CHASKA, Minn. — Tensions boiled over at Monday's Eastern Carver County School Board meeting, with two men getting into a scuffle ignited by a disagreement over masking.
A number of parents signed up to speak before the board after a decision was made to mandate masks for all district K-12 students beginning Wednesday, Sept. 29. Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams alerted parents to the change in a message sent out earlier Monday.
"Last Tuesday, 9/21, Carver County crossed the 14-day average of 50 cases per 10,000 residents that was the benchmark for increasing our masking requirement to all students, regardless of vaccination status," Sayles-Adams wrote. "The district looks at several consecutive days of data before making a shift towards more or less restrictive protocols. In this case, the trend is in the wrong direction."
The majority of those who spoke at the televised school board meeting objected to the district mandate, and emotions escalated as speaker after speaker demanded that the board not take away their right to choose whether their children mask up.
"Stop the madness, listen to us parents who have every right to parent our kids, you do not," said the mother of two district students.
"Be on the right side of history, stop the mask mandates and allow parents to choose what's best for our kids," said a father of two students. "The irony in all of this is that those of us who are calling BS on the masks, the lockdowns and the mandates, we are the ones being treated like crazy tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists."
At one point one of the few people wearing a mask at the meeting took the microphone and told school board members he had conducted a Facebook poll that said 70% of the community supported their decision to mandate masks. "The community that you see in the room might not be representative of the community we serve," he said.
After he finished speaking a man seated by the podium rolled his chair over and told the mask-wearer that he had lied to the board. A number of attendees jumped between the two as members of the crowd shouted.
Shortly afterwards, a woman approached the mask-wearer and accused him of taking an unauthorized picture of her husband, the man who had called the speaker a liar. After she demanded that the mask-wearer delete the image, her husband reached over and grabbed the man's phone and his shirt. The two men began pushing and shoving each other before a number of people intervened and pulled them apart.
"Again, I say civility," Board Chairman Dr. Jeffrey Ross implored those attending. "For all those who are watching, for al those who are here, we are one community. Let's talk, let's have that conversation, but let's not resort to violence and let it get to that level."
On Tuesday Ross and Eastern Carver County Schools Superintendent Lisa Sayles-Adams posted a message condemning what occurred the night before.
"If you watched our school board meeting from September 27th, you saw a community divided," the post reads. "Over the past few months, the issue of masking has become a flashpoint not just in our community, but across the country."
"The behavior and conduct on display in our boardroom this week was unacceptable," the message from Ross and Sayles-Adams continues. "It is healthy for us to disagree and to seek out more information. It is not okay, and not acceptable, to resort to violence or accuse decision-makers of being Nazis. It will not be tolerated, and on behalf of the Board we want to personally apologize to anyone in the room, or watching at home, that it happened at all."
Law enforcement was called and responded to the disturbance, but at this time there is no word on whether charges will be filed in connection with the incident.