Oil City School Board members did not conduct any business at their meeting Monday due to the presence of two people who refused to wear masks, leading to the meeting being canceled after the board recessed for an hour.
Oil City High School student Braydin Glass, who spoke at last week’s meeting about his opposition to wearing a mask at school, and a woman who also attended last week but didn’t speak, refused to put their masks on Monday night. Both wore a black shirt that said “Freedom over Fear.”
Glass had said at last week’s meeting that COVID isn’t real.
After the hour recess, Glass and the woman refused to put on a mask when asked and the meeting was canceled. The meeting has been rescheduled for Thursday evening by Zoom only.
McFadden said the information to attend the next meeting via Zoom would be posted on the district’s website today.
“They need to talk to their legislators. Masks are mandated through the Department of Health,” McFadden said. “People can argue about whether the mask mandate is constitutional or not, but we have to follow the Department of Health and what the state tells us,” McFadden said after the meeting. “They are taking their anger out on the wrong people.”
The meeting was very well attended, however, because of issues not related to the mask controversy.
Teacher Tim LaVan told the newspaper the teachers were assembled to request the board “rectify the forced use of sick days due to COVID.”
LaVan said teachers who were unable to teach due to COVID quarantines were forced to use sick days for the days they missed teaching.
LaVan explained that the teachers were proposing that if they were in quarantine because of COVID but not too sick to teach, that they be permitted to teach remotely and not be forced to use a sick day. He added that if teachers were too sick to teach, they would use sick days.
“If it has to be remote instead of in-person, under the circumstances, then that is better than having a substitute teacher. We want to be able to have interactions with our students,” LaVan said.
