School board meetings are a place for all opinions

Many of us have regularly attended Fallbrook Unified HIgh School Board meetings, particularly since they started meeting in person toward the end of last year's school year. There have been multiple issues discussed during the public comment segment of the board meetings. The comments made have been fact based, emotional and respectful communications made by our community parents and residents.

Cumulatively, there have been well over 1,000 people attending and 100's of people speaking. Through this time, I am only aware of one adversarial confrontation of which we are all very sorry that it occurred. Emotions sometimes get away from all of us, but in a public setting it is not acceptable.

I do not want to downplay the seriousness of the incident, but I want to thank all the others through all these months of emotion, that all the others have been able to act respectfully to those they have disagreed with on very deep seeded opinions.

I am sorry that the person negatively involved is still feeling threatened in the auditorium when it has been well over a month since it's occurrence and many people have voiced apologies for the wrongdoing.

The December board meeting public comments from several people validated that this feeling is still raw and, unfortunately, a very negative comment was "thrown" across the aisle. This comment went so far as to accuse "...only White women are against masks and vaccine mandates and they don't care a bit about us (Hispanics)."

This is a very unfair characterization, particularly using race as the collective noun. At no time has anyone speaking about the mandates said that anyone who wants their child to wear masks is wrong....People are requesting that their families, their children, have the choice. If you feel more protected wearing a mask, that should be your choice and your decision, but let it be a choice. No one wants to hurt another in this school community, so please don't use race to divide us.

Those who are against the mandates feel it's their Constitutional right to choose, just as many feel it's a women's right to choose whether to keep a fetus....They claim "It's my body"......and so the same should apply to the vaccine.

As far as the mask issue, it's been proven over and over that masks do not give you the protection you wish and with children it's even more an issue about their emotional and physical well being. Rarely do children get COVID and when they do it is slight and the death rate can hardly be calculated.

As Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.”

I so hope at our next board meeting, all people will respect each other's right to speak their "opinion" and applause or lack of does not mean the audience is "intimidating opposing views.” I request that the board joins with other boards in our state, to ask our Governor to rethink all mandates and listen to our wise Founding Father.

Judy Willis