In a civics lesson his students will never forget, Pennsylvania high school teacher Kurt Gladfelter took off his mask and lost his job.
Article by Beth Brelje from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.
“Compliance is not always the right thing, and this is wrong,” Gladfelter told The Epoch Times in a phone interview. “To do this to kids— it is not worth the cost.”
An 11th grade teacher at Northern High School in the Northern York County School District, Gladfelter, 38, is a civics teacher with classes on government, economics, and the Vietnam War.
His school was under a mask mandate last year and, because of an order from the Pennsylvania Health Department, the mask order was in place again this year.
“I’m an animated person,” Gladfelter said. “I feed off the energy in the class. Not having the ability to read their faces, I felt trapped. I was miserable not having that emotional connection with my students.
He says he can’t be the same teacher with masks on because students’ faces offer a lot of visual cues without masks.
“I can tell how a kid feels when they walk into my class. I know if they are having a bad day. I can tell if they understand the lesson by the look on their face. The masks are a huge barrier to education, the way I teach, and the subject I teach.”
“Not to mention the panicky feeling you get when you are speaking all day and you can’t breathe through the mask.”
He always had a feeling that he wanted to take a stand, but didn’t know how. But one day he walked into school and the thought of another day in his mask was too much.
“On October 20, I looked at that mask and I wanted to cry. That day, I didn’t wear it.”
Half way through the day the principal and someone from human resources went to his classroom and told him he was on suspension for two days and he should vacate the premises immediately.
“I didn’t trust them to explain it to my students like I would. I stayed for the rest of the day and explained what was happening. I told them that you should be willing to stand up for something you believe in and I strongly believe in this, personally and politically. Local school board members are appointed to make policies for local schools. Our school board voted twice to make masks optional. The governor stole that authority from them,” Gladfelter said.
A student started a petition to save his job and it has over 2,500 signatures.
He was supposed to return to school, wearing a mask the next Monday, but he told the school he would not be wearing a mask.
They asked him to come in for a meeting with the superintendent, solicitor, and human resources director. In that meeting he told them he would not wear the mask. They told him he would be put on permanent suspension without pay and they would take steps to terminate his employment.
The next step is a public hearing where the school board will decide if he should lose his job.
While awaiting a date for that hearing, the Commonwealth Court said the Health Department’s masking order violated state laws and struck it down. It would mean the civics teacher was suspended for violating an order that violated the state law.
However, the Wolf administration appealed the decision, so the mask order stays in place for now. That, despite the fact that Wolf recently announced he would return masking decisions to local school districts in January.
“The basis of the charges is that Mr. Gladfelter failed to comply with the Order which the Commonwealth Court noted was issued without proper authority,” Jeffrey Schott, a labor and civil rights attorney at the Scaringi Law Firm in Harrisburg, Penn. told The Epoch Times. Schott is representing Gladfelter.
“Regardless, Mr. Gladfelter complied with the Acting Health Secretary’s order, and the series of events and allegations stem from the district being even more draconian than the order itself, and are clearly politically motivated,” he said. “As a Social Studies teacher, Mr. Gladfelter, trying to set a civic involvement example for his students, spoke against the mandate at two school board meetings. Eliminating teachers for this is simply another way, like the National School Board Association and Attorney General threatening parents for speaking out, of trying to shut down political debate.”
The School District’s attorney, Robert Frankhouser Jr. told The Epoch Times the district does not comment on personnel matters.
One Sick Day Proves We Need More Voices in Truthful Media
On October 19, I was sick. It crossed my mind that I had finally gotten the ‘rona, but my wife’s cream of chicken soup and a few extra hours of sleep into mid-afternoon had be back up and running after a sleepless night before.
When I finally stumbled over to my computer in the evening, I was met with a deluge of concern from readers. They asked what had happened as only one article had been posted that day. Generally, we post between 10-20 daily between all of the sites, not included curated and aggregated content. Seeing that we’d only posted my super-early morning article before taking the rest of the day off had readers assuming the worst.
We have a wonderful and talented group of writers who volunteer their time for the sites and their readers. Sharing their amazing perspectives has always been a blessing to us because we cannot afford to hire anyone at this time. But having great writers is meaningless if we don’t have great editors, or at least one additional. My wife helps me read and edit stories from time to time, but I’m a one-man show when it comes to getting the stories posted.
Whenever I highlight our desperate need for donations, I note that we do not receive money from Google ads even though most in conservative media are beholden. I often ambiguously note that the money donated will help us grow. Today, I’m highlighting a specific need. We must get an editor to help take some of the load and to expand on our mission of spreading the truth to the world. One sick day proved that.
The great news is that there is no shortage of people who CAN help. I am emailed variations of resumes every week by people who are much smarter than I am. As much as I’d love to hire some of them, we simply cannot. That takes money and as blessed as we’ve been to receive donations and collect ad money (though not from Google or Facebook), we have still fallen short.
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JD Rucker
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