Parents still upset as school district moves to lift mask requirements

MIDLAND, Mich. — Midland Public Schools will soon lift its controversial K-6 mask requirement set in place near the start of the 2021-22 school year.

In spite of this change, parents still came to the Nov. 22 Board of Education meeting demanding better accountability from Superintendent Michael Sharrow, who put the K-6 mask order into place on Aug. 28. Some continued to demand his resignation.

Jacob Lewis, co-founder of the Facebook group Rise Up Midland (formerly Parents Against M.P.S. Mask Mandate), was one of the 20 speakers registered for public comment. He expressed gratitude for the decision to lift the mask order, but had concerns over the school’s mask policy.

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Mr. Lewis charged that M.P.S. staff were reprimanding students for not bringing their own N-95 masks to class, and that M.P.S. staff claimed they did not have enough masks to distribute to students every day.

“In my opinion, if Midland Public Schools is going to mandate medical equipment to be worn by the students in order to attend the classes, while M.P.S. gets millions of dollars in relief from the state and federal government, M.P.S. should absolutely be able to provide a new mask for each child every single day or more,” Mr. Lewis said.

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After Mr. Lewis’s three-minute time was up, he kept talking as the board repeatedly urged him to stop.

“You’re breaking the law by not allowing five minutes!” Mr. Lewis added as he walked away from the podium.

He joined other parents who protested the board’s change in public comment time limit from five to three minutes. They pointed toward the board’s bylaws, section 167.3, which says “each statement made by a participant shall be limited to five (5) minutes duration.”

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Beginning with the Aug. 16 meeting, the board had reduced the time to three minutes for each speaker as a result of the high volume of people who were registering for public comments.

Later in the meeting, the board approved revisions to 167.3 and other sections of bylaws, in accordance with changes to federal and state law. Details on what the revisions are were not immediately made available.

Parents also brought up vaccines. The district’s decision to lift the mask order came in light of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine receiving emergency use authorization from the FDA for children ages 5-11. Following the authorization announcement, M.P.S. announced that they would hold vaccine clinics at Siebert and Central Park Elementary.

Will Zablocki, another member of Rise Up Midland who recently announced a run for school board, mentioned clinical trials conducted on more than 3,000 children ages 5-11 to study the vaccine’s effectiveness, arguing that this was statistically insignificant.

“I wanted my children to wait to be vaccinated until I saw other people getting vaccinated and had the opportunity to determine if it was safe or not for my children,” Mr. Zablocki said.

In a communique issued Nov. 4, Superintendent Sharrow said the Dec. 13 date was chosen to give students time to build up immunity from receiving both doses of the vaccine.

“We must continue to be flexible and prepared to respond to constant changes due to COVID-19. Please note that district COVID protocols will change if we receive public health orders from the CDC, MDHHS, the MCDPH, or the COVID metrics cause us to pause and reflect on the need to update the District’s safety precautions. Future outbreaks in a classroom or school building will result in a review of safety protocols and possible masking requirements by classroom or school building,” Mr. Sharrow wrote.

In a Nov. 19 press release, the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services announced a statewide face mask advisory for indoor spaces in response to a spike in COVID-19 and flu cases.

As of Nov. 22, M.P.S. reports there have been 535 cumulative cases of COVID-19 within the district during the 2021-22 school year, with 72 active cases among students and staff.

At the Nov. 22 meeting, the board of education approved the replacement and upgrade of the school’s student information system and educational resource planning system, with contracts totaling more than $2.2 million. An $83,900 contract was also awarded to Bierlien Companies, Inc. for the demolition of the former State Street School.