CHARLESTON — Cabell County parents are suing the county and state boards of education for their inconsistent COVID-19 policies.
The parents want more consistent protocols statewide. The lawsuit was filed Aug. 31 in Kanawha Circuit Court.
Jennifer Anderson, one of the plaintiffs who is a parent of a child in Cabell County schools, said there aren't consistent guidelines in place and parents are confused.
Petsonk
| Zack Herold / WV Living
"There seems to be no cohesive crisis prevention and management planning county-wide or for individual schools, such as setting expectations of what will occur if the school must shutdown and return students to remote learning," Anderson said. "The lack of consistent, evidence-based protocols for teachers, staff, and families sends a very confused message to parents about the serious nature of the Delta Variant, and this influences how they plan on communicating at home and with other families when children are affected."
Anderson, along with Amy Reed and Christy Black, filed the lawsuit on behalf of their children, J.A., H.R., J.R., B.R. and G.B. In the complaint, they contend that while hospitals in the state are rapidly approaching maximum capacity with unvaccinated patients who are suffering from COVID-19, active cases have increased ten-fold in the last month.
The complaint alleges that certain school districts are contradicting the advice of their medical advisors. The complaint names the Cabell County Board of Education, West Virginia Board of Education, School Building Authority of West Virginia, the West Virginia Department of Education, Ryan Saxe, Miller Hall, Clayton Burch and Gov. Jim Justice as defendants.
Anderson said the county board's stance on masks also doesn't make sense.
"I want to point out that the Cabell County School Board advocated for masks not too long ago when kids getting COVID were not even yet viewed as being at so high of a risk," Anderson said. "It makes zero sense to suddenly make it all based on a personal choice, regardless of whether a county's infection rate has returned to very high levels, and not based on guidance by our public health and safety experts."
The plaintiffs claim that the state's 55 counties are providing unequal protections and that violates the state's constitution.
"To our knowledge, no federal funding for the 2021-2022 school year was allocated for any contingency plan to ensure protection of students who faced challenges during the 2020-2021 school year due to immunocompromised family members, economic, transportation, other inequitable constraints on access to school or food access," Anderson said.
The plaintiffs are seeking for the court to declare Cabell in violation of the West Virginia code. They are represented by Sam Petsonk.
The case is assigned to Circuit Judge Louis Bloom.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number: 21-P-294