Speak Up: Reopening schools, Round 2

A movement within the Indian River School District board of education and the community is saying enough is enough, that it’s time to move forward and get students back in classrooms full time. “We continue to find ways to keep school closed and permanently damage our children of this great state. We need to focus on and find ways to open the schools back up full time,” said Stacy Hennigan in her presentation during the Monday.

• So yeah, let’s hinder an entire generation and make them suffer and not interact with their peers or experience life at that age because a small minority think that COVID is the plague. Kids going to school and living a normal life is hardly a sacrifice. — Keith Dalton

• What the science actually says is that schools don’t pose a transmission threat in an area where there is little to no community spread already. We have way too much community spread to open schools safely. Stop cherry-picking. People’s lives are at stake here. It isn’t a game. — Elizabeth Magnani

• Let me break down the obvious: Private schools charge tuition; ergo, the class sizes are smaller, and the parents are not likely to be “essential workers” who make crappy wages, work in hazardous conditions or live in crowded substandard housing; ergo, they live and work in situations that are generally safer than publicly schooled families; ergo, there is less transmissibility of the virus. — Nadia Zychal

• Wondering how many on this thread actually have school-aged children. — Chris Tazelaar

• Do you know how many children have died from COVID? With a very high survival rate, especially with kids, why can’t they go back to school? If kids can go to Walmart, Target and any other public place, then why not school? Masks, physical distancing and washing hands frequently is proven to work. Life has risks. You could get in a car accident, so do you not ever drive, just in case? Fear is not a reason to keep folks from living their own lives how they choose. Millions of essential workers have worked this entire time and haven’t been sick. Those touching money and products and standing and talking to folks closer than 6 feet, and no uptick in cases. If parents want to send their kids to school, then they should be able to.— Jennifer Rambo

• You do know it’s a 99.97% recovery rate, and most kids don’t even get it or show no symptoms. So glad my kids are in private school. They have had a full year. No problems and no masks for my kids under fourth grade. — Jennifer Fink

• Catholic and charter schools have smaller class sizes. They get to cherry-pick their students. Public schools have to take everybody: special-needs kids, kids in crisis, kids whose parents are in crisis. And that strains the whole system on a good day! — Nadia Zychal

• Yes, it would be great if students could safely go back all week, but it doesn’t seem like the mathematics for remaining socially distant work out. How would you bus them? How would you properly separate them in the classroom? In the cafeteria? In the hallways? How could cleaning staff (and teachers) stay up on the sanitation needs? On top of all that, how does school staff feel about this idea? People seem to forget that even before COVID, we were in a teacher shortage. COVID most definitely did not make it easier to recruit or retain school staff. Point being, if we hope to retain and/or recruit teachers, we have to consider what they, as educational experts, feel comfortable with, as well. — Blair Catlin Brown

• Boohoo. You are so special that you do not operate under the same constraints as the Catholic or charter schools. Get over yourself and get back to work. — Dennis Kirkwood

• Dennis Kirkwood: We never stopped working. We’ve worked all of our designated and required contract hours since we were sent home last March. Teachers have been back in the building since August, just like a regular school year. If they weren’t in the building because of serious medical reasons, they’ve still been working since August like normal and paying their own way with internet, electricity, etc. So not really sure who you’re telling to go back to work. — Phe Marvel

• My daughter has had a full second grade class with masks on since Sept. 2! She teaches in a Catholic school! She will tell you, second-graders are children. Show them, and they will learn. They follow all the safety rules that the state mandates! The students are learning and enjoying school! — Cindy Christiansen

• Don’t act like you’re an expert on a subject matter that you only hear about through your daughter, who works in a non-overcrowded private school with toddlers who have yet to be in their rebellious stages of their life. — Seung Son

• Thanks, Rehoboth Elementary! In class since September. — P. Justin Redefer

• Are you paying attention, Caesar Rodney School District? — Chris Ostrom

• Jesus will save kids at this school. — Pete Reed

• Spoke to a Delaware teacher yesterday, who stated she’s never experienced so many students failing and breaking down mentally. Meanwhile, her teacher friends in other states, who’ve been back in person five days a week, say their students are thriving. Delaware has failed miserably thus far. — Kim Petters

• Should have happened back in September. — Holly Jackson