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Julia Sheppard
Feb 9, 2021, 3:01:26 PM2/9/21
to School Board Public Comments
Dear Dr Steinhaus and School Board,
Our school district and administration has done an excellent job giving teachers the tools and flexibility they needed to do the best job they could for the last eleven months. At this point, it is time to give them the responsibility and opportunity to face their fears and come to work. Now it is time for us to be held accountable to our children and students by educating them. And when we do so, we must not be afraid of them.
My concern is that we have focused so entirely on one risk factor that we have elevated the risk of many other factors in these students' lives. Given that the children we teach have a lower chance of having serious implications from COVID19 than even the flu (which we don't shut down for), it is inexcusable that we have increased their risk of injury due to inactivity, risks of high level anxiety, risks of continuing a sedentary lifestyle, risk of losing the ability to communicate fully with others, risks of losing opportunities for further education, and who knows what else.
I am writing because I have a concern that decisions will be made to delay opening of the schools and restrict our options to educate in the next months, with restrictions self-imposed and more dramatic than the ones already imposed by our state. If this is not the intention of the school board, I have no need to continue. But if it is a consideration, I would like to assert my position to return as soon as possible
In March of last year, our state decided to preemptively close down due to fear of overwhelming our hospitals. Whether that and the following restrictions were the right decisions or not is not worth arguing. However, I believe we have switched our goal of managing a virus so that it has a smaller impact, to using its prevalence the sole indicator of our actions. Currently, we have knowledge and tools that can help us manage the virus, and it is time to focus our efforts on the neglected aspects of our lives. We have set aside our values to educate: academically, socially, and morally for the value of safety. It is time to readdress those values.
To stall any longer raises other benign risk factors to higher, more alarming places. Consider the social and emotional needs of our children: are we willing to damage them long term? It would be naive to deny that these risks have not increased dramatically. Or even consider the physical health of children who sit for six hours a day. Consider the life-impact of the sedentary habits we are enforcing.
If our state, which has been very careful with spread, deems it safe to return to work, I request that we should do so at the earliest possible chance. Our schools have multiple plans that could be put into place. Each teacher and employee is contracted for full days of work, and none of the plans impose on that. Surely, there will be parents who choose not to let their students come back, as is their right. But it is not our right to infringe on those students who need and desire an education.
If our state, which has been very careful with spread, deems it safe to return to work, I request that we should do so at the earliest possible chance. Our schools have multiple plans that could be put into place. Each teacher and employee is contracted for full days of work, and none of the plans impose on that. Surely, there will be parents who choose not to let their students come back, as is their right. But it is not our right to infringe on those students who need and desire an education.
Whether the fear of returning to work is rational or irrational, we cannot tolerate it anymore, as it has and will continue to have further negative impact on the education and lives of our children and students.
“It is a monstrous, uncivilized thing to close a public school—to lock the door and turn children and teachers away, to halt the process of education in the modern world.”--Benjamin Muse, from a different time and for a different reason, who criticized those who closed schools because they opposed desegregation:
“It is a monstrous, uncivilized thing to close a public school—to lock the door and turn children and teachers away, to halt the process of education in the modern world.”--Benjamin Muse, from a different time and for a different reason, who criticized those who closed schools because they opposed desegregation:
Mrs. Julia Sheppard
Los Alamos Middle School
Geometry, Pre-Algebra
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