Good afternoon,
My name is Paz Mas. I am a former LAPS, LAMS and LAHS student. The reason I am writing this email is to inform that I was successfully able to complete my junior and senior years of high school, all online. I believe this was not only the best choice for my mental health and my education but it also was the best choice for my life, in general. It taught me responsibility in a way “normal” schooling couldn’t. I was able to get a part time job while doing school full time, which gave me a bit of a jump start at life. I really believe online learning is beneficial to everyone in many ways, especially during this Covid-19 pandemic. I urge the school board to make the right choice; to not go back to in person classroom learning this fall. I plead for you to keep the students’ and teachers’ health over everything else.
Questions for School Openings:
• If a teacher tests positive for COVID-19 are they required to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Is their sick leave covered, paid?
• If that teacher has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, do all 150 of those students need to then stay home and quarantine for 14 days?
• Do all 150 of those students now have to get tested? Who pays for those tests? Are they happening at school? How are the parents being notified? Does everyone in each of those kids' families need to get tested? Who pays for that?
• What if someone who lives in the same house as a teacher tests positive? Does that teacher now need to take 14 days off of work to quarantine? Is that time off covered? Paid?
• Where is the district going to find a substitute teacher who will work in a classroom full of exposed, possibly infected students for substitute pay?
• Substitutes teach in multiple schools. What if they are diagnosed with COVID-19? Do all the kids in each school now have to quarantine and get tested? Who is going to pay for that?
• What if a student in your kid's class tests positive? What if your kid tests positive? Does every other student and teacher they have been around quarantine? Do we all get notified who is infected and when? Or because of HIPAA regulations are parents and teachers just going to get mysterious “may have been in contact” emails all year long?
• What is this stress going to do to our teachers? How does it affect their health and well-being? How does it affect their ability to teach? How does it affect the quality of education they are able to provide? What is it going to do to our kids? What are the long-term effects of consistently being stressed out?
• How will it affect students and faculty when the first teacher in their school dies from this? The first parent of a student who brought it home? The first kid?
• How many more people are going to die, that otherwise would not have if we had stayed home longer?
Paz Mas