Darbi Boddy Knew: The stupidity of the current Lakota school board and their mask mandates

In all the same ways that the Biden executive orders on mandatory vaccinations violated all kinds of laws, the government’s push to bluff their way into putting masks on school children in public schools has been reprehensible and frightening to people.  And it’s even worse when you are a person who knows better.  When you know the government has overstepped its mandate and is acting dangerously, they almost dare the public to act.  For them to gain so much power, they need a lot of dumb people, like what we have on the current Lakota school board.  They are dumb because they allowed themselves to be completely scammed by the Butler County Health Department, who is still angry that they lost their emergency powers when the House and Senate took those powers away from Governor Mike DeWine early in 2021.  Most people don’t see politics everywhere; my readers here do, but most people don’t, so they don’t understand what’s behind it all.  And that’s usually fine for average, ordinary people.  But for people who want to be in leadership positions, it’s reprehensible to be stupid. After a recent debate with the West Chester Tea Party featuring candidates for the Lakota school board, the current insiders showed clearly why everything is so expensive.    Why they have been caught tossing money at the teacher’s union recklessly, and how little they had managed anything at the government school.  When the question was asked, “how much authority do you believe the Butler County Health Department has over Covid policy in public schools,” the current school board did not know the answer, all of them.  Amazingly, the current board members and one of their hand-picked replacements for Brad Lovell all answered the same way: they did not believe they had any authority on the school board to resist a health order from the department of health.  But the challengers all got the answer right to a certain extent; Vanessa Wells, Karine Chausee, Issac Adi all understood that the health department and the government, in general, had no rights to mandate Covid protocols in a public setting.  But Jodi Boddy, who has put some effort into this issue, knew the answer in detail and said so on the video included in this article.  She is correct. The health department, any health department, just like the CDC, can make recommendations.   They cannot make law.  That is unless a governor under emergency orders so empowers them.  And as I said, those powers were taken away from Governor Mike DeWine because he had abused them in the way many blue-state governors had during Covid. 

I heard the Brad Lovell replacement, Douglas Horton, talk about how smart he was as a brand marketer at P&G, yet when he had to answer this straightforward question, he had no idea what the answer was.  And if he wants to lead a school board with thousands of people employed under it or attending the school, they look to him to know these kinds of things.  Darbi knew.   Kelley Casper is on the board now and was part of the decision-making process on the mask mandates. She dared to sit there and tell the crowd that the health department has the right to order them around on many things and that the ridiculous quarantine policy they had come up with was worse than making students wear masks.  Why didn’t she know that she didn’t even have to follow the quarantine policy? Nobody elected those health officials.  They are appointed to do a job, but the procedure is not set with them, except under emergency orders, and we aren’t under an emergency.  That is set at the state level, and as I said, DeWine lost that power.  Biden will lose his power, too, because he has no constitutional grounding for anything he is doing.  He counts on suckers not knowing better and trusting what they are told, just as Douglas Horton, Kelly Casper, and Michael Pearl did when the Butler County Health Department told them they had to dance to the quarantine protocols or wear a mask.  Because they were lazy and didn’t read and understand the law, they just accepted that what they were told was true.  Which, of course, is stupid.

Out of all the questions that evening, I felt that one about the health department showed clearly the problems with this current school board at Lakota.  They are not intellectually curious about what they are supposed to be doing.  They get pushed around by the state; they get pushed around by the health departments; they get pushed around by the teacher’s union and for what, because of something Michael Pearl said in his answer, that when his car breaks, he hires experts to fix it.  And that’s what the Lakota school board does with everything.  Darbi Boddy had done the research and did talk to health experts.  She knows the difference between a “recommendation” and an “order.” We don’t just get ordered around by unelected bureaucrats, but we do elect our school board.  We expect leadership out of them to ask those kinds of questions.  Yet, nobody involved with the current board knew the answer.  They know how to ask the lawyers for Lakota what they should do, and of course, lawyers will always take the safest path on everything.  After all, most of them are lazy too and want to get paid and move on to the next case.  So for dumb people who aren’t asking many questions, a lawyer will say “no.” “Don’t challenge the health department most of the time. Don’t challenge the state.  Do what they tell you to so that if some panicky parent sues the district, you can always punt to them as your guidance.” But that’s not very ethical; what about the poor kids who have to sit in a class all day wearing a mask for a virus that the government decided was going to be about the “Great Reset,” and was based on no science whatsoever but was instead about everything involving global politics.  Kids don’t need to be wrapped up in that mess.

We can only imagine how many other mistakes this current Lakota school board has made involving everything.  If they arrive at their decisions the way they did with Covid and the mask mandates, it’s no wonder things are so screwed up.  And they only have themselves to blame.  The information is out there; it’s easy to get.  Darbi Boddy knew the answer.   There isn’t a path for any health department or any government agency to win anything involving Covid in a court of any law.  Many of us are shocked by the overreach of government, but when we elect school board members, we expect them to work hard to know things.  And this mask mandate thing was an easy one.  At least one of those school board members should have understood that the health departments only had the power to recommend actions.   They could not order anything.  No court of law anywhere could hold a case for even the little things that Covid protocols have required. Biden thought he could get away with this mandatory vaccination action since it has worked to some extent with these school boards across the country.  That is what happens when you put people with very little intellectual curiosity into positions of power, like on a school board.  Lucky for us. Finally, we have a choice.  We have four good candidates to replace three seats in Lakota.  And, by the way they answered this one simple question, it’s obvious why all three of those current board members need to go and go fast. 

Rich Hoffman