Interim Superintendent Appreciation and Covid Response

[Bethany Scott]

School Board Members,

I am writing to express my appreciation to Interim Superintendent Jennifer Guy for her leadership over the past school year. She has led our district through an intensely difficult time and has handled the pressures of a divided community professionally and competently. I admire her calm responses in heated discussions and how she has clearly communicated with parents.

I deeply appreciate the decision she and other district leadership made to send the students back to school after the week of remote learning. I'm truly grateful that our school district has recognized that in-person school is essential to the mental well-being and education of our children, and that remote learning is not an equivalent option.

As we look forward to the end of the omicron wave, I hope that the covid policies embraced in our district will take into account the fact that covid risk has decreased significantly with the less severe strain and the high vaccination rate of members of our community. I would favor a return to normalcy as quickly as possible. 

I am concerned that the increased covid response is more detrimental to my children than the risk of covid. Masking, distancing, and cohorts had their place when there were no vaccines and a much more lethal version of the virus (or if another lethal strain comes through), but now the burden they present are worse than the disease they aim to protect against (at least for those who are vaccinated--those who are not vaccinated have taken the higher risk upon themselves by choice). We should not keep district policy oppressively strict to appease those who do not feel safe, have chosen not to be vaccinated or face higher risk than average. The district has an online option available for those individuals that offers quality education in a lower-risk environment. 

Sincerely,

Bethany Scott

(Mother of three LAPS students)