Reading the Dec. 1 Courier-Herald, I am filled with dismay that our school leadership is under attack not for performance, but because of skin color (“Racial slur repeated at school board meeting”). How can we become better citizens if we do not allow our children to understand the cultures that make up our society from the indigenous to the immigrants. We are not one race, not one color, not one religion. I embrace that for our community.

I fear the school board meetings are following in the steps of other districts in the country, who either protest over curriculum or virus mandates. I thought our community was more civilized than this. How can we be “community” based on self-righteousness and self-interest and have it takes precedence over civil obedience? No one has threatened a life, or even a choice whether to have a COVID shot or not. They are requesting or mandating that you wear a mask to protect each other. Is this too much to ask during a world-wide pandemic?

The school board protestors are disrupting procedures with threats of more and greater protests. Do we devolve into mass protests of divided citizens, to prove what? That personal rights stand above the law? Enumclaw is a hot bed of coronavirus. Instead of promoting the use of masks, the pressure is on for others to do away with the use of masks. How much worse would the coronavirus be in Enumclaw if those responsible citizens who got the shots and the boosters, and wear the mask, did not do so. How much more risk would there be in the community for illness? How much risk should we ask of teachers and students, by removing the mandate for masks?

It doesn’t matter how the school board members feel about masking. They are following the law. The same should go for the city council, who are supposed to be our leaders. At least they took a stand for racial justice.

Janet Baker

Enumclaw