Lamont Heckled By Parents Over CT Schools Mask Mandate

CONNECTICUT — A meeting among public health officials, educators, parents and Gov. Ned Lamont ended about a half-hour early Wednesday when parents opposed to the state's school mask policy made their opinions known.

The forum was billed as a "roundtable discussion" and held at the Highland Elementary School in Cheshire.

In addition to the governor and many local educators and administrators, state Sen. Tony Hwang; Dr. Deidre Gifford, acting commissioner of the Department of Health; Charlene Russell-Tucker, commissioner of the State Department of Education; Kate Dias, president of Connecticut Education Association; and Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents were also in attendance.

Cheshire Superintendent Jeff Solan chaired the meeting, which took the form of a series of questions to members of the roundtable on topics such as the vaccine protocol for school staff, changes to the CDC's quarantine guidelines, and the mask requirement.

In his opening marks, Lamont said he was "here to listen" — and he got an earful.

After about an hour of question-and-answer between himself and the roundtable guests, Solan attempted to open the floor to questions from the media, and was unsuccessful.

Parents shouted down over the superintendent, expressing their anger to Lamont over his extension of the schools' mask mandate into the new semester, set to begin in most districts next week.

"This is a reflection of how we can't have a civil dialogue," Solan said, shortly before cutting the meeting short. The assembled parents followed members of the panel out of the building, many of them shouting, "You are all criminals."

Max Reiss, spokesman for the governor, told Patch: "These bullying tactics will not change what we all know to be true and agreed upon by both the scientific and academic communities: masks work and they help to keep our communities safe, especially young children who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated."

Fox 61 TV reporter Matt Caron shared video on his social media from parents who were upset with Lamont.

Caron shared other video clips from the forum, which you can view here on his Twitter page.

On a more positive note, the number of COVID-19 -associated hospitalizations dropped for the first time in days, down 13 beds to 378.

The daily positivity rate also took a dive, down over half a point to 3.23. There were another 651 COVID-19 cases confirmed, from 19,850 tests, bringing the total number of cases in the state to 369,132 since the start of the pandemic.

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