It was the recommendation of Brownwood ISD Superintendent Dr. Joe Young, and the consensus of the school board, that students and teachers of BISD will continue wearing masks for the final 10 weeks of this school year. Board President Michael Cloy asked for a motion if any board member wanted to change anything. Being no motion, the Board left current mask guidelines in place.
Leading up to the decision, Dr. Young was the first to speak. “When the Governor came out with his Executive Order that masks would be released, it sent shockwaves through school systems across the state,” Young said. The Texas Education Agency guidance came out a few days later for school districts which left the decision about mask usage up to the local school board.
“Before we left for the break, I sent an e-mail to staff telling them that nothing would be decided until today,” Young said. He asked for feedback from the staff. “I received about 40 emails back from various staff members. Those ranged from building administrators to para professionals, quite a few teachers, about a dozen teachers. The middle school put out a survey of their own. The people I reached out to were members of our site-based decision making group. Those are the ones elected by the teachers on their campus to represent them. It also has parents, community members, business representatives.”
Dr. Young said he read each of the emails he received three times. “They are split, not necessarily down the middle, but as you can imagine, there is passion on each side of the issue. There is passion for choice, there’s passion for rights, there’s passion for returning to normalcy. There is also passion for safety and passion for quarantine issues, etc.” Young shared that 26 of the 40 emails were in favor of keeping the current policy while 14 said remove masks.
“My personal opinion is that I don’t know if masks work or not, I’m not that kind of doctor. If you want to find studies that say that masks work, we can find those. If you want to find studies that say masks do not work, I’ve been seeing a lot of those as well. What I do know, as superintendent, is masks keep our kids and our staff members in school. I do know that. My reasoning is not based on whether masks work or not or whether we have the right to choose to wear masks or not. I hate wearing the mask. At the same time, I do know that helps keep Covid from being spread. My recommendation would be to keep the procedures we have in place based on the quarantine issue at the top of the list of reasons. We’ve had kids in and out of school for over a year now. Quarantine rates prior to Spring Break were very low, a few days no kids were out of school. The masks work against quarantine. I think it helps to keep people safe. It gives us a chance to keep people in school and I would like to see us have full classes. I think if we were to remove the mask requirement some people would make the decision to have their kids not come to school which means kids would switch back to remote learning which we know is not as effective.”
Board President Cloy then opened the floor to comments from each board member. Eric Evans expressed his appreciation for Dr. Young’s thoughtful words and agreed with what Dr. Young said. “We’ve got 10 more weeks of school and I think we can hold out 10 more weeks of the frustrating process of wearing a mask.”
Codie Smith said he could go either way on the issue. “The kids in school haven’t said too much about wearing masks day in and day out. I do see up and down the street, at the birthday parties, in our lives, nobody wears them and they’ve been fine. I would like to see them take off and breath and communicate but if it’s to keep school open, keep people in school, that’s a good choice to have them.”
Amary Doremus said she has talked with a lot of different moms and got opinions. “We’ve got 10 weeks left, it’s been working, why change it now. Finish out the year.”
Diane Thompson said “If it’s going to keep kids in school, I think that we should keep wearing the masks. I’ve got mine, I feel like it helps me. We want these kids to stay in school.”
Board President Michael Cloy wrapped up comments by board members. “I’m in the health care profession, I’ve been seeing what this does to our community in all aspects of how it has affected our community. I’ve had people die. I’ve had Covid. I’ve watched all of it, been vaccinated. Part of me thinks I’m bullet proof and I don’t need to do anything anymore, but that’s not true. I think the key thing is what Dr. Young said. You can’t argue with the fact that if you don’t wear a mask, and your exposed, you’re going to get quarantined. If the simple fact is creating an environment where our kids get to stay in school, our goal is to do everything we can to keep kids in school. When we signed on to do this, we all decided we’re going to do what’s best for kids. In this case, I think it’s also what’s best for teachers.”
During the school board meeting Monday night, and prior to the consideration of the policy, the board received public comments from Martha Canon, a local parent who encouraged the continuation of the mask policy as is through the current school year.
In a related item, Superintendent Young talked about the Covid vaccine plan for district employees. Young said he has been coordinating with the Brownwood/Brown County Health Department in getting school employees who want the vaccine, signed up to receive it. “As of Monday afternoon 82 employees had signed up,” Young said, adding he expects to have a vaccine clinic for BISD employees very soon.