School Board Member Storms Out Of Meeting After Being Confronted By Maskless Photo

A Montgomery County, Virginia school board chairwoman, stormed out during the Feb. 15 board meeting after a parent produced maskless photos taken from her personal Facebook page.

The parent, Alecia Vaught, said during the meeting, "Senate bill 739, as you guys probably know, is going to be signed into law very soon, so we're taking the power out of your hands and putting it back with the parents the way it should be. And it's very concerning that you guys would take the power away from the parents."

The parent shared her concerns about ceaseless school mask mandates to the Montgomery County school board, alleging hypocrisy from the board members and accusing them of an unwillingness to comply with recent executive orders.

"When you were saying, introducing the public address comment, you said this is the time we get to hear from the students, from the staff and from the community members. You didn't mention parents. Not one bit," she said. "We sat here last year and listened to you guys preach about Gov. Northam's executive orders and how we must follow them," adding, "Here's a governor who comes into office, but yet you don't want to follow his orders." The parent spoke in reference to current Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin's executive order abolishing school mask mandates across the state.

Vaught then directed the concern to Chairwoman Susan Kass, who yelled at her and a group of parents at a previous school board meeting when they removed their masks in protest. The video of the incident shared in a tweet from radio host Clay Travis showed Vaught's speech as she draws evidence from Facebook to justify Kass' hypocrisy on masking up. "Here's a picture of you, right here, on Facebook with a crowd of people with no mask on," she pointed to a photo displayed on her smartphone.

Kass, the board member in the photo, quickly shut down the parent's accusations, claiming her words were ineffective and libelous, adding in defense that the parent did not use her time to focus on issues relating to children. In her statement during the heated exchange, Kass insisted that the photos shown were during a gathering with vaccinated family and friends in their homes.

The pro-mask board member requested a police officer to escort the parent out of the building as she continued her accusations. However another member intervened on the parent's behalf, "She should be allowed to say her peace," the member said. "I've had to listen to people come and criticize me."

After a heated exchange with her colleague backing up the dissatisfied parent, the pro-mask board member stormed out of the meeting.