A concerned mother confronted the Vandalia School Board over $5 million in payments from the federal government to the district to pursue mask and vaccine policies.
“I have a proven right to breathe,” Carol Kerr said in her opening statement to the Vandalia School Board.
In her comments before the Vandalia School Board at its Sept. 20 meeting Kerr said the board members were tied to mandating mask usage and promoting or even mandating vaccination after taking federal relief dollars -- money they may have to pay back if they were to break the mandates.
“Does the Vandalia school system for complete full compliance get $5,750,640?” Kerr asked the school board.
The board last month 'reluctantly' agreed to comply with Gov. J.B. Pritzker's mask mandate for schools.
Kerr said she was in possession of a letter from Superintendent Jennifer Garrison discussing the funds tied to the mandate.
“You put us in a corner and you're getting paid to mask our children,” she said.
Kerr told the board she refused to mask her children and had ended up in a hellish situation in which her children were being punished for not wearing masks but were being harassed by truancy officers and told to turn in school laptops so they could not work remotely if they stayed home.
“You are violating the U.S. Constitution of the United States; I don't care what mandate the State of Illinois gives, you are violating the rights of these children, the rights of these parents and your own conscience ... ," Kerr said. "I'd rather see the school in ashes than to see you sit there with your pockets full while you suffocate our children with diapers on their faces."
She also argued about the efficacy of mask usage, pointing to academic studies that found masks may cause problems for wearers while only offering at best a minimal amount of protection against COVID and other viruses.
In fact, a University of Illinois at Chicago study found "cloth masks and face coverings are likely to have limited impact on lowering COVID-19 transmission, because they have minimal ability to prevent the emission of small particles and offer limited personal protection with respect to small particle inhalation."
Kerr said children have told her Vandalia teachers do not enforce proper mask-wearing.
“Children say to me -- to my face -- that 'they're letting us wear (masks) on our chin....now we just have to wear it on our chin,'" Kerr said. "You're teaching them to lie on top of deceiving them into doing something."
A 2010 research article by Dr. Larry E. Bowen of the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama found masks often have fitting problems and offer "very little protection”. The study — "Does that Face Mask Really Protect You," — concluded that "wearing these face masks may produce a false sense of protection."
Kerr ended her comments with a warning to the school board members.
“You have no power,” she said. “You have no power to usurp the rights of our children or the authority that we have over our children; and because they're not old enough to speak for themselves, we stand and speak for them. We, the people, have had enough -- you are all on notice; you will all be gone if you don't change your ways right now.”
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