School masks silently protested
FRANCONIA » The main topic on the agenda for Souderton Area School Board’s Jan. 12 Finance Committee meeting was preliminary information on what will become the district’s 2022-2023 budget, but the topic on the minds of about a dozen people in the audience was demonstrated by the signs they silently held up.
Those signs included messages of “Do what you promised,” “Mask choice,” “We elected leaders to lead,” and “Unmask our kids, teachers and staff.”
Some of the group wore shirts from last year’s school board election campaign, apparently to remind re-elected board members that the protesters had supported the winning candidates in the elections.
Souderton Area’s approved Health & Safety Plan recommends that masks be worn in school, but makes masking optional.
With a surge in the number of Covid cases locally and nationwide, however, the district said when school resumed Jan. 3 after winter break that masks would be required for the next two weeks.
The district’s Covid-19 dashboard showed that as of Jan. 7, 108 district students and 20 staff members had active Covid cases.
Inclusion on the dashboard does not mean the person who is infected got the virus at school, the district points out.
During the time when members of the public were given a chance to ask questions, one audience member took the opportunity to attempt to raise the issue of masks by responding to an earlier statement that many students are taking gap years after graduating from high school.
“If children are taking a lot of gap years, it seems like maybe they don’t have a lot of hope for the future,” the woman said. “How can children have hope for the future when our Health and Safety policies have kind of stripped them
of the joys of their childhood and told them they could get sick and die any day now?”
The question period was only for agenda items, Assistant Superintendent and Director of Human
Resources Christopher Hey said.
“It just might have something to do with the gap years. That’s all I’m saying,” the woman said. “We haven’t given them much hope for a future.”
District officials have previously said the goal of Covid-related policies is to keep students in class as much as possible.