Thursday’s CCSD School Board Meeting was met with nonstop COVID-19 and mask mandate opposition.
“I am sick to my stomach knowing that there are children that look up to you guys, they want to be you guys,” parent speaker Jamie Sellard said. “You’re sitting on a board, you have prestige and you worked hard for that position. You’re lying to our children, you’re telling them a vaccine is safe.”
The meeting started with a 15-minute delay due to consistent outbursts from parents and members of the audience. One woman had to be handcuffed and removed by CCSD Police for refusing to leave the school board meeting and wear a mask.
“You failed all of our children from so many different angles,” public commenter Lorena Cardenas said while in a hazmat suit to show that masks are ineffective. “You failed to represent the interest of the voters who put you in these seats. We demand you resign.”
As the meeting continued, a woman named Jordan Hankins who is black, who brought up putting an anti-racism policy on the agenda, was publicly booed, laughed, with one yelling, “You’re the racist.”
“This is a business meeting, we have business to conduct for the district,” Board President Linda Cavazos said. “We are having it in a public venue but we will clear the room and all that will be available is the live streaming. I am going to ask you again to please stop doing that and give this speaker the courtesy of letting her speak with her public voice.”
Other speakers also called extended mask wearing and emergency use vaccinations, “abuse.” While others called board members “drug pushers” for encouraging vaccinations and went on to compare them to the medical experiments done in the Holocaust. Unvaccinated employees are required to test once a week, and many teachers complained that the new mandate was unfair.
“We know that if you’re vaccinated you’re transmitting COVID-19. We know that you’re getting sick with COVID-19,” Sellard said. “So it is absolutely medical discrimination to force people that are unvaccinated to be tested. While allowing people that are vaccinated to not get tested, to not quarantine, you are punishing our children and it’s disgusting.”
Once the unrest was somewhat settled the next point of concern revolved around the $770 million surplus of federal funds the district attained. One teacher offered the board some ideas, such as giving each school one million dollars to spend on programs and gifting employees a bonus for their dedication.
“Give every employee a two to three thousand dollar bonus for working through the dumpster fire that was last year,” CCSD teacher Sarah Conroe said. “Telling us to practice self care and [sending] a kindly worded email, while we were also fielding dozens of emails [and] piling up on more work, I feel like the money would be appreciated more.”
