A board meeting took place earlier this month for the Penns Valley school district. The meeting that was supposed to be used for the community to ask the board of the school questions turned bad very quickly. The meeting which was supposed to start at 7 pm didn’t begin until almost an hour later due to the attendees not following the mask requirement resulting in a state trooper having to monitor the event.

  Before the school year started for Penns Valley High School the district decided that masks for this specific district were necessary due to this rise in cases. However, the following day Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Alison Beam signed an order to mandate masks for all schools in the state. Many were upset by this news and refused to follow along with the state’s mandates. 

   Community members referred to members at the meeting as “dictators” and refused to comply with the masking rules required by the state for themselves and their children. A parent also claimed their child was sent home from school for not wearing a mask. From the CDT, Superintendent Dr. Brian Griffith responded that the district has several options for students without a mask, including providing them with a mask and attending class, attending the district’s cyber academy, or to have them attend school from a remote location within the classroom/building. The last and hopefully avoidable option is to send the student home. The school originally planned to revisit the mask mandate in the middle of September but will now be waiting until the state mandate is lifted and then proceed from there