A group of Williamson County parents said this week they are displeased with their local school board’s mandate that students wear masks or other face coverings, and they would like to recall certain people from office.
But Gary Humble, who speaks for the group, Recall Williamson, told The Tennessee Star Wednesday that he and other parents will have to wait a while. That’s because current Tennessee law does not permit them to recall school board members — at least not yet.
But Humble and other parents said they’re working on it.
A majority of Williamson County School Board members voted for the policy this week.
“We weren’t being heard by the school board, and that was very apparent in the school board meeting Monday night,” Humble said.
“The issue was if school board members won’t listen to the concerns of parents then we are going to exercise some oversight. That’s when we began talking about a recall effort. It stems from the fact that we need to know that our school board is being a little more attentive to the concerns of the parents of Williamson County.”
Recall Williamson members said in a press release Wednesday that many people don’t know that Tennessee law has a statute of limitations on recall elections. This, per a law that members of the Tennessee General Assembly passed in 2019.
“The initial version of the bill that passed the Senate did apply to the entire state. But things changed as the bill made its way through the House. And we ended up where we are today,” according to the press release.
Humble told The Star that legislators that year introduced a bill that year that would affect the entire state. But legislators later amended the bill to apply only to Madison County.
State Rep. Glen Casada (R-Franklin) will work to change the law to help Recall Williamson recollect school board members, according to the press release.
“This is not a foreign concept and the right to petition for recall is granted to the citizens of many states,” the press release said.
“As many will point out, this solution is not a quick fix.”
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Congratulations to Gary Humble and other parents in the County for taking it upon themselves to finally stand up to the “School” Board. This body of people, primarily who are backed and controlled by Williamson Inc. and the Chamber of Commerce, has been notorious throughout many years for ignoring the will of the parents and taxpayers. It is a body of people who, primarily, do not have a background in education but have a political agenda. I hope the legislature will change the recall law to allow parents and taxpayers the ability to be heard.
So not mandating (forcing) the wearing of face masks some how prevents parents from sending their kids to school with face masks?
William you seem a little high strung.
Send your kids to school with face masks; problem solved.
He would whine about the cost of masks. Getting your neighbors to fork over $10,000 per kid for the “free” public schools is the largest welfare expenditure in the state.
Liberty scares some people, George. They prefer authoritarian government ruling over our health–and most other things, even though, as you say, they can choose to do themselves what they want forced on others. Incredible!
What’s the matter? Don’t these so-called Family Values conservatives care about the health and safety of their children, let alone anybody else’s children? Maybe these rich conservatives send their own children to private school or are wealthy enough to conduct Home Schooling for their kids when the rest of us are not. Most of us have no choice but to send our children to public schools and our children should have every right to safety while in attendance.
If our children start dying like flies as a result of opening our schools without safety procedures such as masks, social distancing, and the like, the blame should fall squarely upon the shoulders of these conservatives who would arrogantly play with the lives of not only their own children, but of other people’s children as well. If children in Tennessee start dying by the hundreds before Election Day as a result of careless school reopening, then I hope the voters will finally have enough sense to know who their REAL enemies are!
William, This Coronavirus has proven to be very mild and even asymptomatic with a minuscule amount of deaths, less than the regular flu, to young people and children. And with that, sometimes certain schools only close for a short time if there are significant absences. But there’s still lot of reactionary (“children dying by the hundreds”) fear-mongering out there.
Utterly ridiculous. Part of immunity is “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The mask will actually lower immunity in the long run. God has given us nose hairs for a reason.