Mendocino County’s opinions on the issues
Check out today’s editorial columns and letters to the editor from our readers.
To the Editor: Children need classrooms
I just left a Board of Supervisor’s Board meeting listening to a very lengthy COVID update. The County “COVID TEAM” was there along with the County Health Officer, Mask Mendocino, etc. There was a long discussion and praise about how outstanding our hospitals and healthcare providers are doing, how groups are reaching out to homeless shelters and cannibus farmers providing PPE and testing. Eight guests in a homeless shelter tested positive for COVID, yet not a single employee/worker there tested positive! Outstanding! So, PPE works, eh? Well, apparently it doesn’t work if it’s in a public school because our public school students have not been in a classroom since March of last year. Remarkably, this population of our society, our future, wasn’t give one minute of discussion in the presentations.
When it was open to public comment I expressed my concern for our children and how the current data does not support keeping children out of the classroom; math test scores are declining while depression, anxiety, and child abuse are on the rise. There are no playgrounds to play on, no sports happening, so children are also suffering physically. (Taking a walk around the neighborhood just isn’t the same as school PE or running and climbing around the playground.) Was there any concern at all from the Board of Supervisor’s or the Public Health Officer regarding these children? Any personal accountability? No. The overall response was that the schools were to blame for not opening up while we were in the red tier (Wasn’t that a two week window?) and it had nothing to do with them.
Meanwhile, the most recent communication from the Ukiah Unified School District states, “On Nov. 12, 2020, Mendocino County Public Health Officer Dr. Coren put out Reopening K-12 Schools for In-person, On-site instruction Preliminary Guidance for School Year 2020-2021. The document provides new guidance on health and safety practices needed to safely resume in-person onsite instruction at K-12 schools. I wanted to alert you that this guidance has created significant roadblocks to eventually reopening our secondary schools (6th—12th Grade) with the previously communicated hybrid model.”
In addition, I have been informed by at least one UUSD Board member that in regards to opening public schools “We have a couple of hurdles. We are using our local public health director, Dr. Coren, as our source of the best science. We will follow his direction on what is safe and what isn’t. It is important to make a science-based decision as opposed to politically motivated decisions. When he gives the allclear, we will push forward with reopening schools.” Where is the science Dr. Coren? What studies are you using to derive data to support your guidelines? According to our County website roughly .003 percent of children in our county age 0-18 have tested positive. The County lists no outbreaks from schools, preschools, and daycares are that currently open.
So, this seems to be quite contradicting. The County blames the School Board, the School Board blames the County Health Officer… and then you have the Teacher’s Union who puts a grinding halt to any progress given to getting kids back in the classroom. Per the same UUSD board member, “The California Teachers Association has opposed any form of reopening schools from the beginning. They do not care about the health and welfare of our kids or community. Their only goal is to protect the worst members of their union. This poses a problem. When the District says that it’s time to go to school, there are a variety of ways teachers can opt- out. We simply do not have enough substitutes to weather the storm.” So, the Teacher’s Union is dictating whether our children get a classroom education. Meanwhile, teachers are getting a three percent pay raise, half of them are refusing (aka “opting out”) to go back to the classroom, and they can’t be fired.
When is ANYONE going to recognize that our children are suffering emotionally, physically, socially, and educationally. (But only the public school children; private schools have been in the classroom for months.) Does any of this seem fair or rational? Right now the only thing that seems rational is school choice with vouchers.
I am not just disappointed, but I am disgusted by the ease at which these people in our community have disregarded the importance of the education of our children; the influence this has on their futures. Will we have a generation of welfare recipients or successful tax paying citizens?
People at risk should protect themselves. Healthy people should be able to live, work, and be educated. As citizens we are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which includes a classroom education. Those seem like important words that may be written somewhere important.
May God bless us and have mercy on us.