A heated night at the Lake Geneva Joint 1 School Board Meeting, as the council heard from person after person after person asking the district to keep the optional mask guidance in place. Parents brought statistics and passionately debated about the topic. Things got heated during public comment when pro-maskers spoke, with one pro-mask parent briefly confronting an optional mask parent who laughed during their public comment after they said their child was being bullied for wearing a mask. Optional mask parents made their voices heard repeatedly, and at 6:36 PM, after an hour of public comment, the board tried to move on to the next topic. As they did that, parents began yelling and interrupting to the point where the board could not get any work done. The board decided to reopen the floor for public comment and allow two more people to speak.
The Board invited Dr. Stephanie Keisler from the Health Department to speak and she went over the current outlook of COVID cases in the district and the district's health plan. She said they are examining every single scenario and they are updating the district's COVID Dashboard page on a regular basis.
Following this, the board readjusted the agenda to move the mask debate to directly after public comment as Superintendent Jim Gottinger outlined that the district is not currently seeing a widespread number of cases, and that he had not heard or seen cases of bullying related to masks. This caused a loud positive reaction from the crowd. Gottinger said he believed that no changes needed to be made at this time, as 80% of the district’s parents believed that masks should remain optional. He did say that if there began to be community spread, the board would likely have to reconsider, but most of the cases in the district at this time are household spread only.
Another Board member, Clerk Linda Boilini, expressed her dismay at the amount of infighting amongst parents during public comment and says she respects both sides. The Board also thanked the parents for raising their children.
Of the 7 people on the stage, 5 people were voting. One board member, Mike Franzene, was masked on stage and spoke for the 20% pro-mask crowd, much to the chagrin of the majority of the people in attendance. After a motion was made to move forward with optional masks, Franzene told the crowd he would’ve made an opposite motion if one had not already been forward. The 5 members voted by a 4-1 margin to keep masks optional, and received a loud applause from everyone in attendance. Oddly, Franzene was then thanked by parents for his service to the district.
After this debate, the board took a five minute recess and moved on to the next topic, which included principal reports, as well as reports from student services, and the director of instruction, and Superintendent Gottinger. The Technology Report revealed that the district was the victim of a ransomware attack just prior to Labor Day that caused the district’s internet to be recycled. The report said that the district already had strong security measures in place, but has increased them with the help of a third party vendor. It was also reported that there are some supply chain issues delaying some training events for teachers into 2022.
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