Updated: 7:15 p.m. Monday, Aug. 31, 2020
The Akron Public School Board voted 4-3 Monday evening to let all fall sports go forward, effective immediately, reversing a decision made last week. The board also voted to allow the marching band to play this fall.
The special meeting was scheduled after the district faced growing outcry from the public that took the form of protests, petitions, emails and phone calls.
Earlier this month, , but left the final decision up to each school district. Many Ohio school districts immediately started allowing teams to resume practice and continue with scheduled games.
Last week, Akron鈥檚 school board voted 4-3 to postpone football and other fall contact sports for at least nine weeks, in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Throughout the week, however, the school district faced mounting pressure from students and parents to reverse its decision.
School board members Derrick Hall and Diana Autry requested the special meeting and Hall told ideastream Monday afternoon that a 鈥減lethora of things鈥 made him reverse his earlier decision.
鈥淲e had a very sort of loud and active parental component to this. There were multiple petitions that went around that had several thousand signatures,鈥 Hall said. 鈥淚 think that being a member of a community elected board, it's important to sort of take [the] pulse and sort of notice when you have that kind of activism going on around an issue.
The number of Akron schools鈥 student-athletes participating contributed to his decision, Hall said.
鈥淲e're talking about 800 students, not 20,000,鈥 he said. 鈥淪o, in thinking about it, we don鈥檛 have sports combined with in-person school,鈥 said Hall, who added that these students are 鈥渟pread across a plethora of different teams. So it's not 100 students, even all together.鈥 During the meeting, board member Lisa Mansfield expressed dismay that they were reconsidering their previous decision.
鈥淚 just feel like we're kind of torturing the public at this point,鈥 said Mansfield. 鈥淚f it feels like Groundhog Day to me, I'm certain it feels like that to them as well. We need to be nimble. We need to make decisions. We need to be the deciding body. We need to take action based on guidance and from the experts.鈥
Mansfield said, ultimately, she supports each board member鈥檚 opinion and has 鈥渆veryone鈥檚 back.鈥
In his interview with ideastream, Hall said the board could still reverse Monday night鈥檚 decision if 鈥渨e start seeing students test positive.鈥
鈥淭he board has a right to reverse any decisions it makes,鈥 said Hall. 鈥淪o my thought, my assumption is that... as we monitor this, if in the coming weeks, we see COVID outbreaks on these teams, I would imagine that we would be revisiting this again.鈥
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