Brandi Engeman
To the Los Alamos County School Board,
When we, as a family, began discussing what the school year would look like, I was as full of hope as any other parent. As we get closer to the deadline for staff and students to return to campuses in Los Alamos, I no longer have the optimism or feel it is the right decision for our community.
We are uniquely poised right now to either see the spread of COVID-19 in our small town or to continue to keep our numbers low, as we have, since the beginning. Not flooding hospitals and urgent care facilities with new cases, not stressing testing sites with potential cases and allowing the curve to flatten are our biggest hopes against this illness. Herd immunity is not guaranteed and we have no current timeline for a vaccine.
I believe, at this time, the best option for the safety of our students and staff is to begin the school year with remote learning for the majority of our students, reserving in person learning for very small cohorts of students, spread throughout all the campuses, with educational needs that can only be met in a resource classroom or those who have parents who are essential workers and who cannot afford childcare.
We should focus our efforts in the coming weeks on supporting parents so they do not feel as lost and helpless as many may have felt when we transitioned at the start of this pandemic in March. We should focus on student mental health and well-being and teaching our students how to be effective online learners so they feel empowered to learn remotely in our new model of education. Even if we return to the classroom this year, future outbreaks of the virus may shut our facilities down and we should take the time now to get the tools for success into as many young hands as possible. Let us innovate and protect our staff and students at the same time.
If we return to our classrooms and we see a rise in mental health issues despite children being back on campus as many realize that the "normal" they had so hoped to find there no longer exists, have we achieved anything in the long run? Have we put them in harm's way to simply give them false hope that things can return to a pre-COVID existence if they are given access to a classroom? Are we asking too much of staff to throw themselves, once again, between our children and potential disaster? It seems that there are too many what ifs and too many questions that are not being answered to fully support a return to campus life for our staff and students at this time.
Ultimately, I hope the School Board will do what is best for our community and think of the far reaching impact even one student death can have on our community. We have experienced this. We know what it does to classes of children and to the staff who have cared for that child as their own. Please, reconsider the plan to start in person learning in August and begin plans to return with remote learning options for more students and staff in place.
Thank you for your time,
Brandi Engeman