Medical Tyranny in New Hanover County Schools

Kids Suffer Medical Tyranny in New Hanover County Schools

School Board to Refuse Physicians’ Advice.

Melissa Mason Confronts School Board

Board of Education Candidate Melissa Mason addressed the New Hanover County School Board at its May 3rd meeting, to demand a change to its communicable diseases policy.

COVID All Over Again

New Hanover County Schools’ disastrous response to COVID is set to become standard operating procedure for all future disease threats.

Currently, unlicensed county or state employees still have the power to impose unnecessary shutdowns, forced masking, mass violation of informed consent, and wholesale fear mongering.

There is no requirement for NHCS to consult any licensed medical professionals when deciding these medical matters.

Citizens, Candidates Fight Back

Fighting to avoid a repeat of the disastrous response to COVID is a collection of candidates, parents, citizen advocates, and one current board member. So far they’ve held the line, but not without some luck.

Pete Wildeboer, a Republican member of the school board who is up for reelection this year, has been fighting since January to change Policy 7262, which governs communicable diseases response. He proposed creating “an independent panel of three medical doctors to advise the board on medical decisions.” (see Policy Committee Minutes)

This panel would make the Health Director and Superintendent accountable to a scientific standard, and make the board’s disease policy decisions transparent to parents. The rest of the board rejected this proposal, and moved to vote on the unchanged policy at the May 3 BOE meeting.

Melissa Mason Supports Wildeboer

At that meeting, Republican BOE candidate Melissa Mason spoke up for Wildeboer’s cause, saying,“I wholeheartedly support this addition to the policy.”

Mason Pulls No Punches

But when it came to condemning the failures of the board as a whole, Mason pulled no punches,

“This board has done irreparable harm to all the students of our … county, with policies which were unnecessary, unconstitutional, and authoritarian. And anyone who says, ‘we couldn’t have known,’ is lying. We all watched you ignore the advice of medical professionals here.”

Morgan Wallace Joins Mason Against Medical Tyranny

One of those medical professionals was Morgan Wallace (RN BSN CCRN AGAC-NP) formerly of New Hanover Regional Medical Center. At the January 4th meeting, Wallace had excoriated the board for their unscientific and harmful masking policy. At the same meeting, Mason had challenged the board’s transparency and integrity.

Dysfunction Carries the Day on School Board

Ultimately, the board did not vote on Policy 7262 Tuesday, as much of their schedule was consumed by the budget consideration process. The process had been undermined from the start, since the board received the hundreds of pages of budget only 24 hours ahead of the meeting. Republican BOE candidate Chris Sutton made this point memorably, when he carried the mountainous stack to the podium during his turn in the call to the audience.

We’re Winning

Mason considered the delay a win. “It’s temporary, but today the community won. When we expose the dysfunction of the board, when they continue to abuse our free speech, when we continue hold ourselves to a higher standard, and fight against policies like the Transgender Support Plan and seclusion rooms, we are keeping the board accountable to the community. The community is united in that goal. We’re winning.”

NHCS Mental Health Failures to Be Exposed

But Mason also stressed that the work is just beginning. Addressing the board, she said, “There is an unprecedented mental health crisis among children in this county. And I believe the actions of this board are directly responsible for it.”

Commenting later she said, “people have no idea what’s been happening in this county. I’ve seen information that has yet to be disclosed, and this board will be held accountable.”