The North Penn School District Board of Directors unanimously voted on Thursday night to require masks indoors for all elementary students, teachers, staff and visitors, following two hours of mostly civil public comment.
Secondary level students, teachers and staff have an option to wear or not wear a mask indoors. The decision to require masks at the secondary level will depend upon COVID-19 and its variants’ transmission levels.
“In regard to the mask, which is the clear issue of the night, the plan is to mandate for the elementary schools and to continue to peg the option to mask (for the secondary level) to community transmission rates,” said board Vice President Christian Fusco, who seconded board Director Cathy Wesley’s motion to approve the masking mandate.
Per the district’s health and safety plan, the masks are required indoors at the elementary level for low (0 to 9 cases per 100,000 and less than 5 percent positivity), moderate (10 to 49 cases per 100,000 and 5 to 7.9 percent positivity), substantial (50 to 99 cases per 100,000 and 8 to 9.9 percent positivity), and high (more than 100 cases per 100,000 and more than 10 percent positivity) levels. Masking is optional outdoors at the elementary level, as long as cases do not reach the high level.
For secondary, masks are recommended at the low and moderate levels, but required at substantial and high levels. Outdoor masking at the secondary level is optional for all levels except high.
Masking on buses is required by federal mandate, said Superintendent Dr. Curt Dietrich.
Dietrich said, as of Wednesday, the data in the North Penn municipalities showed 61 cases per 100,000.
“We are presently in the substantial range and the health and safety plan calls for two weeks in that same range for a change in status. We’re concerned that, as it appears with the modeling we are looking at, that we will stay in substantial for at least a while,” Dietrich said. “By the start of school, we would be in substantial for start of two weeks and require students to be masked.”
Assistant Superintendent Dr. Todd Bauer said school lunch plans would maintain seating charts for contact tracing purposes and enforce masks in the lunchroom, except when eating or drinking.
The board is also allowing teachers to teach unmasked in certain situations.
“If the teacher is fully vaccinated and, in the teacher’s professional opinion, if they are more than six feet away from children doing a lesson, they would have that latitude to drop masks during that time period,” Dietrich said. “We talked about some lessons in the phonemic area, where if the teacher is fully vaccinated, is in front of the class, away from students, and be able to effectively deliver the lesson, we would allow that.”
Dietrich said a doctor’s note permitting a student to not be masked would be accepted by the district. The school days would have mask breaks, he said. Schools also have supplies of masks to provide to students who forget masks, he said.
“In the health and safety plan, it does call for North Penn to engage in an assurance testing program, and that would be required. However, if a staff member is vaccinated and can show proof, they would not be required to participate in that,” Dietrich said.
Bauer told the board that masking guidance apply to all visitors on campus.
“If events are optional outdoors, then that would be the expectation of visitors to the campus,” Bauer said.
The vote came after two hours of public comment, where residents and taxpayers expressed one of two things: The demand for free will and the choice to unmask their children in school, and the demand for the school board to follow Montgomery County Office of Public Health and Centers for Disease Control guidance and require masking for students at the elementary level, principally to combat the rise of infections from the Delta variant.
Board President Tina Stoll made the revised public comment directions clear at the beginning of the meeting: The 50 people who pre-registered would be the first to comment, with every speaker allotted two minutes to speak at one of two podiums. The microphone will cut out after two minutes and go to the next microphone.
The board allows a public comment period before and after its business, but Stoll combined both comment periods into one large comment period at the start of the meeting. Then, after all pre-registered persons spoke, Stoll allowed an additional 30 minutes for those who did not pre-register to speak to the board.
Due to the fervor over the masking issue, the school board held the meeting at North Penn High School’s auditorium. Towamencin Township Police and North Penn High School Security were stationed at the back of the meeting room, called in to help keep order if things got out of hand. The board did not want a repeat of last week, where people were reportedly threatened and a verbal spat escalated in the parking lot of Penndale Middle School.
“Do not yell out or boo, or you will be asked to leave the meeting,” Stoll said.
Resident Joanne Oropeza supported a masks-optional policy.
“I’m not here asking to take anyone else’s rights away from wearing a mask. I support your right to do so,” she said. “We have to choose what is best for our children. No parent wants harm to come to their child. They’re the ones who have the best interest for children at heart, not a school board.”
Oropeza said masks have led her autistic child to struggle, affecting learning and delaying him further. His anxiety and OCD soared, she said, and he had bloody noses daily.
“Masks all day cause more damage,” Oropeza said. “Kids are fine if they wear masks. That is false.”
Katie Hersh, of North Wales, told the board she was a Democrat who voted for all of them. However, she supported a mask-optional policy.
“Leave the medical decisions to the health department,” Hersh said. “When a mask mandate comes from the county or state, enforce that.”
Hersh said it was “just a piece of cloth” that is a learning impediment.
Husband and wife team Mike and Vicky Flannery, of North Wales, got their turns at the podium.
“I see people that fall into three categories: Ignorant, greedy, and evil. The time to figure out what group you fall into has come and gone,” Mike Flannery said to the board. “If you are sitting on the stage and pushing masks, and Critical Race Theory, and vaccines on these kids, you are evil. Masks and CRT are poison, period, and you know it.”
Flannery said the school board “operates in the shadows” and skims and scams behind taxpayers’ backs to rob tax money.
“Robbing wasn’t good enough,” he said. “You are agents of chaos pushing poisons in our schools. Your handlers lied to you and promised we wouldn’t notice. They lied to you … we are freedom loving patriots and we are everywhere.”
Vicky Flannery said they moved to the North Penn district for academics and athletics. Sadly, she said, the district is truly fraught.
“Children are your political pawns for … raising our taxes, and now you will potentially enforce children to wear masks,” she said. “If you are truly concerned for your community, would you be hosting a Crawford Stadium pep rally before school starts up?”
She said the board are “community villains.”
“The super spreaders are the board and this unregulated event,” Flannery said, before being cut off at the two-minute mark.
Resident Lauren Riley said she was in favor of mask mandates for all school levels.
“The board need only to follow the published guidance,” she said.
Mask requirements, Riley said, would decrease the need for quarantine closures and virtual education.
Resident Sarah Hoffman was disappointed the community was still having a debate about masks. An optimistic summer is not our current reality, she said, as COVID cases are rising across the county.
“Maybe we can agree, if nothing else, we want schools open and in school buildings, but we haven’t created the environment for that to happen,” Hoffman said. “You either want to end the pandemic, or don’t. You can’t have it both ways.”
Montgomery Township resident Debbie Zinton spoke on behalf of the children. She told the public how her great niece became violently ill, but had no COVID symptoms. Eventually, she was diagnosed with Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, or MIS-C.
“CHOP has a floor full of children hooked up to tubes. They have constant testing and medications to bring all systems under control … Many have heart damage and kidney damage, and have to be tested now for the rest of their lives,” Zinton said. “I don’t care if 10 percent get MIS-C, do they really want their children to be one of those 10 percent or 20 percent? I’m asking you to go with a mask mandate. Kids do not show symptoms and get very sick with COVID, but if it goes on to MIS-C, then they do get very sick.”
Lansdale resident Jennifer Svetlik supported a revised health and safety plan to require masks indoors at the elementary level. She said the children are getting the benefits of an in-school education.
“I express my gratitude to the school leadership for their hard work in this challenging and volatile time,” Svetlik said.
Samantha Ferry, of Hatfield, was against a mask mandate. Masks are useless after 20 minutes and germs get re-inhaled into the lungs, she said.
“A majority died (from the Spanish Flu) from secondary infection – bacterial pneumonia from masks,” Ferry said. “Masks impede oxygen flow and aren’t porous enough to dissipate (carbon dioxide). It increases the risk of carbon dioxide poisoning”
Eric Knoblach, of Montgomery Township, said everyone cares about the community and the children.
“We want to be sure our school board considers our point-of-view in making a decision,” he said. “This time last year, Montgomery County averaged 42 cases per day. Today, we are averaging 130 and cases are going up. If cases rise and remote learning is required, many of us here will wish we did more.”
Beth Staab, of Montgomery Township, urged a vote for masks.
“The viral load (of Delta variant) is a thousand times more and it’s transmitting faster,” she said. “Kids are being affected more.”
Jessie Bradica, of Upper Gwynedd Township, told the board there is a fine line between equity and student safety.
“For three years, the board has invested an equity to shrink learning gaps through staff hirings, professional development, and resources. Yet, the board shut down schools and forced virtual learning in the lowest period of COVID transmission, then opened schools when transmission began surging, stayed open through the peak of transmission, and now will force only unvaccinated to quarantine,” she Bradica said. “Every one of those decisions only widen learning gaps of those who need equity the most.”
Bradica said the health and safety plan development has taken away resources to ensure the board is making the best decisions to keep children safe.
“Yet, this board has an outstanding lawsuit from a child who was not protected from years of classroom abuse. Parents have been begging this board for appropriate action to be taken when an employee received a DUI and was arrested while being paid to chaperone an out-of-state event,” Bradica said. “Last summer, the board upheld equity when they fired an employee for questioning the BLM movement in a repost on her private Facebook page, which has now cost this district an undisclosed amount of money in a lawsuit settlement.”
“We are united in the fact that we all love our children and this community,” she said. “No one wants harm. We want our right to make the healthiest and safest choice for our children.”
Yanni Lambros, of Lansdale, who owns Koffee Korner and is running on the Republican ticket for Lansdale Borough Council, called the board hypocrites.
“You try to force mask and vaccines with false science and narratives … I’m here to call you out, and anyone else pushing an agenda. Mrs. Stoll’s husband at the last meeting was the one who called police and harassed my friend Zach. There was another woman with two masks who yelled at a six-year-old girl, ‘I hope you end up on a ventilator.’ That’s the side they’re pushing,” Lambros said.
Resident Jonathan Neal felt sorry for the board for the harassment from the community.
“If people don’t want kids to wear masks, they can go somewhere else. They can pay to go somewhere else to give them that,” Neal said. “Everyone has choice.”
Samantha Ferry’s husband called the board “cowards.”
“Out of the 15 up here, anybody cam make it optional. But you already made up your mind and you’re all cowards for it,” said Ferry, of Hatfield Township. “Youse (sic) are. We don’t co-parent with you guys. We make the health choices for our children, not any one of you guys.”
Ferry, quoting a fellow Marine, told the board, “We are not going anywhere.”
“We will win,” Ferry said, “and we will embrace you as allies if you choose to side with us.”
Despite the intensity of portions of the public comment period, school board Director Jonathan Kassa said after the meeting that he was happy to see a return to order.
“The respect for decorum on display tonight proves that this community answered our call for a higher standard of civility. Cooler heads prevailed tonight. I’m so proud to serve the entire North Penn community because everyone respects the value of common sense over rhetoric,” said Kassa. “We pulled together, from all sides and perspectives, to rise above the noise and nonsense we see degrading democracy elsewhere. A good reason to be North Penn proud.”
See also:
Upcoming School Board Meeting Moved to High School Auditorium, Public Comment Time Reduced
Police Called After Tempers Flare Over Mask Policy at North Penn School Board Meeting
Build-A-Bag Backpack and School Supply Drive Looking for Donations and Local Partnerships
Critical Race Theory Not Part of Required Curriculum in Pennsylvania, Department of Education Says
