As Sheepscot Valley Regional School Unit’s board talked COVID issues Nov. 10, Superintendent of Schools Howard Tuttle called for a break to ask a man to leave. The parent, Windsor’s Kenneth Dostie, had requested 120 minutes of public comment for him and others earlier in the meeting. At Chelsea Elementary School (CES) and live on YouTube, some attendees called out from the audience and used expletives when the board discussed COVID topics including pooled testing,  in-school, voluntary vaccination clinics and possible precautions for the new basketball season.

“Can we ask (Dostie) to leave, please? He just keeps yelling stuff out,” Tuttle said. The early moments of the recess were not shown or heard in the livestream. Tuttle later told Wiscasset Newspaper in an email response, “He was asked to leave and he did.” Another man left without being asked, after he stood and yelled that he had had to bury two children and the board should not have a right to tell him he has to take a chance on the life of another one.

He does not have to, officials reiterated. Parents decide if they want their children vaccinated, they said.

And, after the board voted down a proposal from member Ryan Carver of Windsor to cancel LincolnHealth’s in-school COVID vaccination clinics, another man got up and left while saying an expletive and another comment that, according to fox5ny.com, is a month-old phrase referring to an expletive-including insult to President Biden.

Responding to Dostie in public comment, Tuttle told him LincolnHealth’s vaccination clinics at school have their government approvals, and the pooled testing is voluntary. Tuttle also noted public comment is not for questions and answers, and Dostie could call him with questions. Dostie then asked for proof behind an announcement’s statement that the risk from COVID is greater than the risk from the vaccine.

“And you just look at me,” Dostie said. “That’s all you can do, right?” He also said an expletive, said Tuttle had no backbone and, at the offer for Dostie and others to telephone Tuttle, Dostie said, “You won’t let us in (to meet) because you’re too much scared.” 

“This is public comment time (on agenda items), this is not attacking people,” Chair Sandra Devaney of Palermo said. “Attacking the superintendent is not an agenda item.”

Member Richard DeVries of Westport Island later proposed that in future meetings the board not tolerate “the arrogance and harassment that we received at this board meeting.” The audio then dropped on YouTube. Tuttle said via email Saturday, DeVries’ motion received no second.

Other audience members spoke without expletives or yelling when opposing the district’s COVID practices and plans. During public comment, Jeff Sullivan said having children wear face masks and not have their parents with them at sports practice or awards events is raising a generation of scared kids. And Angie Sullivan called pooled testing a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.

The district’s pooled testing started Nov. 8, Tuttle said later in the meeting. Principals said Whitefield Elementary School had 41 participants, 30’s at Windsor Elementary and CES, and 15 at Palermo. “So we got off to a good start,” Tuttle said. The testing is another layer of protection to keep children in school, he said. Vice Chair Richard Cote of Chelsea said he is “mostly against” pooled testing, but to keep quarantines down “until this COVID goes away, (the testing is) an evil we’ll live with.” It also helps gauge the virus’ local presence, said member Rick Danforth, a retired microbiologist, also of Chelsea.

Member Doug Morier of Alna said the vaccination clinics help working parents, who have more to do in a day than they can. He said of the service, “It is easy. It is something we have always done, that is somehow now being made insidious, or wicked. It is not.”

One working parent in the audience, Whitefield’s Gretchen Morrow, planned to get three children vaccinated through the clinics. “They don’t have to miss school, I don’t have to miss work,” she said in public comment. “They’re pleased and we’re pleased.” She thanked SVRSU for keeping children safe and for offering the clinics. 

Danforth said he would oppose the vaccinations if they were mandatory, but they are not, and if someone chooses to get their child vaccinated, he would want to make that as easy as possible. He recalled getting vaccinated in school for polio.

“We are in a critical situation. Unfortunately, when politics gets involved in disease and medical things, this is what happens,” Danforth said about the opposition the clinics were receiving. If the district has a history of offering vaccinations, he did not understand “why we’re making a stand (against it) just because it’s COVID.”

In proposing  the COVID vaccination clinics’ canceling, Carver said: “There’s plenty of places to do it. Go to Walmart, go to Hannaford, go to CVS.” The vaccine has emergency, not full, Food and Drug Administration approval for children ages 5-11, he noted. “Why is our RSU willing to take the responsibility if a kid drops dead ... from taking that shot in our building,” he asked. 

Tuttle said there is no liability for the district. And he said vaccination clinics have gone on nearly a decade in the district without needing board approval.

The FDA issues emergency approvals for a reason, Danforth said.

Carver’s fellow Windsor representative Kimberly Hutchinson seconded his motion and said, in case of an adverse reaction or other emergency, anything medical should be done in a doctor’s office. That wouldn’t fly, Tuttle said. Besides vaccinations, the district provides many other medical services, such as for diabetes, and it has four nurses.

The motion lost. The clinics are also open to the community, Tuttle said.

As for school league basketball games, the board decided to, for now, allow masked fans in shifts based on which teams are playing, and require masks for players except on court, and coaches except when speaking to their players.

Also Nov. 10, Tuttle said the district has no substitute bus drivers and not enough substitute teachers, so few, officials are starting to discuss what to do if there aren’t enough staff to cover every classroom. One person can’t have a combined class of 60 students, he said. The statewide problem has now hit the district, he said. The board OK’d Tuttle to temporarily raise substitutes’ pay an unspecified amount and then next month tell the board what other districts are paying and propose an amount.

Tuttle said the recent death of CES teacher Kim Tinkham-Lavallee after her long cancer fight “has been extremely hard for the staff and students at the school here ... Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone ... She will be greatly missed.”