members of, affiliated with, or sympathetic to the ideas promulgated by Moms for Liberty. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Moms for Liberty was “originally established to combat what it considered controversial COVID-19 safety measures in schools, mostly centered around masking.”

Still, it was surprising to see the Policy Subcommittee decide to recommend the rescission of the masking policy adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The policy, adopted to ensure compliance with federal regulations and to secure ESSER funds, lies dormant now that the pandemic is more or less under control thanks to the wide availability of COVID-19 vaccines.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the transcription. “Audience members” refers to the roughly 25 people in attendance who are there to follow the Policy Subcommittee meeting.

Committee Chair Polly Hopkins: Policy for masks and masking. I requested to delete it.

Committee member Donna Chambers: Delete it?

Polly Hopkins: Yep. The COVID, I don’t know what the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE)’s recommendation is on this. COVID’s long passed. Face masks. There was a lawsuit brought against the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) by a group of parents, and it was against the face masks because a lot of parents did not believe that they, according to Dr. Fauci himself, don’t work. So we - the lawsuit settled - I can’t say “we” because I was not in that first tier group - but the Rhode Island Department of Health settled after discovery and was never able to produce any information that face masks work.

So the Rhode Island Department of Health told everyone in the state that they must and should [wear masks] - and then they backed down and said, in their wording, “it was mandated.” Well, it was really just a suggestion, but they kind of made everybody believe that it was mandated. It was quite a beautiful thing to see.

This is titled Policy for Face Masks and Face Coverings - COVID-19. COVID-19 is gone, and the thing that I worry about the most is the safety of the students. You have people coming in [to schools] with face coverings, and you can’t see who they are. You can’t identify them. You can probably only identify them by their height, but there are no height marks here at the doorway.

It’s not a safe situation for kids.

Committee member Linda Lyall: But we can’t deny [entry to] a person wearing a face mask if they want to wear one.

Polly Hopkins: If it’s a safety issue, they should. Somebody’s covering their face and coming into a school with underage children is a safety issue.

Audience Members: But people are doing it for health reasons.

Linda Lyall: People wear them in Walmart

School Committee Attorney Jon Anderson: There are people who are doing it for health reasons.

Polly Hopkins: I know.

Jon Anderson: And there are people who do it for religious reasons. I think the last thing the school committee would want to do is adopt a policy that contravenes a person’s religion.

Polly Hopkins: We’re not talking about adopting any policies. COVID is over. We don’t need this policy. We don’t need to have it sitting in the list of policies. And to be honest, if somebody is wearing a mask because they’re worried about being in a crowd, the mask isn’t going to help.

Audience Members: [About to speak and cut off]

Polly Hopkins [exasperated]: I know! I’ve had this conversation with my dad all the time. He’s 83.

Audience Members: I’ve been 40 years in healthcare. You’re wrong.

Polly Hopkins: Healthcare is different. Healthcare, honestly, we can get down to the nits and everything about that, and why they’re used in healthcare. That’s a different story. We’re in a school and we need to think about the safety of the students above everything else. There’s no policy where we’re going to say you can’t come into the school if you have a mask on, obviously, but we don’t need this.

Linda Lyall: Okay, so I’m confused.

Jon Anderson: So am I.

Linda Lyall: Yeah, I was just going to say, okay, so this policy covers, I believe, the students and the teachers when they’re in school,

Polly Hopkins: COVID-19.

Linda Lyall: COVID 19 in school. And I agree with you. There’s no more COVID-19. Well, there’s still COVID-19, but yeah. I agree with the second thing you just said, that we can’t stop people from coming into the schools with masks on if they need it for health reasons.

Polly Hopkins: It’s not - I’m on the school committee. That’s up to the admin and whoever’s running the building.

Linda Lyall: Could you reiterate, then? The purpose of getting rid of this policy is to what? You started saying, “because people come into the building, they have face masks on, and it could be scary and whatnot.” Now I’m confused. You want to get rid of it only because you don’t think we need it anymore?

Polly Hopkins: Absolutely.

Donna Chambers: That’s what I’m hearing.

Polly Hopkins: We don’t need it. First of all, because COVID…

Linda Lyall: I understand.

Polly Hopkins: My second justification was that the Rhode Island Department of Health couldn’t, and I wrote here, “cannot provide peer-reviewed data even suggesting that masks work.” So if our own health department can’t provide that data, and it’s been years, then I think maybe we should take this policy out of the mix. Let people decide for themselves. Personal liberty. Do you want to wear a mask? Go ahead. But then the administration has to say, I can’t see half of that person’s face. I’m going to have to stay at an angle where I can see them better. There are other precautions you’re going to take.

Superintendent Gina Picard: I think the only reason we had to do this policy was to get our ESSER funds (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund), which was a requirement as part of the federal law. I mean, now it doesn’t exist. So I think what you’re asking is that the policy be deleted from the school committee policies. I would have to double-check. I don’t think, because all our ESSER funds are spent, that there’s any other thing I’m not thinking of...

Linda Lyall: ...that it’s not required.

Jon Anderson: I just want to make sure that if there’s a person, for example, who is of a Muslim background and they wear a veil...

Gina Picard: But you could do that without this policy...

Jon Anderson: Well, I share Linda’s confusion in that Ms. Hopkins has indicated that wearing a face mask at all is dangerous. And that...

Polly Hopkins: I did not say that at all.

Audience Members: Yes, you did. She said it is dangerous.

Polly Hopkins: It is a safety issue…

Jon Anderson: Right.

Polly Hopkins: ...and it is a factor for safety. I didn’t say it was dangerous.

Jon Anderson: That’s exactly what you said. And I’m saying that there are people who, for sincerely held religious beliefs, will wear a covering on their face. There are also people who disagree with you regarding the health concerns. For example, when Superintendent Michael Ricci was doing chemo, he wore a mask. If there is a student doing chemo and wants to wear a mask, I want to make very sure that our policy allows them to wear a mask

Gina Picard: Or even an employee.

Committee member Patricia Pouliot: This policy is just obsolete.

Polly Hopkins: Yeah, it’s obsolete. It’s for COVID-19. It specifically says that at the top, and whatever we might feel about how masks work or don’t work, the policy is moot. We don’t need this. Get this out. If somebody is a Muslim and wearing face coverings or somebody is wearing a mask for health reasons, the staff and the administration can handle it. I have no doubt about that. But for us, as a school committee, we don’t need this.

Linda Lyall: To be sure, you’re saying this is irrelevant now and moot, and that’s why you want to get rid of it. Not about the safety stuff.

Donna Chambers: Can I get acknowledged, please? I don’t see any reason to remove it. Yes, it does say COVID-19. No one in this room can assure us that that won’t happen again. If you read the latest news, it’s possible. But the policy can be changed when it needs to be changed. It’s about how we handle and respond to pandemics in the schools. This is one of the policies. I do not see any reason to remove a policy that already exists, even though it’s dormant right now, or could be dormant. That’s my feeling.

Audience Members: Change the title.

Donna Chambers: We’ve never removed policies, have we?

Linda Lyall: Oh, sure, you can get rid of a policy.

Gina Picard: Yeah, you can.

Polly Hopkins: This one was about COVID.

Donna Chambers: Then cross out COVID-19

Polly Hopkins: Is the governor still working off the emergency? [laugh] I don’t know...

Audience Members: I view the news regularly, and I honestly cannot say that I have read or heard anything about COVID and its variants being eradicated.

Laura Chapman: I haven’t heard that either.

Audience Members: So don’t say it’s not. It is. And if you want to get into an argument about whether masks are an effective way of [preventing the spread], that’s another discussion. But either way, we’re still talking about COVID.

Donna Chambers: Well, I will say I’ll not vote to remove this from our policy. It’s dormant, but it’s no big deal to leave it there as far as I’m concerned.

Laura Chapman: But Gina, were you saying that if somebody wants to wear a mask, then you don’t need the policy in particular? Could they still do it if they want to?

Gina Picard: The policy had to be created because, to request ESSER funds, we had to comply with the federal mandate.

Laura Chapman: And we don’t have ESSER funds anymore, so...

Gina Picard: I don’t want to speak out of turn. I want to double-check, but my understanding is that we’ve expended all our funds, so this policy would no longer be required. I want to just double-check.

Donna Chambers: But it was required because of the health and safety of the children. Nobody in this room can guarantee that that will never happen again. Removing a policy that already exists - these policies take a lot of work to put together, and to take it out and throw it in the trash - that is not the right thing to do. Let it sit dormant. People don’t recognize it right now, but I can’t see removing it.

So, do we take a vote or what?

Polly Hopkins: I’ll make a motion to delete the policy.

Linda Lyall: We’ll have to send it to the [full] school committee.

Polly Hopkins: Yeah.

Linda Lyall: Can I just ask another question? Are there any policies in our health and safety policy or any other policy that address things of this nature that are not as specific as COVID?

Gina Picard: I have to check.

Jon Anderson: Our 504 policy. [Note: 504 is a federal law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal funding, including public schools.]

Gina Picard: We do have some medically fragile children sometimes who have different treatments, or even their parents.

Linda Lyall: And then, to this gentleman’s point, we don’t know. We hope that we don’t go back to pandemic whatevers, but it would be easy enough to reinstate the policy, correct?

Audience Members: Not if you make it go away. You’d have to rewrite it. It’s easier to leave it and change the words.

Laura Chapman: Well, wouldn’t that guidance come down from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and all that stuff, then you have to be…

Polly Hopkins: Well, this is a five-year-old policy too, so we should review it, update it, or make a decision... I mean, all the writing will be there, should we need another one to, I don’t know, Policy for Face Masks and Face Coverings - Bird Flu. We’d have to go through the rigmarole of changing the wording anyway.

Donna Chambers: But the framework is here. It’s a four-year-old policy. It was revised four years ago.

Jessica Purcell: My suggestion would be to take out anything about mandates or requirements, and we could leave in things like we abide by the guidelines set forth by RIDE and RIDOH relating to public health. I don’t know.

Polly Hopkins: I think a lot of parents got annoyed with RIDOH telling us what to do and then, after years of court...

Jessica Purcell: But it is true that we would have to abide. That’s why this policy exists, because we had to abide by RIDOH and federal law to have kids in school and receive funding. So even if it bothers people, it’s true that the district has to do that. I’m just trying to find a common ground.

Audience Members: I would like to go back to one of your initial statements. You said it’s a safety concern if people are wearing masks in the buildings. Could you explain that a little bit to me?

Polly Hopkins: It’s a safety concern, and I’ve seen... kids don’t wear hoods. Why don’t kids wear hoods in schools?

Donna Chambers: Let her finish her question.

Audience Members: But they have to buzz in. We have to see who they are when they come into the building. And if someone’s coming in and they’re wearing a mask, I don’t think we should have the right to say, “You can’t come in because you have a mask on.”

Polly Hopkins: I never said that.

Audience Members: But how are you going to abide by the safety portion of it?

Polly Hopkins: That’s a kid, with an ID, getting buzzed in.

Audience Members: What about parents?

Polly Hopkins: What if we had something at the auditorium where people are all coming in? A couple of meetings ago, there were several people with masks. It’s a safety issue…

Audience Members: So you’re saying that they shouldn’t be allowed in there...

Polly Hopkins: No, of course they should be allowed to come in, but it’s a safety issue. So now it’s just like kids walking down the halls. Why can’t they keep their hoods pulled up? I think we - they’re walking down the hall. My son loves his hood on.

Donna Chambers: That’s another issue.

Polly Hopkins: I think it’s the same kind of thing.

Jessica Purcell: I know, when you started speaking and presented this issue, I think you looped that safety issue in, but we need to stick to this. This policy is not the issue. It’s okay if it’s a concern, but it’s not this agenda item.

Audience Members: My concern is that people be allowed to wear masks if they choose to or if they need to.

Polly Hopkins: Yes.

Audience Members: Okay.

Polly Hopkins: I’ll make a motion to send this to the school committee. I would like to remove it from our policies.

Patricia Pouliot: I’ll second.

Polly Hopkins: All those in favor. Opposed? Donna Chambers is opposed.

And Donna Chambers was the only one of the six to vote in opposition.