Aiken County Board of Education had a two-hour briefing on the district’s response to COVID-19 and quarantines. A woman’s angry voice could be heard shouting about 15 minutes into the meeting.
The special called meeting followed reports that two students have died from COVID-19. Coroner Darryl Ables said 9-year-old Ethan Blue and 15-year-old Emily Brosnahan died on Sept. 1. Blue went to North Augusta Elementary School while Brosnahan attended Aiken High School.
When Board Chairman Dr. John Bradley asked for a moment of silence, he requested special thoughts for the families of five individuals who have died recently.
MORE: COVID-19 Claims the Lives of Two Aiken County Students
“We lost a student at Aiken High School, Emily Brosnahan, and North Augusta Elementary student Ethan Blue,” he said. “A secretary-bookkeeper at Aiken Elementary, Gisele Moreland.”
Additionally, Angela Dicks, a special education aide at Aiken Elementary, and Candace Beasley, who teaches first grade at Clearwater Elementary, lost their husbands. Beasley was married to North Augusta Department of Public Safety Officer Dustin Beasley, who died Aug. 30.
About 15 minutes into the meeting, a woman shouting, “Make masks mandatory,” was heard. Schools in South Carolina are prohibited from instituting a mask mandate because of a proviso the state legislature included in the state budget.
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The districts are also limited in the ability to offer virtual learning due to joint resolution 704 passed in April by the General Assembly. The state’s Department of Education website explains, “It also requires five day in-person learning to be offered to next school year, removes earnings limitations (up to $50,000) for retired K-12 educators, and prohibits districts from assigning a teacher to deliver instruction to students simultaneously in-person and virtually unless it is reasonable and necessary due to extreme and unavoidable circumstances. In such circumstances, additional compensation must be provided.“
Bradley made his displeasure known with both restrictions.
“Our hands are tied,” he said. “The state legislature seems to want to be the school board these days and they keep taking more and more authority on their own. And they’re not doing a very good job of it, in my opinion. It’s all political. They’re politicizing the education of our children and their health.”
District 7 representative Patrice Rhinehart-Jackson pleaded with board members to consider a mask mandate despite the proviso.
“Everyone from the superintendent to teachers to bus drivers to nutritional staff, students and parents are stressed, tired or simply worn out. Because the governor has essentially tied the school board’s hands in implementing mask mandates, everyone within the district will continue to be tired, worn out or deceased.”
Bradley said he’s not willing to deliberately break the law, a sentiment he said he’s heard from other board members.
District 9 member Cameron Nuessle suggested a resolution asking the legislature for local control.
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“The nine members of this board, they’re your neighbors, they’re part of your church family, they went to school with you, they care about you and your children; and, simply put, I trust the nine members of this board to make that decision, wherever we end up, more than someone removed in Columbia,” he said.
The eight members at the Tuesday night meeting voted unanimously to send a resolution to the state legislature asking it return control to the local board. District 2 member Jason Crane was not at the meeting.
Aiken County Superintendent King Laurance said he is talking with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to get updated guidance on how to handle quarantining students and staff. He said he will give the board options for COVID-19 safety measures during the regular board meeting on Sept. 14. Currently more than 5,000 students and 100 employees are quarantined.
MORE: COVID-19 Dominates Aiken School Board Meeting
The district’s website is updated to offer take home meals for students who are quarantined and the form to request the meals.
Orders must be placed by noon for pick-up the next day. Pick-ups will be at the students’ home schools with elementary school pick ups from 10 to 11:30 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to noon for middle and high schools.
In the meantime, Rhinehart-Jackson implored everyone to wear masks.
“I don’t want to lose another life within the district,” she said.
The video of the meeting is available here https://www.acpsd.net/Page/52553
Dana Lynn McIntyreis a Staff Reporter with The Augusta Press. You can reach her at dana@theaugustapress.com.
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