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PONDERAY — Parents put trustees on notice over COVID protocols during the public comment section of Tuesday’s Lake Pend Oreille School Board meeting, saying they needed to listen to them more.

“You’re on notice, if you don’t tell the truth you’re out of here,” a parent told the board.

Another parent even turned his back on the board to address the audience during his comments, saying they were the only ones listening. He said if the board was doing the right thing then they would not be encouraging the COVID-19 vaccine.

The parent, who said he was an Occupational Safety and Health Administration approved health and science professional, told the board that his research found no study that backed the use of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. He said that cases do not equal illness and said that even the Dr. Allen Banks of Panhandle Health District had said the same thing on record. Banks is a chemist with patents for development of therapeutic compounds, including vaccines for both humans and animals.

“The best thing about COVID-19, is that it is waking us up,” he said.

The Centers for Disease Control recommends that everyone two years of age or older who is not fully vaccinated should wear a mask in indoor public places. For those fully vaccinated, to maximize protection from the Delta variant and prevent possibly spreading it to others, the CDC says to wear masks indoors.

Parents brought concerns about other topics, specifically on what the district is doing to prevent pornographic material being passed on school buses. One parent said that in the past she had worked with Superintendent Tom Albertson and other district staff to mitigate the issue. She said the solution was to put “multiple” signs up in buses with a number for students to call or text to report on the sharing of pornographic material.

However, when she visited the district’s transportation department earlier this week, she found one sign at the front of the bus with the contact information.

She expressed concern that students are not aware of the signs since they were not located throughout the bus like she said she had been told.

In an unrelated issue, she said her son has been denied his inhaler repeatedly in school even when she has brought in a doctor’s note that stated he could use it whenever he needed.

“You are opening yourselves up to so many lawsuits it isn’t even funny,” she said to the board.

Parents suggested that the school board create a “parents’ bill of rights,” following the example of a school district in Tallahassee, Florida. She went on to say that the U.S school system was based on Prussian military school, which teaches students how to be obedient and follow authoritarian rule.

Kristin Dodd, another parent, discussed funding with the board, saying that more money isn’t always better. Dodd said she has been looking over the district finances and has heard different numbers when it comes to how much money the LPOSD pays for each student.

She compared Utah’s schools to Idaho’s saying that Utah pays about the same amount for each student as Idaho does. Yet Idaho is ranked 29 in the nation and Utah is ranked in the top 10. She said that she did not see the correlation between finances and performance.

Dodd asked the board to dig deeper on how the school district can perform with less. She said that funding should not be the first area that the board looks at when looking for improvements.

LPOSD board of trustee meetings are the second and fourth Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Ponderay Event Center. Meetings can be watched in their entirety on the districts YouTube channel LPOSD #84.