Supporters of three Mt. Pleasant school board members facing a recall over voting to require masks rallied before Monday night’s school board meeting, showing organization for the first time. It was a mirror image of the previous school board meeting.
Members of the board who entered the main public entrance to the performing arts center in the district’s high school did so to the applause of people carrying signs and wearing shirts indicating their support. That included Amy Bond, board president, and Wiline Pangle, a trustee serving a partial term.
Courtney Stegman, board secretary, didn’t attend Monday evening’s meeting.
The rally kicked up shortly after 5:30 p.m., with most supporters wearing yellow shirts with the board member’s names on them.
Absent were recall supporters, who’ve attended school board meetings since before recall efforts kicked into high gear following the July vote to require children 11 and younger to wear masks. Bree Moeggenberg, one of the campaign’s organizers, attended briefly with a pro-recall sign and said that they were meeting elsewhere to strategize how and when to start gathering signatures.
She didn’t go into details, saying only that they would start after Sept. 15, the first date that they can gather signatures for Pangle. Because of the way recalls are authorized under state law, petitions for Pangle can circulate only in between the first and last year of her term in office, which starts Sept. 15 and ends Dec. 31.
Recall supporters are targeting the three for voting to require that masks be worn by children 11 and younger because they are not eligible for COVID-19 vaccines. The biggest chunk of the board meeting was taken to discussing the policy vote, placed on the agenda by Trustee Sheila Murphy, who said she doesn’t oppose wearing masks but opposes mask mandates.
That couched wording is associated with people who opposed most public health mandates related to COVID-19. Murphy went on to be more direct in voicing that, saying that in doing her own research she came to doubt whether vaccines were the best route out of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that clean rural air and Vitamin D could help minimize serious infections.
While fresh air is associated with fewer infections, it is because fresh air quickly dilutes concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 virus and not because rural air is healthier to breathe than urban air. And while some researchers early on wondered why people with Vitamin D deficiencies often had worse disease outcomes, the most recent research says that taking Vitamin D has little impact on the severity of someone’s illness.
When Pangle, who works Central Michigan University’s biology department, told Murphy that Jennifer Morse, medical director for Central Michigan District Health Department, supported wearing masks in school, Murphy said that CMDHD takes its cues from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and ultimately the Centers for Disease Control.
“They’re not really high on my list of people I trust,” Murphy said of the CDC.
She also cited that no cases were associated with in-person learning in the district and that children were not documented carriers of the disease and saw few serious infections. Last year, everyone in the district was mandated to wear masks and classrooms could allow distance between pupils because some students took classes through the district’s online program.
Further, the Delta strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, confirmed in Isabella County last week and believed responsible for up to 90 percent of all current infections in the United States, appears more capable of attacking children and causing serious disease.
The conversation about the district’s mask policy was tabled for a month to see what happens.
Supporters of Bond, Stegman and Pangle also comprised the vast majority of people to speak out during public comment, which the last month and a half has largely been a mix of people in support of masks and teaching critical race theory, and people opposed to masks and teaching critical race theory.
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August 18, 2021 at 02:05AM
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Mt. Pleasant school board supporters rally at meeting - The Morning Sun
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