Tag Archives: #Kentucky

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This is how prosecutors should treat criminals! Try them, convict them, lock them up, and throw away the key.

Jake Messer did not kill anyone; Tonisha Hendrickson did. Mr Messer, prosecuted seriously, was sentenced to life in prison; Miss Hendrickson, treated leniently by Lexington prosecutors, got ten years, much of which she had already served.

Kentucky man sentenced to life in prison in kidnapping over a botched drug deal

by Bill Estep | Wednesday, June 1, 2022 | 11:26 AM EDT

Jake and George Messer. Photo via Clay County News. Click to enlarge.

A southeastern Kentucky man who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a woman after a drug deal went bad has been sentenced to life in prison.

A jury in federal court convicted Jake Messer, 39, of Whitley County, on charges of kidnapping a man and his girlfriend in April 2018.

Messer believed the male victim, who was not named in court documents, had stolen $10,000 that Messer had provided to buy marijuana, according to court documents.

The man thought he had arranged to buy marijuana, but the purported dealers were con men who stole the cash, Todd E. Tremaine, a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in an affidavit.

Messer directed the kidnapping of the man in an effort to figure out if he was involved in taking the money, and kidnapped the man’s girlfriend as what one witness called “human collateral,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenna Reed said in a sentencing memorandum.

Read more here.

The woman was raped at least twice while she was held.

But this is how criminals should be treated: try them, convict them, lock them up, and throw away the key.

The Messers were bad seed: Jake Messer had a previous conviction for distributing methamphetamines and other drugs, and his father, George Oscar Messer, who raped the kidnapped victim at least once, also received a life sentence. But, as far as I could tell, they didn’t kill anyone, unlike Miss Hendrickson, Xavier Hardin, Seantel Watson, Jemel Barber, Malachi Jackson, and James Ragland, who were all allowed to plead down in exchange for more lenient sentences.

The Messrs Messer were prosecuted by the Feds, and not local prosecutors. But Fayette County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn ought to take notice: we can lock away bad guys for the rest of their miserable lives, rather than allowing them to plead down to lesser offenses and being able to look forward to eventually getting out of jail while they are still relatively young.

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The fruits of ‘Lia’ Thomas’ labors If someone was out to destroy transgender acceptance, what would he be doing differently?

Getty Images. Click to enlarge.

I have asked, many times, what Will Thomas, who now calls himself ‘Lia’, is getting from his record-breaking performances on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swimming team. Yes, he’s piling up victories and records, but everyone will recognize that not only should those records have an asterisk on them, he is doing the one thing he really ought not to want to do, demonstrating the real differences between himself and real women.

Now we have this bill in the Kentucky General Assembly, and the obvious question becomes: would the impetus for this legislation, and similar legislation in other states, have been less were not Mr Thomas doing what he has been doing? I have asked before: If someone was out to destroy transgender acceptance, what would he be doing differently?

‘We’re going to get sued.’ KY bill banning transgender girls from girls sports moves forward

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Wednesday, March 9, 2022 | 6:34 PM EST

With a Lexington Republican lawmaker among those in opposition, a Republican bill prohibiting transgender girls from competing in girls sports at the post-secondary, middle and high school levels moved ahead Wednesday.

Senate Bill 83, approved by the House Education Committee with a 15-5 vote, requires the Kentucky Board of Education and the Kentucky High School Athletic Association to establish that an athletic activity or sport designated as “girls” shall not be open to members of the male sex.

“Ninety-six percent chance we’re going to get sued when we pass this,” said state Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Lexington, who voted against the bill. “I’m not sure I feel like spending money on lawsuits.”

Under the bill, the sex of the student shall be determined by the biological sex indicated on the student’s certified birth certificate issued at the time of birth or adoption, Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, the bill’s sponsor, said.

The proposed legislation does not prohibit girls who think they’re boys from participating in boys’ sports, because there are no unfair advantages there.

Further down:

Critics of the legislation have said they haven’t heard of examples of student-athletes harmed by the inclusion of transgender classmates.

There’s more at the original, but if critics say they haven’t heard examples of girls being harmed, then they haven’t been paying attention; the stories about Mr Thomas have been all over the news, and if Mr Thomas competes for an Ivy League school, and the girls who have been harmed have been in Pennsylvania and the northeast, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the Bluegrass State.

People have been cowed into silence, or anonymity, for the very reasonable fear of losing scholarships or future job opportunities:

Penn’s women’s team roster lists 41 members. The 16 teammates did not identify themselves in the letter, stating that they “have been told that if we spoke out against her inclusion into women’s competitions, that we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer.”

UPenn Women’s Swim Team, via Instagram. It isn’t difficult to pick out the one man male in a women’s bikini top. Click to enlarge.

Mr Thomas is an extreme example: he’s 6’3″ tall, and was a competitive athlete on Penn’s men’s swimming team, and if not a consistent winner, he nevertheless scored a few victories in Ivy league competition. He went through male puberty, and was fully developed as a male before he succumbed to his mental illness began his testosterone suppression therapy. Mr Thomas went from being ranked “#462 as a male to #1 as a female”.

At least one women’s swim team member has complained that Mr Thomas is still a physically intact male and thinks little of parading around the locker room with his male genitalia exposed.

It is at least arguable that a boy who thought he was a girl and began ‘transitioning’ prior to puberty — something which qualifies as child abuse as far as I am concerned, and ought to be illegal — would have few physical advantages over real girls, and such shouldn’t make a difference on, say, a girls’ soccer team. In a case like that, there wouldn’t be too much opposition on the local level, and the local level is where such matters would be handled . . . were it not for Will Thomas and the legislation he has at least aided in getting passed, if not completely inspired it.

If someone suffers from “gender dysphoria,” it’s really none of my business. If Joe wants to call himself Jane, it’s no skin off my nose, until the point at which he wants to use the power of the state to require me to call him Jane. But Mr Thomas has forced the issue, forced his mental illness ‘transition’ on everybody — with the complicity of Penn, Ivy League, and NCAA officials — and thus he has accomplished what I would have thought the ‘transgender’ community would not have wanted, to point out that ‘transgender women’ really are not real women.

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Where is our privacy?

Lexington Herald-Leader health and social services reporter Alex Acquisto wrote, “A little over 55% of the state population is fully vaccinated and 23% of residents have received a booster, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health.” One wonders: would more Kentuckians consider the vaccines if there were no Kentucky Immunization Registry (KYIR) and the Vaccine Tracking System (VTrckS)? Why must my personal medical information become part of the state’s database?

    Kentucky’s omicron surge is now ‘significantly if not rapidly declining’

    by Alex Acquisto | Monday, February 7, 2022 | 4:59 PM EST | Updated: 5:17 PM EST

    The number of new COVID-19 cases and the statewide rate of people testing positive are now solidly declining in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said on Monday.

    “Cases are significantly if not rapidly declining,” the governor said in a news conference from the Capitol.

    As it has played out in other states, the longevity of the current omicron surge — from beginning, to peak, and now decline — is significantly truncated compared with the delta surge last year, largely because omicron is much more transmissible. It took the delta variant roughly nine weeks to peak at 30,680 cases a week; omicron reached its weekly caseload peak of 81,473 in four weeks.

Further down:

    Hospitalizations, Beshear said, are also showing a “real downward trend,” though the decline is not as sharp as cases. Over the last seven days, coronavirus hospitalizations dropped by 7%, he said, adding that 2,124 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 on Monday (down 221 people from Friday), 414 people were in an intensive care unit (40 fewer than a week ago), and 207 are on a ventilator.

    Meanwhile, the number of people seeking vaccinations is “definitely slowing,” Beshear said; at the height of the delta and omicron surges, upwards of 7,000 people would get a dose in any given weekend, and on weekdays, typically more than 3,000 people. Weekends now bring closer to 5,000 people getting doses, and weekdays, 1,000 or less.

There’s more available here.

Kentuckians are independent cusses, and we don’t like people sticking their noses in our business, yet every time the Herald-Leader publishes these stories and shows us these statistics, it tells us what we already really knew: the state government is tracking these things.

The real question is: does the Commonwealth have simply aggregate data, or is the state maintaining information on which specific individuals have been vaccinated?

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High water!

SSG Pico bought tickets for her and me to see the Oakland — never Las Vegas! — Raiders play the Baltimore Indianapolis Colts today, but the one road in or out from our farm is underwater. Our place isn’t in any danger; even the record flood of a guesstimated 41.00-foot crest didn’t get in the house, though it did get in the garage and crawlspace.

But we have sparktricity, propane, food, water and internet, so life is still good.

There has been some flooding damage in Madison County, but we don’t live in Madison.

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How gun control works Convicted felon tells police that he'd never be caught without a gun

Erich Storck. Photo by Nicholasville Police Department.

Were criminal stupidity an actual legal violation, Erich Storck would be guilty of it.

Mr Storck is a previously convicted felon, and, well, you can read it for yourself:

    Man who fired shots with police in his house said he’d ‘never be caught without a gun’

    by Karla ward | Tuesday, November 9, 2021 | 6:33 PM EDT

    Nicholasville police arrested a man who fired a gun inside his home multiple times while police were there talking with him.

    Police said they went to Erich Storck’s home on the 500 block of Courchelle Drive Monday evening in response to a call about shots fired in the area, according to a police uniform citation.

    When they arrived, Storck, 49, was inside. With three officers inside the home trying to talk to him, police said Storck “fired multiple bullets,” which police said put their lives in danger, as well as the lives of his neighbors.

    Police said two bullets exited Storck’s home, went through a neighbor’s window and lodged in the neighbor’s bathroom wall, which put the lives of the seven residents there “in substantial danger of death or serious physical injury.”

    Police said Storck’s possession of a firearm was also “a violation of his Kentucky DVO.”

    “When advised of this charge the above subject stated he would never be caught with out a gun,” police wrote in the uniform citation.

Naturally, the Lexington Herald-Leader did not publish Mr Storck’s mugshot, but it was easy enough to find.

This is why gun control will never work. Mr Storck is a previously convicted felon, and thus it is illegal for him to have a firearm. He was under a domestic violence order, which also prohibited him from having a firearm. But he was a drug dealer — the police got a warrant after seeing pot plainly visible in his house, and a more thorough search found plenty of evidence — and drug dealers, even small time ones, find firearms to simply be a necessary tool of their trade.

Mr Storck, allegedly, of course, reacted as a smoked up drug criminal would act: stupidly. But his statement shows that criminals won’t obey gun control laws, regardless of how the left think gun control laws will work.

Of course, there’s more. With his criminal history, he could not have purchased a firearm legally, so someone else must have violated the law in getting it for him. That guy might never be found.

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Mask mandates in the Bluegrass State They don't seem to have made much difference

The Lexington Herald-Leader does not publish a Saturday edition, but at least subscribers can get some updated content on Saturdays. In a story from Friday, we find out that the Bluegrass State’s COVID-19 vaccination rate isn’t as high as previously reported:

    Data duplication error means Kentucky’s COVID vaccination numbers just went down

    By Alex Acquisto | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 9:31 AM EDT

    A major pharmacy chain unintentionally logged a few hundred thousand COVID-19 vaccinations twice, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Thursday, which means many fewer Kentuckians than previously thought have received their first dose.

    Kroger locations across Kentucky, where vaccines are administered through its pharmacies, reported 431,100 duplicate doses to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s federal vaccine database. Those doses — 252,500 of which are thought to be first doses — will be removed Thursday evening and final numbers will be released Friday.

    “The CDC has confirmed in their system that some COVID vaccination data has been counted twice,” the governor said Thursday in a news conference, adding, “This was not intentional by anyone,” but “What it does to our numbers hurts a little bit.” Three other states have made similar errors, Beshear said, but he declined to say which ones.

There is more at the original, but I will admit to being amused.

Jerry Tipton, one of the newspaper’s sportswriters — and it’s the coverage of University of Kentucky sports which keeps the paper alive — had an article this morning on the mask mandate for entrance into Rupp Arena for UK’s exhibition game against Kentucky Wesleyan.

    As fans waited for players to make a “Blue Carpet” entrance to this year’s Big Blue Madness, a security guard noticed Pamela Buboltz’s mask had slipped off her nose. The guard motioned for her to pull it up.

    Buboltz made eye contact with an onlooker (blush). Her gaze seemed to convey a mix of annoyance and can-you-believe-this? She shook her head from side to side after adjusting her mask.

    “No one is wearing a mask,” she said when the onlooker asked about the exchange. “Look around. I see five people (wearing masks). They don’t work anyway.”

There’s more at the original, and Mr Tipton cited examples which ran the gamut.

I noted, on Twitter, on October 5th:

Both signs are still up, the one on the right “strongly encourag(ing)” fully vaccinated shoppers to wear masks beside the outer doors, and the one with no option other than to wear masks beside the inner doors. This is at the Kroger on Bypass Road in Richmond, Kentucky. And while there looked to be roughly 80% compliance three weeks ago, yesterday it was down to, by my guesstimate, 50%. Even a few of the employees, along with a non-employee vendor, weren’t wearing masks, or had them below their chins, where they were of no use.

I, of course, did not wear a mask, and there was no one from the store entrance either encouraging people to mask up or inquiring about vaccination status.

But this was the most important story:

    Two school districts in counties near Lexington are lifting their mask mandates

    by Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Friday, October 29, 2021 | 1:05 PM EDT

    Two Kentucky school districts in counties adjoining Lexington have announced that they are lifting their mask mandates.

    In Nicholasville, Jessamine Superintendent Matt Moore said that masks in school will be optional starting Wednesday.

    Moore said several factors went into making the decision including county data, student and staff cases and quarantines, the number of vaccinations in the community, and the success of the Test to Stay Program, which allows students who test negative for COVID to stay in class even if they have been exposed.

    “I also communicated that, if the data does not trend in the desired direction, JCS would transition back to requiring masks,” Moore said.

    Beginning Monday, Nov. 8, masks and face coverings will be optional for students, staff, and visitors in Madison County Schools at Richmond.

There’s more at the original.

Thanks to the Kentucky General Assembly overriding Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) veto, the decisions on mask mandates in the public schools are the province of local school boards, and not the state. The Governor lamented that he lacked the authority to issue a mask mandate now, and said that, if he had the authority, he would “immediately implement” an indoor mask mandate. The Governor also said that he hoped businesses would put in place mask mandates themselves. Well, Kroger has the signs up doing just that, but Kentuckians are not complying, and the store is not attempting to enforce the requirement.

But the most important sentence in Mrs Spears article is this:

    In recent weeks, Madison County Schools has seen a significant decline in the number of active cases and quarantine cases among students and staff. That decline is in line with the number of cases in the county, officials said in a statement.

If the Madison County schools, which had a mask mandate since the beginning of school, is seeing a decline in cases “in line with the number of cases in the county,” where there is no mask mandate, doesn’t that say that the mask mandates have made no difference?

On September 1st, Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford was shocked and appalled that UK football games was inviting Mr Delta to a tailgate party:

    Then UK announced its COVID protocols for the football season at Kroger Stadium in an Orwellian orgy of double speak: The rules say if you are not vaccinated, you have to wear a mask at all times, even outside! Pinky promise you’ll abide by our honor system! You do have to wear a mask in indoor spaces. Maybe. If we check. Wouldn’t you like to see a UK usher knock on the door of a luxury box to ask some poobah UK donor enjoying a nice bourbon to pull up their mask?

    I’m not sure how to rank science versus football in the SEC, but it seems that UK could have followed the lead of a peer like Louisiana State University. The Tiger Stadium can seat 103,000 people and they’re asking for vaccination status or negative test results. Yes, there will be lines, but also less likelihood to turn games into superspreader events. Then again, maybe LSU has a slightly more celebrated football history and can afford to turn away a few irate fans.

Except the ‘superspreader’ event Mrs Blackford feared never happened. As this graph from The New York Times shows, the South has the lowest “average daily cases per capita” of any region in the country.

On September 1st, the day Mrs Blackford published her column, Kentucky had a moving seven day daily average of 4,320 new cases per day; on October 29th, that average had dropped to 1,214. That’s a 71.90% drop, with UK football games featuring only a small percentage of fans wearing masks, with the vaccination numbers lower than previously reported, and with Kentuckians mostly ignoring masking mandates and requests.

Yes, while I am vaccinated, I have been mostly ignoring the ‘safety protocols’, and I have criticized them. But I can also get kind of numbers geeky, and this article was about the actual numbers. What the worry warts have been telling us has simply not been the case!

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Kroger and masks Local Kroger didn't require masks during worst of the Δ outbreak, so why now?

This sign was posted beside the outer doors at the Kroger on the Eastern Bypass in Richmond, Kentucky, on October 5, 2021.

We reported, on August 10th, that the Kroger Company KR: (%) had updated its mask policy:

    Our current mask guidance requires unvaccinated associates to wear masks and requests that unvaccinated customers wear masks when in our stores and facilities. In light of the Delta variant and updated CDC recommendations, we strongly encourage all individuals, including those who are vaccinated, to wear a mask when in our stores and facilities. We will continue to abide by all state and local mandates and encourage all Americans to get vaccinated, including our associates.

According to the sign, Kroger had gone from “request(ing)” that unvaccinated customers wear masks to “requiring” unvaccinated visitors to wear masks, while still saying, “Masks strongly encouraged for fully vaccinated individuals.

But there was another sign, on the inner doorway, maybe twenty feet from the outer doors:

    Achtung! Attention! Mask required! To stop the spread of the virus, Kroger requires all customers and associates to wear a mask while in our stores.

    Thank you for shopping with us today.

I chose to obey the outer sign, and, being fully vaccinated, I declined their ‘strong encouragement’ to wear a mask. As a guesstimate, about 20% of the shoppers I saw inside were not wearing masks.

So, why did this particular branch of Kroger put up these signs? New COVID-19 cases have been declining in the Bluegrass State, and, thanks to the Republican-controlled General Assembly, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) cannot impose one. This particular branch hadn’t had any signs like this up for months, including during the worst of the ‘Delta’ variant cases. Perhaps the manager got her hand smacked by the corporate office?

At least the store was not attempting to enforce this stupid requirement. It is their private property, so they can impose any restrictions they wish. But I am a free individual, and if they start enforcing this policy, I am free to take my business elsewhere, and I will.

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Yup, Andy Beshear regrets having to call a special session of the General Assembly! The state representatives and senators did the will of the people who voted for them

I asked yesterday if Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) would regret calling a special session of the General Assembly to deal with his COVID-19 programs now that the state Supreme Court has ruled that the injunctions against the General Assembly’s restrictions on his authority had to be dismissed. The Governor got the extension of his state of emergency order for which he asked, but the mask mandate he wanted, and said he would impose if he could? Not just no, but Hell no!

    KY lawmakers override Beshear’s vetoes and end all statewide mask mandates

    By Jack Brammer and Alex Acquisto | Updated: September 10, 2021 | 12:17 AM EDT

    The Republican-led Kentucky General Assembly soundly rejected Gov. Andy Beshear’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic late Thursday night, overriding his vetoes of two bills that stripped the Democratic governor’s ability to issue statewide mask mandates in schools or anywhere else.

    The action came as lawmakers ended a special session of the General Assembly just before midnight. The session, called by the governor to comply with a Kentucky Supreme Court decision last month that said the legislature must approve the governor’s emergency orders, began Tuesday.

    Both the Senate and House late Thursday overrode Beshear’s vetoes of Senate Bills 1 and 2, which he had issued shortly after the bills were initially approved by lawmakers. Senate Bill 1 would nullify emergency regulations mandating masks at public schools and daycare centers, leaving that decision to local officials and business owners. Senate Bill 2 bans any type of statewide mask mandate until June 2023.

    Beshear has said he needs that authority to fight the coronavirus, which has claimed the lives of more than 7,800 Kentuckians and is leaving hospitals severely strapped for staff and resources.

The Senate overrode SB1 21-6, and SB2 23-5. The House overrode the veto of SB1 69-24 and SB2 69-22. The reason that Republicans have such huge majorities in the General Assembly was the Governor’s mask mandates in 2020, when 100 state House and 19 state Senate seats were up for election.

The bills outlaw statewide mask mandates by the state government, but do not prohibit local school boards or districts from imposing their own mandates within their jurisdictions. Mr Beshear had asked local school boards to impose such policies, but most declined to do so, so he got angry and made it an order.

The Governor rescinded his mask order following the state Supreme Court ruling, but by then had persuaded the state Board of Education to issue such an order lasting through the entire school year. The Governor needed his emergency declaration extended — it would otherwise have expired today — but by calling the special session, he lost the state Board of Education’s mask mandate. Whether the state Board’s order was covered by the Kentucky Supreme Court’s August 10 decision is legally up in the air, but it would at least have lasted longer if it had to be adjudicated; now, it’s history, or at least it will be in five days, to give local Boards of Education time to meet and take their own decisions. It is expected that at least the large districts in Fayette and Jefferson counties will impose their own mask mandates, but smaller districts in more rural counties might not. In the Bluegrass State, local Boards of Education are elected, and the Board members must be responsive to the wishes of the voters.

Parents can, of course, tell their children to wear masks even if the local school district does not.

It’s amusing to see the reader comments on the Lexington Herald-Leader article cited above, all claiming that the General Assembly was gambling with the lives of students, but the facts are plain: the members were doing the will of the voters who elected them.

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Will Andy Beshear regret calling a special session?

As we have previously noted, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) really, really doesn’t like the state legislature, but he didn’t have much choice but to call a special session of the General Assembly. Getting the General Assembly involved is something the Governor very much did not want to do. On July 10, 2020, Mr Beshear stated that he wouldn’t involve the legislature because he believed that they wouldn’t do his bidding.

    Beshear was asked at Friday’s news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

In the Bluegrass State, the legislature’s regular sessions are restricted by the state constitution, to sixty days, the last of which cannot go beyond April 15th in even numbered years, and thirty days, not to run beyond March 30th, in odd numbered years. The Governor, however, can call the legislature into special session, and he has the power to set its agenda during a special session. The General Assembly cannot call itself back into session outside of the constitutional restrictions.

But, with the COVID-19 state of emergency that the Governor declared in March of 2020 set to expire on Friday, September 10th, thanks to the state Supreme Court’s decision on the laws reining in the Governor’s emergency authority, Mr Beshear needed the special session to extend that. The General Assembly voted for an extension of that until January 15th, at which time the legislature will be in its regular session.

However, the Republican-controlled legislature hasn’t been doing much that the Governor wanted. We had previously noted that the Governor had asked school districts to put mask mandates in place, but most districts made them optional. The Governor then got pissed off, and made it an order.

    Bill ditching KY school mask mandate approved by House committee on the second try

    By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | Updated September 8, 2021 | 7:15 PM EDT

    It took two attempts, but the House Education Committee on Wednesday passed a bill that would eliminate the state’s mask mandate in K-12 schools and specifies when districts could close to in-person learning.

    The House Education Committee first met at noon Wednesday, when House Bill 1 failed because it only got 11 of the 12 yes votes it needed to win approval in the committee of 22. There were seven no votes and three pass votes.

    Later, a second meeting of the House Education Committee was called for 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. At that meeting, the committee quickly reconsidered and approved the bill. It now moves to the full House of Representatives, and similar legislation remains alive in the Senate. The second vote was 16 yes votes, 2 no votes and no passes. . . . .

    At the second meeting, several lawmakers said they were changing their vote so that the legislation could be heard in the full House. Others said they were afraid if the bill died, schools would miss out on the help the legislation could provide. One provision makes it easier for retired teachers to return to the classroom to ease staff shortages.

There’s more at the original.

The Governor had already said that he would reimpose his despised statewide mask mandate if he could, and when the state Supreme Court ruled that his authority had been limited, he ran an end-around, to get the state Board of Education to issue one, a mandate lasting for the entire school year. I had been noting for awhile that the Governor was looking for an excuse to reimpose the mask mandate, and he admitted it, stating that the high number of COVID-19 cases and hospital staffing shortages would have spurred him to enact a statewide mask mandate for indoor settings.

However, under the proposed bill, local school boards and districts would still have the authority to issue mask mandates for their jurisdictions.

The truth is simple: it was the hated statewide indoor mask mandate which was the primary impetus for voters in the Commonwealth to give Republican legislative candidates such huge majorities in the 2020 elections.

The bill also includes language to allow schools more flexibility on ‘non traditional instruction’, NTI, days. In the regular session last winter, the legislature, fighting the closure of schools and long term use of remote instruction, mandated that no schools could take more than ten NTI days without having to make them up in in-person days. As several districts, at least 38 of them so far, have had to close down due to COVID, those days, normally used for snow days during the winter, would quickly get used up. The legislature is still looking at limits, but with more flexibility for schools who confine NTI to those students or classes which must be quarantined, rather than entire school systems. We do not yet know what the final form will be.