Attention SC lawmakers: Give local school boards control over mask mandates
The frustration and desperation in school board member Patrice Rhinehart-Jackson’s voice was palpable even on a livestream.
“I don’t want to lose another life within the district,” she said as the Aiken County Board of Education considered what it could do to combat the spread of COVID-19 among the district’s more than 23,000 students and 3,300 employees.
As of Tuesday night, more than 4,000 of the district’s students were in quarantine and five members of the school district family - two students, ages 9 and 15, and three staff members - have died from COVID-19.
The meeting began with a moment of silence for the dead.
“I’m pleading with you to put on a mask,” Rhiehart-Jackson said.
Similar scenes have played out in school districts across South Carolina since students returned to their classrooms.
Like Aiken County, school districts here are battling not only a deadly virus. They must also take on the obstacles placed before them by the South Carolina State Legislature.
The legislature included a now infamous two-sentence proviso in the state budget forbidding districts that take public funds from instituting mask mandates.
“The legislature seems to (want to be) the school board,” Board Chairman Dr. John Bradley lamented. “They’re politicizing the education of our children.”
The nine-member board voted unanimously to issue a resolution urging the Legislature to eliminate the proviso and give school boards some freedom to make their own choices.
It also spent the rest of the meeting talking about ways to prevent COVID-19 from spreading and what would ultimately trigger the entire district to return to all remote learning.
Every single member of the State Legislature should be forced to watch these board meetings and see what their careless decision has caused.
In Aiken County, the board heard from its professional staff about remote learning, remote instruction, live streaming options and more. They heard that while all students in the district should now have laptops to use at home many do not have reliable or, in some cases, any internet access.
They heard a suggestion, submitted by a parent to a board member, about possibly diving classrooms between the masked and unmasked. They talked about possible incentives - a pizza party for the masked, perhaps.
It was painful to watch knowing that this didn’t have to be.
How could any member of the legislature watch the events in Aiken County or anywhere else in our state and not understand that the ripple effects of tying school district’s hands with the ban on mask mandates are hurting our children and our communities?
We support Aiken County’s resolution and again urge Gov. Henry McMaster and the legislature to end the madness.
The legislature is full of members who will spout off about the importance of local control, yet they blocked local school boards from doing what’s best for their individual communities.
Repeal the proviso and return control to South Carolina’s schools.
This story was originally published September 8, 2021 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Attention SC lawmakers: Give local school boards control over mask mandates."