One more woke Ontario school board has narrowly defeated attempts by some of its progressivist trustees to extend mask mandates beyond the government’s own deadline.
After two hours of debate Monday night, Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB) trustees voted not to extend masking rules to April 8, which is two weeks later than the province’s own Mar. 21 deadline.
The vote was 6-6. Tie votes are considered a defeat.
The decision didn’t come without the classic hyperbole and questionable comments dressed as facts – all, of course, in the name of protecting the children.
Or so the progressivist trustees claimed.
It was indeed amazing that some trustees – who contended throughout COVID that they were following the science – spent so much time trying to skirt around the science either out of fear or attempts to pander to the teachers unions.
The idea to extend the mask mandate seemed rooted in disdain towards the Doug Ford government by some OCDSB trustees, who – quite ironically or without the slightest bit of awareness – dismissed Ford’s decision as “political.”
Trustee Justine Bell, a senior policy advisor for Global Affairs Canada (working in poverty reduction), put forward the motion to keep children masked longer than the government required them to be.
Bell claimed that masks were the number-one measure mitigating the spread of COVID.
“There is a lot of evidence and data out there that it will not be safe (after March break),” she said, pronouncing parameters as “parometers.”
Lyra Evans, the province’s first openy transgendered trustee, said it was “really important” to “stepwise out of protections.”
Evans said that if COVID cases skyrocket in the next several weeks, the “reasonable thing to do” would be to extend the mandate beyond April 8.
“It is foolish of us to remove a mask mandate that has been effective,” Evans said. “The decision (by the Ford government) was entirely political.”
It is not at all surprising that that the allegedly non-political Evans and fellow progressive Justine Bell were out protesting against the Freedom Convoy a few weeks ago:
Another trustee suggested they needed the opportunity to “course-correct” and remove restrictions “step-by-step in a controlled way.”
Asked what will happen to staff and students who don’t wear a mask if in fact the trustees voted in favour of the extension, education director Camille Williams-Taylor said they’d be subjected to “progressive discipline.”
With staff, these would include conversations up to termination of employment, she said.
Students could be disciplined too, she added, although they’ve been careful “not to take a punitive stance.”
Donna Blackburn, the only trustee who appeared unafraid to speak out against the woke culture at the board, said staff are tired of wearing masks and that a high vaccination rate was a “better line of defense” against the spread of COVID.
Blackburn also insisted there was no way to enforce the extension.
“It is not prudent to go against provincial jurisdiction,” she said.
Evidently, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board disagrees with that position. They are now the only school board in Ontario that has asked to extend the mask mandate for three weeks beyond March 21.
But Blackburn is right. There is no way to enforce an extension. And that concept seems to be lost on some woke trustees who are yet again using kids as pawns to achieve their own political agenda.
It’s time to let kids and parents make their own decisions.
After two years lost, most of us simply want to get on with our lives.
