Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to the newsmaker line to discuss his continued opposition to mask mandates in his county’s public schools and the pros and cons of the new state budget increase.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by our favorite wrestler-turned-politician, the mayor of Knox County, Glenn Jacobs. Good morning, Glen.
Jacobs: Morning, guys. How are you all?
Leahy: Good. Thanks for being with us. In studio, your fellow county mayor, Andy Ogles.
Jacobs: Yes, my second favorite mayor of all. (Laughter) Good morning, mayor.
Leahy: I want to kind of catch up with everything going on in Knox County. And here is a bit of a question that I have for you. All of this COVID stuff going on and all of the evidence now coming out showing the huge harm on children that the lockdown policies, the mask requirements, the attempts to mandate vaccines have had on children.
Where do you stand in the Knox County Schools with the federal judges that have said that you have to have mask mandates in schools? Where does that issue stand in your county?
Jacobs: (Chuckles) It’s interesting because Jen Psaki, the president’s press secretary, yesterday said that should be left up to local school boards to implement CDC guidelines. And that’s what we did.
The school board twice voted down mask mandates and a federal judge came along and said by not having a mask mandate, they were violating ADA.
Leahy: Americans with Disabilities Act.
Jacobs: Yes. Four families of special needs children brought this case and – a little context – there are 60,000 kids in Knox County schools. And basically the judge said because these youngsters are tragically at higher risk from COVID-19, that everyone has to wear masks – even if they’re not in the same room, even if they’re not in the same school.
And of course, what that ended up doing, really, was that for other kids that have disabilities, there are very few medical exemptions.
So other kids who had disabilities where they can’t wear masks, weren’t allowed in school for a couple of weeks. And many of those kids were also special needs kids who had IEPs and 504 programs that they were legally entitled to.
So the judge had forced Knox County Schools into a situation where they were violating either his order or federal law. That didn’t seem to bother him, though, because he’s kept on with that. I have no idea when he will lift this mask mandate.
Leahy: So let me see if I get this right. Knox County Schools’ kids are still having to be forced to wear masks?
Jacobs: Yes. Yes, because of the federal order. And Michael, by this judge’s reasoning, it’s very sad, but because these kids are more at risk from every respiratory virus. When do you ever get to lift the mask mandate?
Because that means that flu is more dangerous for them. Everything else is more dangerous for them. So it’s completely illogical. And from the start, I’ve opposed it as much as I’ve been able to.
But this is one of those things where it’s really not under my purview other than to use the bully pulpit and essentially tell the judge I think he’s extraordinarily wrong in this case and he’s doing great harm.
Leahy: Yeah, doing great harm. Actively doing harm. There’s a story by our own Susan Berry, who’s our new education editor and followed this for well over a decade at The Tennessee Star [with the] headline “Child Psychiatrist Toll on Children’s Mental Health During Government Response to Pandemic Is ‘Utterly Devastating.'” This psychiatrist, Mark McDonald, has studied this for years and said there are three elements of the government’s response that have caused these problems for kids.
Number one, the lockdowns and the schools not being in session. Number two, the forced mask mandates. And number three, now the efforts to do vaccine mandates. Will anybody push back against the harm that this judge’s ruling is doing to kids in Knox County?
Jacobs: I think what hopefully is going to happen is parents of students who have been directly harmed by this, and kids that have IEPs, and other programs that were not happening because of the judge’s order, they’re going to join the lawsuit and bring some light to the fact that the plaintiffs, in this case, don’t represent everybody.
And, of course, the media has really concentrated on that and they have not concentrated on the harm being done. Look at what’s happening with speech therapy. Those numbers are exploding, and it’s pretty simple to understand.
Leahy: When you say the numbers in speech therapy are exploding, give us some data on that.
Jacobs: I’m not sure of the data in Knox County, but I think nationally I just saw a story from another region, a news story where they were interviewing a speech therapist, and her numbers are up by 300 percent. And the reason is obvious.
Leahy: If you have a mask, it’s hard to speak and it’s hard to watch other people speak.
Jacobs: Exactly. As a child, you’re emulating what other people are doing with their mouth and you can’t see it. How are kids supposed to learn to read when the teacher can’t mouth words and can’t make phonetic noises?
So it’s a terrible situation. It’s one of those things where we look at the directive and say, oh, we can solve this by doing this. And then you have all these other disastrous consequences that end up following it.
Leahy: So this is a question for the two mayors here on the newsmaker line, Glenn Jacobs, the mayor of Knox County, and in-studio, Andy Ogles, the mayor of Maury County. I’ll start with you, Glenn. What is the impact of the State of the State address and the proposed budget set forward by Governor Lee on Monday at the State of the State address. What’s the effect on Knox County?
Jacobs: There are actually some really good things for us. The governor started a supplemental fund for TDOT, which includes initially two interchanges that we need pretty badly. So there’s some good stuff. But I do think the budget is up like 20 percent from where it was last year.
Leahy: In one year!
Jacobs: Yeah. Hopefully, these are one-time projects and hopefully, it doesn’t have any impact on the ongoing operational budget because that’s a huge, huge leap.
Leahy: And Andy Ogles, mayor of Maury County, what was your reaction to the budget? Do you agree with Glenn Jacobs here?
Ogles: One of the things in there for Maury County was an expansion for the community college there, which benefits not just Maury County but the region because it serves nine, ten counties.
But as the mayor says, the increase in the budget is just really astronomical. So here we are with all of this spending and we still are going to end up with a $2 billion or so surplus if not three. Where was the tax cut?
Why not roll back the gas tax? Why not give something back to the people? Because we’re clearly overtaxing Tennesseeans.
Leahy: Glenn Jacobs, would you have favored a tax cut in that budget?
Jacobs: Yes. When you have all this money sitting in reserve – and don’t get me wrong, I think Mayor Ogles would agree, I think we’re going to have a pretty serious recession at some point. So you do want to have healthy reserves.
But we also have to realize this is money that’s been taken from the taxpayers. So when all the bills are paid and there’s a bunch left over and you’re not using it for anything, you should probably give it back.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Glenn Jacobs” by Gage Skidmore CC BY-SA 2.0.
