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Montgomery School board chair storms out of meeting after being challenged for breaking mask rules

Montgomery County school board chair Susan Kass stormed out of a meeting after a parent confronted her over breaking Covid-19 mask rules

As the battles between school boards and parents over Covid-19 restrictions rage on, a video of a mother exposing board members without masks has gone viral.

The clip, uploaded to Twitter on Wednesday, February 16, was originally shared on TikTok. It shows an unidentified woman taking her turn at the podium by holding up her phone for the board and revealing that she had identified Susan Kass, Chairwoman of the Montgomery County, Virginia, school board, breaking the board's own mask rules which have been imposed on students.

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“Here’s a picture, of you, right here, on Facebook, with a CROWD of people, with no mask on,” the woman declares in the video. “Here’s another picture of you, with no mask on,” she continues, before Kass interjects angrily. “If you are going to sit there and disparage a member of our school board, you can sit down,” she says as the women go back and forth during the live-streamed meeting. Moments later, Kass asks, “may we have a police officer over here, please?” 

However, there is some dissension within the board itself, as fellow board member Jamie Bond chimes in to say, “She should be able to say her piece, I’ve had to listen to people come and criticize me.” Kass responds, “That doesn’t make it right, Jamie, that’s my family." This prompts the mother to angrily retort, “What do you think about our family? Our family is being suffocated to death with your policies." Kass eventually gets up and says, “I’m done. She leaves or I leave,” before leaving the meeting.

Kass told WDBJ7 in a statement, “Just because you believe in masking in a classroom, with 30 students sitting in a room in close proximity, in a small, not well-ventilated room, asking them to mask there is not the same as saying I need to wear a mask in my house. The fact they went and trolled my Facebook to find anything they could to disparage me is pretty sad and pretty low.”

Kass has indicated that she may retire from the board, but other members are hoping she stays on. “She’s been a fantastic board member and honestly a really effective chair. Many of my fellow board members share that view,” fellow board member Mike Cherbaka told WDBJ7.

It's worth noting that Virginia has been at the forefront of a nationwide debate over masks as well as broader cultural debates in general. According to BizPacReview, Loudoun County in particular has become synonymous with impassioned confrontations between parents and school board members. The debates have intensified after newly elected Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin signed a law prohibiting schools from making masks compulsory. The bill, SB739, allows parents to “elect for [their] child to not wear a mask while on school property,” regardless of any restrictions issued by local school boards or state agencies.