A school board member was filmed pleading for a compulsory mask rule after claiming elementary school children could commit murder without...
A school board member was filmed pleading for a compulsory mask rule after claiming elementary school children could commit murder without them.
Linda Sexton furiously called for Norman Public School board to defy the Republican governor's no mask mandate and pursue legal action to protect the children at a school board meeting later uploaded online.
Sexton said: 'If there's any way that we could get this changed, I hope we can because it's just not okay for kids to commit murder by coming to school without a mask, and when it comes down to it, it's possible that they will cause a death of another child because they come to school without a mask.
Linda Sexton (second from left) is calling on Norman Public School board to pursue legal avenues against Republican governor Kevin Stitt's ban of compulsory face masks in schools. She claims school children 'could murder' another student by coming to school mask-less
Sexton (above) said the school district, as well as surrounding superintendents, need to stand up to protect 'our little kids'
'That's not okay. I don't know what we can do about it, but I hope it's something. We got to work hard and we got to think fast.'
In May, Governor Kevin Stitt passed a law prohibiting school districts from forcing mask mandates unless there was another state of emergency.
Oklahoma schools cannot require their students to wear masks unless there's a state of emergency in their locality.
About 65 per cent of school districts in Oklahoma had implemented some sort of mask mandate.
Governor Stitt has joined other states, like Florida, against compulsory facemasks in schools.
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has since threatened to use taxpayers' money to send kids with anti-mask parents to private schools, and even withhold salaries of staff from school districts with compulsory masking rules.
Cases are currently rising in the state with 6328 new cases as of August 9
Sexton is also calling for surrounding school districts to stand against the Governor to protect 'our little kids' from a virus that is five times more contagious than 'the one we masked everyone for last year.'
'I would like to find a way to stand up as a district and get our surroundings superintendents to stand up with us to protect our little kids,' she said.
'It's insane to send five and six and seven and eight all the way through eleven-year-olds, who don't have a choice about the vaccine to sit in a classroom where people can spread a deadly disease and not even know they're sick, and not even know in three days that they're going to be sick, but they are spreading it today because that's the way it works with this disease.'
She is also calling to pursue legal action against the governor in hopes of being able to implement a mask mandate before school starts.
'I want to pursue the legal avenues we have to defy Governor Stitt - and that's not how I like to pronounce his name, by the way.'
Sexton continued to say that she believes the mask-less should be the ones fleeing to virtual school. She said: 'I don't think any parent with an asthmatic six-year-old, eight-year-old or 12-year-old should have to make that choice that their child can't go to school because some other kid is going to spread a germ that could kill them.'
In a press conference, Stitt said: 'The difference is we're not going to mandate that somebody else has to send their 4-year-old to school with a mask.'
Governor Stitt (above) has joined the ranks of Florida in banning compulsory face masks in schools and said in a press conference that he wasn't going to mandate someone to 'send their 4-year-old to school with a mask'
Oklahoma is currently experiencing a surge in new COVID cases with 6,328 new cases reported on August 9 and a seven-day average of over two thousand new cases.
Sixty-four per cent of Covid cases in the state were caused by the Delta variant, according to the Oklahoman.
Half of Oklahomans have had at least one dose of their Covid vaccine, but just 40 per cent are fully vaccinated.
Unlike public schools, universities in the state can require their students to wear masks as long as all students have to. Stitt's law prohibits universities from only requiring unvaccinated students to wear masks.
Stitt's law also prohibits schools from requiring students from being vaccinated, as well as, their vaccination status impeding on their attendance or admittance to class and campus, according to the Oklahoman.
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