https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/20/2047120/-A-Tennessee-community-went-viral-for-anti-mask-violence-Now-a-school-is-closed-due-to-COVID-19
Tennessee’s public education system has been the focus of Republican attacks for some time now. With a raging pandemic, economic uncertainty, and a Democratic Party offering up proactive legislation to help ameliorate working peoples’ lives, GOP officials have set to turning schools into battlegrounds. This is because while conservatives believe every fetal cell inside of a woman’s uterus is sacred, the moment that child is born they consider them to most likely be criminals here to steal capitalism away from the donor class. <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/15/1911730/-Tennessee-s-Republican-governor-says-he-will-sign-law-allowing-discrimination-against-LGBTQ-parents> To this end, the Republican Party has moved to stop Tennessee schools from teaching about African American history or people of color in general. <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/8/2038862/-Tennessee-Republicans-deem-Ruby-Bridges-story-critical-race-theory-in-effort-to-ban-it-in-schools>They have also kicked this political football into the public health sphere. Piggybacking on anti-vaxxer parents’ rights to endanger other people’s children, conservatives in the state have fought vociferously against mask mandates in schools. A little less than two weeks ago, as the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus increased its spread across the country, the Williamson County school board in Tennessee decided to pass a mask mandate for the upcoming start of the school year. <https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/11/2045119/-Tennessee-county-passes-mask-mandate-for-schools-parents-choose-violence-We-will-find-you> This came as Tennessee released data <https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/health/documents/cedep/novel-coronavirus/datasets/Data-on-Cases-among-all-Children-0-18.pdf> showing that in the first two weeks of August, almost 14,000 children were making up almost 25% of Tennessee’s *new cases of COVID-19* <https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/health/documents/cedep/novel-coronavirus/datasets/Data-on-Cases-among-all-Children-0-18.pdf>. Still, parents screamed and threatened board members and had to be herded off by local law enforcement as they hurled real threats like “We know where you live” at the board members who were voting to save their children from them. In the end, only elementary-age students were mandated to wear masks. Guess what’s happening in Williamson County, Tennessee, as of Aug. 19, 2021? School’s closed. On Friday, Fairview Middle School in Williamson County will be closed. Williamson County Board of Education member Rick Wimberly tweeted <https://twitter.com/RickWimberly/status/1428500432792346628> that “Fairview Middle to be closed tomorrow because of COVID cases (187 of 560 students, 23 of 77 faculty). We'll have to use one of ten weather days for them and no remote learning can be offered because of new State requirements.” These numbers are quite a bit higher than they were just a few days ago when Williamson County Schools updated their data. <https://www.wcs.edu/Page/8531> The *Tennessean* <https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/2021/08/19/fairview-middle-school-closed-friday-due-illness/8204796002/> reports that new numbers are to be released on Friday—a new decision as they had planned on only releasing numbers on Tuesdays.* This comes on the same day that WSMV <https://www.wsmv.com/news/more-than-half-of-williamson-county-elementary-schools-report-fewer-than-5-student-covid-cases/article_ad81f0de-ffff-11eb-9a8a-d70c16475b92.html>, a Nashville NBC affiliate reported that Williamson County has had “3,500 mask exemptions for religious or medical reasons have been filed.” That number is reportedly set to increase as Gov. Bill Lee signed an executive order on Monday allowing parents to just opt out of mask mandates. <https://twitter.com/GovBillLee/status/1427365113770749958?s=20>
