Anti-mask tweets stir schools debate
The Lake Local school board in Stark County is expected to decide within weeks whether to require students to wear masks in schools with classes set to resume in August.
At least one school board member appears to believe that the wearing of masks don’t prevent or reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus and his social media comments have created outrage by some Lake community members.
School board member Derrick Bailey appears to have posted on Twitter on July 12 a message that states, “the quicker we get it and build up herd immunity the better and faster we can get this behind us.”
While Bailey did not return a message from The Canton Repository to confirm the authenticity of the Twitter account, the person behind the @derrickbailey4 account identified himself as Bailey, a local real estate agent, and provided a phone number that matches the number listed for Bailey on Lake Local’s website.
The district’s superintendent, Kevin Tobin, said he will recommend the board follow health officials’ guidelines, which strongly recommend that students grades 3 and above wear masks in schools when they cannot be more than 6 feet apart. The Ohio Department of Health is already generally requiring all school staff to wear masks.
“As the superintendent, I support what the Ohio Department of Health has put out there, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the regulations and guidelines, and those guidelines are, if you can’t socially distance more than 6 feet, that you should definitely have masks on that will contain the spread of COVID-19.”
Tobin said school staff and the board are working on a plan to reopen the schools as scheduled on Aug. 18. He said a policy on wearing of masks are part of those conversations. But he said he couldn’t say yet when the plan would be released.
On the school district’s website, Tobin has posted a message that states no plan would be approved prior to Wednesday with the plan being presented no later than Monday. But the message states the plan would offer parents a choice between sending their children to get in-person learning at school or a learn-at-home option through online instruction.
Most of the Stark County public school districts that have released their back-to-school plans are requiring students to at least wear a face covering while on the school bus and are requiring older students to wear them while not sitting at their seats in the classroom.
On Twitter, Bailey has been posting tweets about his opposition toward requiring the wearing of masks for at least a month. But it was his comments last week that began to catch the eye of people who described themselves as Lake parents, educators and alumni.
On Thursday, he posted a link to a video entitled “Why Face Masks DON’T work, according to SCIENCE,” directed at the Twitter account of Gov. Mike Dewine with the hash tag #realscience.
In response to a tweet by Dewine calling for people to wear masks, Bailey posted, “Very evident you didn’t say they work to stop the spread, because they don’t work . ... Wrong mask could actually cause harm.”
In another comment, Bailey posted,
“A lot of students don’t believe in the masks theory. I’ll advocate for them and the constitution.”
Bailey’s fellow board member, Deborah Cain, said she had not read Bailey’s tweets as of Sunday night. But at a board meeting last week, she said Bailey had expressed that compelling him to wear a mask would be an infringement of his freedom.
Cain said she believes that people should generally wear masks because it prevents infections. But unless the state mandates that students wear masks, the school district could not effectively enforce such a requirement.
“I’m not opposed to the situation of students wearing a mask, but if their parents object, I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it right now,” said Cain, a retired teacher. “I do think enforcing this is a very difficult situation. Again, you’re taking the time away from classrooms. You’re having administrators deal with this. You’re having teachers deal with this . ... I look at it as pretty much a no-win situation.”
Cain added, “if we get to the point where ... everybody has to wear a mask, maybe this outbreak has become so serious, we really have to look at, are we really serving our kids best by teaching them in person?”
Asked about what appeared to be Bailey’s tweets about mask mandates, Tobin said, “obviously each board member has their own opinions and philosophies and so on and so forth on such things as masks ... Unfortunately, I believe that masks have become a political football in our country.”
He added, “the end goal is to get our kids back in school but, as always, we have to keep not only our kids but our staff safe.”
This list is compiled from voluntary submissions by parents to hospitals.