The first petition clearly outlining our demands and reasoning behind those demands was effectively ignored by the BOE despite overwhelming support and unexpectedly high numbers of signatures. Releasing the video explaining that they "encourage masks" and "distance when possible" is honestly very insulting and the video was obviously made to brush off the very reasonable demands made in the original petition.

The Board starts off their video boasting about how great the last semester was while ignoring the fact that a ludicrously high percentage of tests in our area are coming back positive. As a frankly unsurprising result of these statistics many, many seats were empty on this first day back from winter break, in some cases nearly half. This opening is clearly meant to be misleading to those that have little to no knowledge of the situation inside of actual schools.

Due to this course of events it has become clear that the Oconee BOE is uninterested in making the slightest attempt to mitigate the pandemic situation, and much more interested in enforcing things like an archaic dress code, while simultaneously hiding behind the false perception that a mask mandate is out of their authority.

To be clear, I do not believe that the BOE or any of its members are unintelligent/unaware of the circumstances, nor am I making any assumptions of their beliefs regarding the relevant scientific data. I do believe however that they are worried about backlash from a particular group of people that are unaware of or choosing to ignore easily accessible scientific data. This is honestly worse than pure ignorance of the reality of things, because that would imply that BOE members are more concerned with their reelection than the safety and well being of the students and teachers they are meant to serve.

The first petition made just one mistake, it was ASKING the board to meet the demands. I believe, given their response, it is time to clarify the fact that we are NOT asking and that this is NOT a negotiation.