So during the current debate regarding our Interim Secretary's ability to mandate masks in school, the Tamaqua school board has shown the fortitude to challenge the mandate and has make masks optional. The Department of Education has claimed its actions as "willful misconduct." Precedence has established the traditional formulation of willful misconduct has required "a showing that there has been a deliberate act or omission with knowledge of a high degree of probability of harm and reckless indifference to consequences." Berg v. Reaction Motors Div., Thiokol Chem. Corp., 37 N.J. 396, 414, 181 A.2d 487 (1962)
The Department of Education is grasping at straws in it's attempts to scare school boards into shirking their legally protected duties by pointing to definitions that simply don't apply. No school board has ever been found guilty for a student contracting an illness while at school.