Demonstrations over masks held ahead of Carroll ISD Monday meeting

SOUTHLAKE, Texas - Tensions over mask requirements ran high at several school district meetings on Monday.

In Southlake, supporters of masks in schools held a protest outside Carroll ISD's main building. There were also people there who don't support mask mandates.

The district doesn't have a mask mandate in effect right now. In fact, Monday night's meeting was supposed to be about the budget.

A polarizing debate inside Carroll ISD’s board of trustees meeting centered around if trustees should order a mask mandate for students and staff or keep it optional.

More than 800 parents and 100 doctors signed and presented a petition calling for a mask mandate.

One woman who claimed to be a registered nurse questioned the effectiveness of masks.

"This is garbage. It does not protect you from COVID," she said. "It is completely illogical to have a child wear a gator or a cloth mask or a surgical mask or even an ill-fitting N-95 respirator."

A mask mandate was not officially on the agenda Monday. But still, parents for and against masks rallied outside prior to the meeting.

"My younger son said he was the only one at school on Friday that had a mask on in his classroom," said parent Ann Lutterbach.

"Mandate masks. Protect our children," another parent said outside the meeting. "Do you think they will? I hope so. I’m not hopeful, but I hope so."

One man and woman said they don’t even have children in the district but came to demonstrate against mask requirements.

"Yeah, that’s one of the sad things about this is this stuff gets politicized, and then it gets spun into some other different story" he said. "The people that should be here speaking about this should be people who actually have children in the school system."

Inside, people spoke on the subject for nearly three hours and still divided as ever as the pandemic rages on.