Hearing Anyone with Masks on during Meeting

[Loren Knapp]

At our board meetings, we are socially distanced and wear masks into the meeting. Our meetings have been moved from the library to the gym to accomodate the social distancing.

For me, I have a hard time hearing our soft spoken members when the masks are on. The acoustics are not good in the gym, the distancing, and the muffling of the masks don't help. Sometimes, the member repeats themselves a number of times and sometimes another member relays the information to me. 

We are a small rural school, so we do not have microphones in our meetings.

One member does remove the mask to speak and then puts the mask back on when done speaking. The others prefer to leave the mask on the mask on, which I have no issue.

Does anyone else have this issue? How do you handle the problem?

It is frustrating not being able to hear what is being said or discussed.

Thank you.

[Rebecca Edsall]

I am also from a small rural district. We had a board member a few years ago with a hearing difficulty and we realized that we really needed to be able to accomodate all needs in our community as well as our board member's. We purchased a portable sound system (two speakers and 3 mics) that we spread around the table. That way, our member could hear the community and the other way around. Because it's a portable system, the district can use it for more than BOE meetings as well.

I agree the masks make it difficult. I hope this helps.

[Carol Popolow Abraham]

We are returning to remote (Zoom or Google Meets) meetings for this reason. We had more community viewers and it was easier to communicate when we were all on the chat.