Mask outrage at school board meeting: Many parents testify they will pull students from Anchorage schools, some will move

By
Suzanne Downing
-
113

Over 100 people testified at the Anchorage School Board on Tuesday, and most stated that their children’s social, psychological, physical, and emotional health was being put at risk by the superintendent’s mask mandate for the coming school year. Another 914 parents sent emails to the school board on the matter of the masks.

Many said they will pull their children out of the public schools as a result. Most who spoke said that the parents’ rights need to be restored and they won’t send their children to school in masks.

A few noted it was apparent the board had already decided to back Superintendent Deena Bishop on her decision to enact universal mask mandates.

“What happens to the children who choose not to comply?” Kim Paulson asked the board. Would they be expelled? she asked.

Suicides outnumber covid deaths in children and further interventions with masks are a net harm, said one parent. At least two parents said they are now considering moving to the Lower 48, due to the masking of children in the public schools in Anchorage.

Corinthian Wiley said the U.S. prides itself on individual rights, and the mandates are a step toward totalitarianism.

The mask question was treated as an action item on the agenda, but in fact it was a non-action item. The board simply supported the ruling of the superintendent without a vote.

Board member Dave Donley asked the rest of the board if they would agree to ask the superintendent reconsider her plans to accommodate the many parents’ concerns and the testimony given Tuesday night. But his motion died for lack of a second.

Read: Kenai will not mask school children

Read: Anchorage will mask the kids this fall

At several times during the meeting, Board President Margo Bellamy cautioned the crowd to stop clapping, cheering, or yelling, or “next time” she would clear the room. The attendees were generally polite but supportive of each others’ testimony.

Read: Enrollment explodes at no-mask Anchorage Christian Schools

113 COMMENTS

  2. So many white males and female Karens not wearing masks in that photo. They need to resign and let people of color rule the Anchorage schools. These whites act like Plantation bosses of years past pretending they are good to their captive slaves of color just so they can stay in power and keep their jobs. With the exception of Marxist Board President Margo Bellamy (who cautioned the crowd to stop clapping, cheering, or yelling, or “next time” she would lay down an iron fist and clear the room), these school board hypocrites are shameless in their whiteness and refuse to display sufficient guilt for their white skin color. Anchorage deserves better.

      • Race has everything to do with it. After all these are the same fascists that want to brainwash our kids with Critical Race Theory so the kids who are white can be ashamed of their whiteness. Yet this school board clown show is being run by a majority of Marxist whites. So they should practice what they preach and resign in shame of their whiteness. Unless their hypocrites of course. (Which they are. )

    • You can’t be a real person. You have so much hate in your life, completely focused on race. How sad for you.

  3. As much as it sucks, Anchorage residents had a real chance to make a change in the school board last election cycle but instead the majority voted in these bunch of communist. I’m glad though that these parents haven’t given up and are still fighting for their kids future.

    • By not fighting the virus? Not fighting against the virus sounds to me like not fighting for the future of their kids.
      Just putting virus deniers in office doesn’t mean the virus magically goes away. You do understand that, right?

      • And you do understand that the “covid vaccine” doesn’t stopped you from contracting the “deadly” virus right? It’s nothing more than a flu shot right? Because just like the flu shot you might still catch the flu? We never shut down the world for the flu. We were never forced to wear a useless mask to protect our health from the flu. Why is everyone going full lunatic over whether we decide if we should put on a mask or get a jab? I’m not a covid denier. I do know from common sense that there is a virus going around but as the “science” show, kids are less likely to have an adverse effect from contracting the virus unless they have underlying diseases. I like to think we’re still a free nation, so why not let folks make decisions on what they think is best for themselves and their family?

      • Primary source data please showing all the severe illness and deaths of school age children and teachers.

      • You can’t eradicate a virus, you have to live with it. Do you keep your kids home during flu season which is more lethal than Covid for kids? Do you not allow your kids in cars which is also more lethal than Covid? Facts matter.

      • “Suicides outnumber covid deaths in children and further interventions with masks are a net harm..” Greg, demands to muzzle young children 8 hours a day (or more) are not backed by science or statistics. Nor will patronization and silly name-calling help support your opinion. You are free, of course, to mask your own children against a virus that will pass through almost any cloth mask. But how many times a day do kids touch their masks, pull them down below their noses, or under their mouths?

      • How do you fight the virus personally? Have you done anything to get healthy? Have you left the couch and lifted anything? Have you checked your vitamin levels in your blood? How sad it must be to force muzzles on your kids with the hope of not getting a virus, and if you do, you have no hope of surviving. What a completely sad life you must live.

        • This is about the jab. This is not about health or your child’s safety. Why on earth would you put a needle into a child’s arm with no REAL benefit…..
          It’s not safe for anyone. if it was approved there would be no argument amongst the thousands of doctors on both sides of this but it is not safe yet! Even the president has flipped the dialogue on this… cmon

  4. This outcome was predictable. The ASD doesn’t care about what parents want or think. It kowtows to the teachers union. BTW, CDC data show since the pandemic began there were zero Covid deaths for Alaska in those younger than 18 years. The best way to curb the virus is to require vaccinations for all ASD staff and contractor personnel. Follow President Biden’s lead–he requires vaccinations for all federal employees.

    People are finally waking up to how the ASD operates. It doesn’t care one iota about the customer. But it does care about $$$$. So, parents take your kids out of school during the first 3 weeks of October during the student count period for state funding. If your student is not in school during those 3 weeks, then the ASD does not get state funding for that student. ASD does understand money!

    • Good point on cutting funding to ASD. However, if the child is enrolled at the beginning of the school year what is to keep the ASD Staff from keeping the count up regardless of actual attendance. Do you trust them to honestly report true data? After all, union jobs will be on the line.

      • Start massive campaigning against bonds for the schools. Every. Single. Time. It’s worked for the We The People Convention, if someone is willing to do it.

        • I actually funded the BSA which is the formula and the average daily membership (number of students enrolled) decreasing students would decrease funding.

    • Actually, it is my understanding that it is enrollment numbers, not attendance numbers that determine funding.

  5. If Anchorage parents simply remove their children from the Anchorage public schools, and put them in private and/or just keep them out of school until the School District complies with their demands, lack of federal funding for loss of enrollment will force the Superintendent and School Board to rescind the ridiculous mask mandate.

    Thank God for the Matsu!

    • Probably be too late to rescind if people pull their kids out, so the net effect would be to put the ANC school system into receivership.
      Except, the state constitution requires the state to support public education. And you can’t force publicly supported entities into receivership, because they are not a business. The schools would still be in session, but the cost (in dollars) would be high.
      So then what?
      How difficult is it to mask? Do you really think making a kid wear a mask will warp him/her the rest of his/her life? What about the myriad of family squabbles unrelated to anything Covid that families routinely experience. Have we become so emotionally flaccid that we aren’t willing to wear masks (don’t get me started on their efficacy!) because we fear they will harm our children’s emotional health when the real possibility is that they could die or become seriously ill.
      So many questions…

      • No, kids should NOT be masked, Greg,, for the following reasons:
        .
        1) They are at essentially zero risk from the Wuhan Virus, and at essentially zero risk of transmitting it even if they contract it;
        2) All ‘the science’ indicates that long-term and widespread mask wearing does little to nothing in terms of preventing disease transmission;
        3) Most importantly, because this arbitrary, unscientific and authoritarian diktat will only further inculcate in our children a passive submissiveness to, and acceptance of, the rapidly escalating loss of freedom in this country, and tyrannical governmental intrusion into their lives. It is mainly for this reason that I think all the radical leftists love and applaud the mask mandates, to make a very public and visible demonstration to the kids, and to everyone, that “WE are in charge, and you WILL do as we say!”

      • Masking during the entire duration of the school day is unnecessary. There are so many other variables. If the student has symptoms, how far are the desks spaced, simple hygiene protocol. Protocol for janitorial. To wear a mask all day is not healthy. Wearing a mask during transitions, perhaps. Seated at ones desk, out on the playground, really not necessary. Simply blanket masking 8-3, or whatever the attendance duration is, is far too long for anyone’s health.

      • It only takes a few kids going homeschool to loose the salary of one teacher. If enough parents go this route, union teachers jobs will be lost.
        Not sure if Los Anchorage has a home school program but parents do not have to use it, they can use any state homeschool program. When a student is homeschooled, funds are directed to the student, about $2,200 per year, in reimbursements.
        This directly takes funds from the school system and ultimately could cost teachers their jobs.

      • Yes, wearing a mask can indeed cause long-term issues. Oxygen deprivation is real and it builds on itself. What harm does masking cause? Many, if you’ve read any legitimate studies.

    • Yet even vaccinated individuals still catch and pass the virus just like the unvaccinated individual? Make sense much?

    • Funny, those that have had Covid are not getting it. And many of the current cases are amount the vaccinated. The vaccine supposedly will lessen severity and that is great. And many will have enough immunity boost to not get, but you are not guaranteed no virus with the vaccine. Yet if you get it you pretty much are. Immunity from getting virus is greater than that from the vaccine. Hence why would a healthy person who is not at any risk not rather take their chances and just get the virus? When I was a kid parents would literally rally their kids around a kid that has chicken pox or mumps.

      • “Immunity from getting virus is greater than that from the vaccine.” This statement is not true-frankly they don’t know for sure but suspect the immunity from the vaccine is greater than from the virus.

        • Bill Yankee, good to see you back! Only the Cleveland Clinic, medical journal Nature, SIREN study conducted in the UK at the Public Health England (PHE), medRxiv, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, NIH and many others show greater immunity from the infection than the vaccine.
          Of the 3800 receptor binding domain (RBD) on the virus, the vaccine focuses only on the spike, so any mutation to the receptors there decreases vaccine effectiveness. Infection, on the other hand, exposes the body to all of the RBD, to which the body builds antibodies and lymphocyte memory. AND many of these RBD are common with other Corona viruses, so many have some level of prior protection anyway. Our bodies are miraculous creations resulting from thousands of generations facing diseases, from which we evolved multi layered complex means to fight them and survive.

          • Here is virologist Sabra Klein on covid immunity: “Immunity from natural infection starts to decline after 6 to 8 months. We know that fully vaccinated people still have good immunity after a year—and probably longer.”

        • Just out of Israel: ‘Nearly 40% of new COVID patients were vaccinated – compared to just 1% who had been infected previously.’ Arutz Sheva, Israel National News. The actual number is actually less than 1%. Of course, that’s not MSNBC/CNN so you will deny it.

        • Oh, and more: “95% of the severe patients are vaccinated,” “85-90% of the hospitalizations are in Fully vaccinated people.” News Israel.

        • Evidence is showing lasting immunity from infection. Look at Israel. And her Johns Hopkins compatriot, Dr. Marty Makary, says the opposite with equal evidence to make his point for natural immunity. With vaccine side effects, and deaths, primarily do no harm. Time will tell. 518,769 VAERS reports as of two weeks ago.

    • Covid will be here forever. In twenty years it will be looked at just like the flu. 100 years ago the Spanish flew killed countless people (millions??) but did it go away? Nope. It is just the “FLU” today.
      Keep hiding.

  8. What’s funny about these masks is this….If you worked in a factory or production line that had large dust particulates and wore a cloth mask, OSHA would fine and shut down the company. You would be required to wear a sealed mask with filters suitable to your contaminants. It’s all about control.

  10. This supposed mask mandate by Deena Bishop still flies in the face of Mayor Bronson’s declaration that there will be no mandates “on municipal property”. The last time I checked, the school district’s infrastructure was all municipal property.

  11. Please remind me – Besides Dave Donley, which other board members (if any) are against this continued mask mandate ?

  13. Grand Kids attending Anchorage Catholic schools wore masks while in school all last year. The did not like it but at least the were in School.
    Sad but true in order to get back to normal we will have to ALL bend a little.
    Side Bar, last year when the Arch Diocese was edging toward home schooling, the parents, whom 40% are not Catholic said that if that was the case they would not attend Catholic schools. Deal Breaker. Opened the eyes of the Arch Diocese of Anchorage. And to use China Joe s line. “SOB the Catholic Schools were open”.
    Too bad we as taxpayers cannot opt out of paying into the Cesspool, aka ASD.

  14. Bishop is spineless and the parents are finally declaring war on those who have declared war against them and their children
    This is a great thing
    Bring it on

  15. In AK, If you have not gotten the free vaccine, you are liable to yourself as an individual.
    The vaccine works whether you choose to take it or not.
    I’d be interested to know what percentage of teachers have gotten the vaccine or have overcome covid?
    If they have, they should STFU about their (low risk) students having to wear masks.
    It’s become very obvious, teachers unions across the U.S. have NEVER had this much power. Masks are just one of the “tools” being using as a political bargaining chip. If it weren’t masks, they’d be arguing for gloves.

    Bottom line is if teachers and staff are worried about catching covid from their students maybe they should be the ones inside the bubble let the children live a normal life!

  19. So there are close to 50 thousand students in ASD and 100 parents showed up to raise a raucous.
    FAKE NEWS! Move on. My kids don’t mind wearing a mask.

    • From another article on the Anchorage School Board meeting last night:

      “Over 100 parents testified and the board received another 914 emails from parents, most who do not support the superintendent’s actions.”

      That’s over a thousand responses from ASD parents, most of whom do not support this mask mandate. I guarantee there are many more who feel the same as the parents who spoke out last night, but feel that this board, much like the Anchorage Assembly, will ignore their input. They’re right. These meetings are performative and nothing else. Their minds are made up, so parental feedback is futile.

      Many of these parents will quietly pull their children and enroll them in private schools, create home schooling pods or enroll them in any number of home schooling organizations.

      It’s great that your kids don’t mind wearing masks. My kids are out of school, but they would have minded it very much. The school aged children I see out and about don’t seem to like it either. They touch them endlessly, fiddle with them to make them more comfortable, scratch their face, etc. One kid used his mask to stealthily pick his nose at Freddy’s. Masks don’t do those kids any good. I have a hard time believing any kid is exercising proper mask hygiene which makes forcing them to wear masks as performative as our School Board meetings. They do nothing to keep them safe. It’s all do-nothing activism.

      • Masks actually cause harm to those who do not need them. Not only are they filthy concentrators of organisms, they trap CO2 to sometimes toxic levels, and disposable masks often contain harmful Phthalates. In normal children there is no medical reason-and many contraindications-to masking. It could be considered abuse to mask a child.

        • This has all been debunked.
          In a normal society, wearing masks is not necessary. In a pandemic, it could be.
          Wearing a mask isn’t child abuse. It is protecting other children from that child’s sneezes and coughs.
          There is no evidence that wearing masks is harmful so long as they are kept clean or renewed regularly.

          • 1. Study in Germany showed up to 25,000 PPM CO2 (15,000 PPM is toxic)
            2. Multiple studies show nasty cultures after short mask use
            3. Multiple analyses show phthalates in disposable mask filter media, especially the cheap blue ones, and children are especially susceptible to phthalates
            4. Our immune systems develop based upon exposures. Rural kids develop better than city, and farm kids better than rural. Kids need to get dirty for their bodies to build good response (sanitizer is a terrible thing, too)
            This data is all available (we can’t post websites) for any who get their faces out of MSNBC. Or you can continue living in your Maddow/Stelter fantasy world.

  20. There’s no need for masks for children, unlike many geezers children are incredibly resilient and will beat the Chinese flu and many have, natural immunity is the best. Psychologically, of course there will be a negative effect on these kids with a mask mandate, we all know it. I’m glad my kids are out of school, if they weren’t I’d definitely pull them out.

    • And, by masking we inhibit normal immune exposure to build a healthy immune response. It will take years until the evidence becomes clear in this big experiment.

    • Are you afraid that by wearing masks the kids will become bandits? Where is the evidence of psychological damage? How reliable is it, if it exists?
      And no, we don’t all know it.

      • Uh, Principia Scientific International, Children’s Health Defense, American Institute For Economic Research, Psychology Today, The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, among many.
        It’s not just about the child wearing the mask. From infancy people focus to the face to learn emotional responses and attachment. An infant’s point of focus is from the breast to mother’s face. When she is masked, that input is distorted. Just like we now know the damage from lead upon generations exposed to exhaust fumes, which many denied at the time, one day the damage to many in this generation will become evident.

      • Facial expressions convey tons of information and is very important for a growing mind, cognitive dysfunctions can arise later in life if this area is blocked for a length of time, this is an area the school board should have seriously considered.

  21. For a country that killed an entire generation in the womb but tells people to wear masks to save lives – your words are a joke and an embarrassment.
    ” Activism is a way for useless people to feel important, even if the consequences of their activism are counterproductive for those they claim to be helping and damaging to the fabric of society as a whole.” Thomas Sowell
    These people know full well what they are doing. Enough people just need to understand what is going on before it is too late. The left will always use the rights morality against them, don’t forget it.

    !

    • And moreover, QE, the left will never, EVER heed or consider any arguments or protests against their ever-increasingly authoritarian policies and mandates, as they are always incredibly arrogant and utterly, dogmatically convinced that they are right and everyone and everything that opposed them is wrong. That is because statism is, for them, an ersatz religion, and one cannot logically or rationally argue with somebody who holds a dogmatically religious opinion.

  22. Here is a logical solution. Clean and sanitize. Wash your hands…. use sanitizer. Every one do the task… teach the kids how to be sanitary and apperently you need to teach the teachers and staff too. Simple solution for no masks. No one should be subjecting kids to this mask mandate.

    • This denies that fact that the virus is spread through aerosol distribution. It isn’t spread through the oral/fecal route, which is where hand sanitization is important. It is spread by the air we breathe, and the more concentrated the virus is in the air we breathe, such as when someone sneezes in your face, the more likely you are to inhale an infectious dose. Sanitizing doesn’t work for Covid.
      Masks are meant to reduce the spread by limiting the amount of virus in the air. If you have a mask on and you cough or sneeze, the droplets that contain the virus are constrained. That reduces the viral load in the surrounding air. This is well understood by aerosol experts (yes, there is such a thing), but there are still many questions about it, so even that is debatable.
      The one thing that seems most effective is distancing. If you are not in an area where the virus is suspended in the air, you are very likely safe. But that means distancing, and there is nothing magical about the 6 foot distance, it just seemed to the CDC to be a good compromise from not going out where there were people to not going out at all.
      Requiring masks on kids is not a plot to subjugate them. It is a plan to keep them safe.

      • Greg, if you could shut off all the fearmongering from the corporate media propaganda that you so evidently swallow hook, line and sinker, and try thinking independently for once, you would realize that the extreme measures that are being mandated or advocated to ostensibly fight this virus are FAR overblown and unjustified, given the quite small risk to society at large from the virus. I mean, it supposedly has a 0.2% fatality incidence, which is only around 10 times more than an average seasonal flu, and maybe three times higher than an especially bad seasonal flu. Yet we NEVER tried shutting down our economy, or society, and forcing everyone to wear masks, just for the flu. Nor did we do so for the Asian and Hong Kong Flu of the 1950s and 1960, nor did anyone ever suggest such extreme measures at the time. Simply put, your exaggerated fear-based reactions are wildly out of proportion to, and utterly unjustified by, the relatively small risk posed by the virus.
        .
        All you cowering, authoritarian-loving conformists are essentially advocating that we chop off an arm in order to avoid getting a cut on a finger.

      • Thank you Greg, you sound like a thinking human being with some decency and respect for the lives of those around you. I understand that to many, this is a mass conspiracy, but it is as basic as going to the hospitals of most of these cities and listening to the folks who are now pleading for the vaccine, a little more oxygen, not to be intubated and saying good-by to their loved ones over an iPad, who, just weeks ago, were as all knowing as the folks on here posting about the scientific fallacies of masks and vaccines. It is like cancer from smoking, people smoke, but once them, or a loved one goes through the horrifying experience of cancer, their regret is deeper than one can even imagine, thus, we have created laws that seek to protect the public from smoking in public areas. At one time, this was considered obscene, not being able to smoke in the teacher’s breakroom, or smoke in the back of the plane, but low and behold, we actually came to some agreement after understanding that thousands of non-smokers had been diagnosed with cancer through this little thing, second-hand smoke. I know personally the toll of COVID, just a month ago my friend of twenty years, who sounded just like the posters on here, a little intelligent man, tuff as nails, black belts in three martial arts styles, well to do, big fifth wheel, big brand new shiny motor home, just bought an airplane, super bikes, quads and nice cars, the whole American dream, worked for everything, but when his friend, another who didn’t want to be muzzled, brought COVID into the home, it spread like wildfire. Both my friend, his wife, son all got it. He was in the hospital on oxygen for two weeks and is now carrying around an oxygen tank like a little old man, his friend has been intubated for the last month with his daughter sitting at his bedside while he fights for his life and their co-workers niece, who went into the hospital at the same time, died two weeks ago. I don’t need the media to tell me the story, and, this is only one first hand account that I could give.

        • Yeah and thank you for that. Unfortunately you can’t help those that don’t want help. For whatever reason even if it’s just for the sake of putting forth an argument, they will risk it all. So be it.

  23. Hey Greg Forkner it is my body and it is my choice! Oh that only works when one side says it huh. No the conservative part of the population still believes in freedom or what is left of it as with the liberal side, they all think they will be part of the power structure that is forming or are the useful idiots that are being used by their own to gain more control with this Plandemic.
    “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson

  25. The ultimate solution to all problems in education in one word: Vouchers.
    .
    We need to do whatever it takes to give parents vouchers to enable school choice. And, religious schools should be an acceptable choice if fundamental standards are met.

  26. For many leftists, the masks have become a strange kind of “security blanket”. Using government to force others to act as they see fit (the root of all political leftism) through mandates helps them to rationalize their behavior. They become agitated, even violent when anyone suggests an end to the mandates. These are the people who have their two and three year olds masked at Fred Meyer. It shocks me that they don’t see the psychological and developemental damage they are causing their own children.
    Total deaths, from all causes, in the U.S. for the last several years, have been about 2.8 to 2.9 million. The death rate has remained steady. We have no excess deaths. How is there a pandemic if the death rate has remained the same? “covid 19” barely makes the top 3 causes of death, and that is with grossly inflated numbers. Even the cdc admits this.
    – M.John

    • We liken masks to either a Swastika armband or yellow Star of David on the chest. It is a way for good little progressives to self identify to each other. Double masking is a dead giveaway.

  27. In the proverbial words of Iron Maiden: “If you’re gonna die, die with your boots on! ”
    -M.John

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