Jennifer Hall Lee, a member of the Pasadena Unified School District board, wrote recently about the importance of of “high-functioning” school boards where members work together toward common goals and avoid partisan politics.
Case in point: the PUSD board has a higher standard for vaccinations than the state. At a time when many school boards have been split by partisan battles, it is good to hear of a school board that prioritized the public health of students and staff over politics.
She wrote:
Only the Governor of California has authority over the PUSD School Board, and on August 11, Governor Newsom announced. “California Department of Public Health (CDPH) today issued a new public health order requiring all school staff to either show proof of full vaccination or be tested at least once per week.” He is requiring proof of vaccination or, for the unvaccinated, to be tested at least once per week.
The Governor’s plan on testing is less robust than the plan the PUSD is already acting upon: PUSD has a stronger testing plan for students.
- Because of our strong relationship with the City of Pasadena Department of Public Health and Dr. Ying-Ying Goh, PUSD was among the first districts in our area to offer vaccinations to all teachers, staff, students and family members.
- 96% of PUSD staff and teachers are already vaccinated: 1,320 through PUSD-run clinics, and another 800 through appointments at clinics at Huntington Hospitalthrough a partnership with Pasadena Public Health.
- On August 5, the PUSD School Board had affirmed the goals of the Superintendent, Dr. Brian McDonald, Ed. D.: attestation of vaccines among staff and mandatory testing of all staff and teachers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wonder if that little ole lady from there has been vaccinated?
Go lady Go Lady Go Lady Go
In North Florida the virus is out of control in the schools, and the schools are not following the recommended protocols except that students may wear a mask if they choose. So many illnesses and deaths could be avoided if they followed science instead of politics.
My grandson is in school in the suburbs of El Paso. He started the last week of July. The school has had one Covid case during the first week of school. Most of the students and teachers are vaccinated and masked. Some 6th graders like my grandson are not vaccinated because they are eleven, and there is no Covid outbreak among 6th graders. As soon as eleven years olds are eligible, my grandson and others will get the vaccine. El Paso should be a model for the nation in fighting Covid. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/06/mexixan-factory-workers-texas-border-covid-19
amen
A record number of cases in Florida. Thanks for far worse than nothing, Governor DeSantisssssssssssssssss.
Oh my God NO! Have the socialists made inroads even into TEXAS–one of our great bastions of patriotism, loyalty and sanity–while our noble governor is incapacitated with the fake Chinese flu?? What’s next–socialistical control of who we can vote for and when we can pray? May God give Governor Abbot a speedy recovery and send a new mighty Trinity of him, DeSantis and Trump to save our most American state and our great country!
El Paso did not want to repeat the devastation they faced before the vaccine. As you may remember, there were freezer trucks of dead bodies in hospital parking lots. Now with over 80% of their population vaccinated and many still wearing masks, they are defeating Covid despite the fact they are a low resource community. El Paso has more registered Democrats than Republicans.
Only an insane person like Insantis would oppose mask mandates for schools.
DeSatanist
DeathSentence
great link/ info, retired teacher. nice to hear good news from Texas.
I would just ask that we be spared lectures from the “goverment schools” crowd on how public schools will become ungovernable when they’re redefined as not public at all.
A lot of people knew that, and all of them were ignored in favor of the know it all, arrogant “disrupters”
It’s pretty disruptive for public school students. Hope you’re happy.
Ed reformers might want to skip advising public schools on this. This is their market vision, realized.
Jettisoning the “public” in public education comes with consequences. It was never without risk.
Public schools will never thrive or improve under the direction of experts who don’t buy the basic concept of public schools.
I’m hoping after this miserable summer where our schools were used as battlefields with absolutely no regard for our students public schools will finally get that.
Public schools should be led by people who value them AS PUBLIC. That’s the absolute minimum they should demand.
A charter school would never take direction from people who refer to them as “corpprate charters”, yet public schools are expected to take direction from people whose whole goal is to take them private or “transform” them into something else entirely.
👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
“He [CA guv] is requiring proof of vaccination or, for the unvaccinated, to be tested at least once per week.”
Testing just once a week is close to useless to prevent viral spread, since the peak of contagiousness to others can come within just a few days of a person’s contracting the virus, a couple days before they even show symptoms (which occurs at day five, on average).
Besides, even the most accurate test (pcr) can have a significant false negative rate (up to 40% (even higher according to some studies), depending on when the test is performed) and rapid antigen tests can have false negative rate of up to 50%. So a negative test is certainly no guarantee that the person is not infected.
The upshot us that vaccinations should be required of ALL school staff. Testing is no substitute.
And masks should also be required of everyone, since even the vaccinated can spread the virus.
CA also has mask mandate for public and private schools [as well as other venues], & CA Dept of Public Health warned Wednesday of legal ramifications of not enforcing it. Med Bd of CA also warned of licensure issues if doctors issue illegitimate mask exemptions [i.e., beyond exemptions allowed by state]. https://newsroom.ocde.us/coronavirus-update
testing every day — yes, there’s a chance it would help. Testing once a week is exactly what you relay: “useless to prevent viral spread.”
In including the “test at least once a week” wording, Newsom is simply acting as a politician.
No surprise there. The guy is s!icker than oil.
If these people are not going to quit this sort of crap, they need to be voted out of office.
Viruses don’t give a damn what politicians (or anyone else) thinks.
Basing ones decisions and decrees on calculations to get votes is a very bad public health policy.
Anyone who is actually legitimately interested in giving school children, school staff and their families the maximum protection would make use off ALL the currently available means of preventing spread, not least of all vaccine and mask mandates.
Proposing half measures at this point is a clear indication that one has other goals that may actually conflict with protecting schools.
Goggles for sure. Hazmat suits if they’re available.
One of the reasons the Covid numbers are so high in schools near me is that people are refusing to change their behavior to stop the spread. One of the reasons El Paso is so successful they are following science and modifying behavior.
FLERP: does your comment indicate you have a problem with mandating either vaccination or wkly testing for all school staff, & masking for all (incl students)? In the past your main concern has been with getting kids back into the classroom, no? I can’t think of a better way to overcome teacher & parent hesitancy.
I’m not in favor of mandatory vaccination plus mandatory masking for vaccinated people, especially students. I generally come down on the side of no masks for elementary-age students and vaccinated students. And I think Covid is likely endemic and is something we are going to have to live with, and the best ways of doing that are vaccinations and treatment. Of course, what I think has no impact beyond making a handful of commenters on a blog extremely upset.
🙂
oops, I should have read on before commenting…
FLERP has made his antimask stance crystal clear.
Correct, I am against the need for masks in a building where everyone is vaccinated. Whereas you are in favor of requiring masks to be worn in buildings in which everyone is vaccinated. Surely my position is not merely wrong but also uneducated, insane, and dangerously right-wing, right?
Anti mask
And anti science
FLERPy’s task
Is rank deniance
I already made it crystal clear that the virus can be spread by the unvaccinated.
That’s not a debatable issue.
Your position is simply anti-scientific.
SDP, I understand your position to be that people should wear masks indoors (and maybe outdoors) as long as there are cases of Covid-19 in the world. And maybe as long as there are other respiratory viruses. I think this is an absolute lunatic position, but then again, I’m “anti-scientific” and thus wrong.
You obviously believe that one can reach a compromise agreement regarding basic scientific facts and I have no desire to “debate” such an illogical position.
Spread by the VACCINATED
Just curious.
Do you make these sorts of illogical arguments in court?
What’s the illogic?
Belief that the vaccinated don’t need to wear a mask in school when you know that the vaccinated can spread the virus AND that both the CDC and the AAP have recommended that EVERYOnE in a school wear a mask regardless of vaccination status (for the above reason)
That’s illogical.
But the fact that I had to explain it to you ( more than once) is nothing for you to write home about.
Logic is clearly not your thing.
Treating CDC and AAP recommendations as irrefutable proof is downright hilarious, particularly since you were probably tearing your hair out back in May when the CDC recommended that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks indoors. When the CDC shifts again in a way that doesn’t match your risk appetite, remind me to laugh my ass off again.
I’m not a scientist like you, but my understanding is that although the vaccinated “can” spread the virus, they are much less likely to do so than the unvaccinated. Likewise, although the vaccinated “can” be infected, they are much less likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. And although the vaccinated “can” be hospitalized and even die from Covid, they are much less likely to do so than the unvaccinated. These are among the reasons why regular rubes like me choose to get vaccinated.
On a side note, have you eaten in a restaurant since March 2020?
SomeDAM Poet,
You will be pleased to know that most parents understand the difference between having mask mandates when a pandemic is in full force and mask mandates when it appeared that the pandemic had subsided.
Most parents understand that science is always changing in response to evidence. It is a right wing narrative to push distrust just because the CDC has changed its recommendations.
In fact, the reason that Trump was such a horrible president to have in the midst of a pandemic is because Trump would never admit he was wrong because to him, the worst thing in the world is to admit you are wrong. But the whole point of science is to have hypotheses based on early evidence and you continue to search for more evidence and test your hypotheses. It is acceptable to be wrong.
The worst thing in the world would be the “Trumpification” of science. Stick with whatever you said regardless of how much new evidence arises to prove you are wrong. Tell people that the new evidence is fake, and tell them not to believe their lying eyes because everything is perfect.
The majority of parents understand how outrageous it is when a few angry people insist on presenting a false choice of “no mask mandates” or “mask mandates until there isn’t a single case of COVID anywhere in the world.”
The majority of parents understand that supporting having a mask mandate during the height of a pandemic is common sense.
Over a month before the CDC came out with their results, Israeli studies were showing decreased effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against the delta variant of the virus. In fact the latest studies which came out before CDC, showed just 39% effectiveness against getting CovID (although the studies still showed relatively high effectiveness against severe cases resulting in hospitalization and death). And even less serious cases (including asymptomatic CovID patients) can spread the virus.
I mentioned these studies here and was recommending mask wearing by the vaccinated even before the CDC came out with their results.
The fact that CDC was late to the party does not mean they are wrong.
But given the option of listening to legitimate researchers (in Israel and at CDC) or lawyer FLERP!, I don’t think there is any real choice.
Others are free to disagree, of course.
The fact is , far from just accepting CDC recommendations, I was quite critical of their decision to remove the mask recommendation for the vaccinated BECAUSE of the research coming out of Israel .
I could hunt down my comments and link to them (and Bob Shepherd can probably vouch for the fact that I made them) but quite frankly, it’s not worth my time just to prove a point to someone who is clearly little more than a science denier.
Believing that buildings where everyone can show they’ve been vaccinated should not require masking does not make me a “science denier.” To me that’s sensible policy. But you do appear to be a “zero Covider.” That’s a pretty crazy way to look at a world where Covid is likely never going away.
SomeDAM Poet,
Thank you for your comprehensive reasoning for your positions.
I saw no evidence in anything you wrote to support the attack on you that you are a “zero Covider”.
FLERP!
If you don’t believe you can get and spread the virus after being vaccinated (and it certainly appears you don’t), you are certainly entitled to your opinion.
From what you have said , I have every reason to think that you can — and probably will — believe anything you damned well please.
And as long as it only affects you and your immediately family, that’s YOUR business.
But what is NOT ok is for you to put other people at risk simply because you find wearing a mask inconvenient.
And that’s what your opposition to masks for the vaccinated is really about. You don’t want to wear one (and don’t want anyone telling you to or even recommending that you to wear one), so have come up with a cockeyed justification that includes denying the research that shows that the vaccinated can spread the virus.
Do you actually believe this stance makes you appear logical?
SDP, people put themselves and others at risk every day in all sorts of ways. I don’t dispute the statement that one “can get and spread the virus after being vaccinated.” I’ve never disputed that statement on this blog or anywhere else, so I don’t know why you would think I would dispute it. The question is how likely is a vaccinated person to “get and spread the virus.” You’re the expert here. How likely is it?
FLERPs first reply to my comment that I linked to above pretty much tells you where he is coming from
“Would you say that everybody should wear masks in school buildings, regardless of whether they have received a Covid vaccination (whatever the vaccination), as long as the vaccinated can spread the virus?
If these conditions were true for 10 years, would your position change?
Has everyone lost their goddamn mind?”
/// End quote
The implication, of course, is that the response to the pandemic should not be dictated by the actual conditions (eg, viral prevalence and virulence) but by how many years have passed (and presumably, how “tired” people have grown of stuff like mask wearing)
The reality is that the more people refuse right now to do what is required to prevent spread of the virus in order to bring the pandemic under control, the longer it is going to last.
The virus doesn’t give a damn if we are tired of wearing a mask or if we don’t believe the vaccinated can catch and transmit the virus.
The way things are going now with so many people refusing to get vaccinated and refusing to wear masks in schools and other indoor settings, I can see this easily lasting several years.
And it will be the fault of the refuseniks — who are so tired 😩
Certainly won’t be the fault of those calling for vaccinations and continued mask wearing.
SDP, I’m not sure if you’re speaking to me or about me, but in either event, I give up. I don’t think you’re reading my comments correctly, but I’ve had a terrible day and I’m exhausted.
SDP,
Trying to wrap my head around a person who believes that the “risk” of having a very bad outcome is measured only by an individual’s chance of catching COVID by being in an indoor classroom with a bunch of unmasked, vaccinated people.
On the contrary, the “risk” of having a very bad outcome is measured on whether there is any medical treatment available to the people who have more than mild cases of COVID when the people who are infected from being in crowded rooms with unmasked, vaccinated people spread it and infect others.
The reason that schools haven’t required masks during past flu seasons is because there was always the understanding that people who caught the flu at school and had any complications would be able to get treatment at hospitals.
I do not understand why anti-maskers seem to be (deliberately?) obtuse about this.
Flattening the curve. It’s a concept that is beyond the understanding of many people who can only see “risk” as “what are my personal chances of catching COVID” and not “what are the chances people I love will be able to get medical treatment for any illness if we don’t act to flatten curve?”
What are the risks if this country doesn’t flatten the curve when the pandemic is going strong?
Rather than measuring “risk”, some people should study exponents.
FLERP, let me try to say this in a different way than SDP has done.
Going back to your other-thread post: “Would you say that everybody should wear masks in school buildings, regardless of whether they have received a Covid vaccination (whatever the vaccination), as long as the vaccinated can spread the virus?”
To me, the question asks for binary answers that don’t fit reality. If, for example, we’re talking pre-Delta variant, and students are over 10yo [i.e., they transmit as readily as adults], & a large majority of them are vaccinated [plus staff]—no. I would have said only those with compromised health who could not be vaccinated should wear actual self-protecting masks [e.g. N95], just in case– because the vaccine greatly reduced the incidence of transmission of pre-Delta variants.
But that situation never existed: just as the 12-17yo’s were being vaccinated, the Delta variant began its spread.
Today we have a different situation. You stated below “my understanding is that although the vaccinated “can” spread the virus, they are much less likely to do so than the unvaccinated.” However, in the Provincetown July study [where 90% of cases were Delta], 74% of fully vaccinated people tested positive.
Granted, only .015% had to be hospitalized and there were no deaths. And some estimates as of Feb ’21 say only 10% of covid survivors get long-haul symptoms. However, we have controlled [year-old] studies that a large majority [78%] of 36-54yo’s who had asymptomatic or mild cases experienced heart inflammation et al long-haul symptoms months after testing negative again. Which studies are right?
We do not yet have studies on under-18 long-haul covid, but a number of families have testified in Congressional hearings about these effects, where youngsters have experienced for 6+ mos (& continue to experience) shortness of breath, low-grade fever, & other symptoms that have made it impossible for them to return to normal life. This mirrors the experience of that majority of 36-54yo’s in the studies: why wouldn’t we assume same is true of younger folk until proven otherwise? Uniform wearing of high-grade masks indoors [in school] would go a long ways toward keeping the under-18’s [or all folks, while Delta is around] from contracting the disease (at least from school exposure)– why wouldn’t we do that? Meanwhile, more data will be collected on the likelihood of long-haul covid among youngsters; if it proves to be a rarity– especially if delta moves on– masking protocol would change.
In that post you added: “If these conditions were true for 10 years, would your position change?” Again, a binary Q. The conditions change every few months; the conditions dictate masking protocol. If we are talking about the condition “as long as the vaccinated can spread the virus,” let’s keep in mind that a number of diseases have been wiped out or greatly reduced disease in the US via vaccines that — like the covid vaccine– do not confer “sterilizing immunity” [i.e., non-transmissibility]: the inactivated polio vaccine, chicken pox vaccine, flu vaccines, rotavirus [an infant diarrhea disease that kills babies], and others; and diphtheria & pertussis vaccines convey only partial sterilizing immunity. However, it took until a huge majority of population was inoculated for that to take place.
This particular disease, where everyone is highly vulnerable to transmission simply through breathing the air exhaled by those in close proximity indoors, and we are far from huge majority inoculated, is greatly mitigated by wearing masks. Why wouldn’t we just do that, until then?
bethree, thank you for the response. Excuse my shortcomings in this reply, I am very drunk and walking on the street. I would say the binary nature of the hypothetical is intentional, designed to gauge the tolerance for how long the exigency that has become the status quo should continue. To me, if someone’s response to the question “Would you say that everybody should wear masks in school buildings, regardless of whether they have received a Covid vaccination (whatever the vaccination), as long as the vaccinated can spread the virus?” is anything but “no,” then I have to assume that person is for some reason unwilling to assess and balance everyday risks, incapable of assessing and balancing everyday risks, or insane.
I’ll say what I’ve said a hundred times here. It is disgusting how little ink is spent in the comments here about the extraordinary stress placed on young people during this pandemic. At some point I would assume that a regular commenter here would accidentally express anguish about what has been happening to young people. Instead it is a bunch of political, sanctimonious, pompous bullshit. I could not have less respect for anyone associated with this blog, and that includes me for continuing to comment on it.
Flerp, I’m sorry to have sounded challenging, I really just wanted to know what you think at this point, and thanks for replying. I get the hazmat/ goggles bit now, it’s about assessing and balancing everyday risks. I would have agreed with you a couple of months ago. The stats in the Cape Cod cluster, where 74% of the infected who were studied were fully vaccinated, really threw me. That’s delta. I see my different take from yours has to do with my outlook on covid. I imagine delta variant as something that will peak and move on– the more vaccination and masking, the sooner. Nor do I see covid as a permanent fixture on the foreseeable horizon, though many express that—to me it feels like a war.
I too would like to see some extensive discussions on how this is affecting our youth emotionally, especially adolescents. I have no contact with teens in my life at the moment (due to my age cohort), and see very little in the press on this subject. It seems really wrong to me that all we ever hear in press is about learning loss, and the covid-associated culture wars.
You didn’t sound challenging, bethree.
LOL
FLERP!,
I know we often disagree and you likely won’t read this, but…
I know you are a responsible and concerned parent who cares very much about the well-being of your kids and other kids, too. This has been an incredibly difficult time and has put enormous stress on so many students and their families — mine, included. Your kids are lucky to have you looking out for them. I sincerely wish the best for you, despite our differences. And I hope for all our sake that one good thing to come out of this discouraging spike in cases is such a massive increase in vaccination rates that further new strains aren’t able to take hold. And we all get back to a normality that looks a lot more like 2019. I look forward to reading more comments from you in the future.
We had to cancel a volleyball game today because the opposing school has the covid and has shut its doors. I think the general scheme here is that schools will chart the covid the way they chart flu and close when it gets bad.
The Missouri Attorney General has sued the Columbia Public Schools to prevent a mask mandate from being enforced. See: https://www.kmov.com/news/missouri-ag-sues-to-end-mask-mandates-in-schools/article_7b95de1f-8734-5321-a11b-913b790f948f.html?fbclid=IwAR2TT_16aUJTrqJgTHZFO_mzBfTLumGRUCLiKQJ5R2ePg3EUAeNHAg-fK6c
Personally, I believe that he needs a corn-cob enema to clear his thinking.
Duane: As an old farmer who once played in the loft of a boyhood friend among the corncobs next to the old corn sheller, I must protest the graphic imagery of your trope. That seems too real to me.
My mother never liked to hear sports announcers declare that a player had guts. It took me a long time to understand that the word gave her images of having her hands in dead chickens, whereas the announcer only experienced a dead metaphor.
More on the idiot who is suing school districts (he has ambitions to replace Sen. R. Blount in ’22):
https://m.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2021/08/25/missouri-attorney-general-fights-school-mask-mandates-because-of-course-he-does?fbclid=IwAR1V-NWhOgdwA_A-du2Lxikf8d-rICV6dfX9NRYc7y9jpyWWUa4SjlxxTKQ
My niece has been fighting for a mask mandate in Fox C-6, which started this week with masks being mandatory. Now whether the district adminimals have the cojones to follow through and not collapse in the face of Schmitt’s political ambitions. . . is another story.
She, Laura, is interviewed for the RFT article.
Sorry, off topic, but I’m excited about and pleasantly surprised by the email I just got from the NEA. They are seemingly focusing on fighting privatization. https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/choice-grounded-exclusion-and-inequality?utm_source=neatoday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=210825neatoday&utm_content=choice&ms=neatoday
UTLA sent a similar email: https://wearepublicschools.org/student-centered-funding/. Please click and then send.
Many of my students have to quarantine right now because some have tested positive. I still keep in mind the long picture. Vouchers must be stopped.
Let me take another crack at getting banned from the blog. After 18 months of this pandemic, the brunt of which has been borne by children, I cannot recall ANY comments by any regular commenter focusing on the problems that have been heaped on children, especially the most vulnerable children. Carol Burris had a few comments over a couple days back in maybe December. Diane had a couple posts about how schools should be open because in-school Covid transmission was low. Diane also had a post featuring Emily Oster and was roundly flamed by the most active commenters. That’s it.
I propose the blog change its name from “A Site to Discuss a Better Education for All” to “A Site to Discuss Trump, Anti-Maskers, and Charter Schools.”
If you want to get banned, Diane has three simple rules you can break: Use not the f word, conspiracy theorize not, and do not insult teachers.
Also, one other ground for deleting your comment: insulting the writer of this blog. If such insults are persistent or unusually hostile, a permanent ban is imposed. By me.
Your indignant moralizing about getting kids back to in person schooling might actually be believable if you weren’t now balking at universal mask wearing in schools.
Which, not incidentally, was the basic motive behind the CDC’s recommendation for universal mask wearing in schools
Students benefit from in-person learning, and safely returning to in-person instruction in the fall 2021 is a priority.
Vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Promoting vaccination can help schools safely return to in-person learning as well as extracurricular activities and sports.
Due to the circulating and highly contagious Delta variant, CDC recommends universal indoor masking by all students (age 2 and older), staff, teachers, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/k-12-guidance.html
It’s a shame we never heard anything from you, whether indignant moralizing or any other sounds, about the dangers of keeping kids out of in-person schooling.
FLERP, everything I have read suggests that the most vulnerable students—the poor, the blacks/ browns, the SpEds & the immuno-compromised—have parents who have resisted sending their kids back to in-person schooling out of fear that their local districts are not/ cannot comply with the sort of covid mitigation strategies that would keep their kids safe: uniform masking, adequate ventilation, all adult staff vaccinated, distancing, extra protective measures taken re: eating lunch, using rest rooms. Most are people living in nbhds where cases are high & they’ve lost relatives & friends to covid. The figures I’ve seen repeatedly are 25-30% of school pops whose parents are resisting in-person ed, all of whom fall into those categories. This doesn’t square with an anti-uniform masking position.
I am not even counting those who have been unreachable by remote instruction, even when teachers come pounding on their doors house-to-house, many of whom have either become homeless or have moved to squat with relatives or friends somewhere, and the last thing on their minds at the moment is how the kids will continue their public ed, it’s just about a roof and food. There are hero teachers who have managed to connect such families to at minimum school breakfasts/ lunches. Those kids are victims of the covid fringe, the first to be victimized by economic disruption– the ones public schools can only do so much for, given our broken social net.
At least for the ones still in place in a home who can access a school for in-person learning, we need to have in place covid mitigation [at minimum universal masking!] that will encourage their parents to send them to school.
I don’t discuss Trump anymore. I strongly support masks , mask mandates and vaccinations for everyone.
If you want to get banned, that’s your choice. There are bunch of trolls spreading misinformation and incendiary comments on facebook, Twitters, etc. Do better if you want to keep crawling on the ground dodging the landmines and cordons without being notified.
Speaking of Trump, he urged his base to get the vaccines this week, and encountered boos from anti-maskers. Apparently, they weren’t happy with insane clown’s lip service.
First it was “we have to re-open schools for in-person learning because it is so important for kids’ well-being.”
Now that kids are going back to school, those people are complaining that kids have to wear masks?
I am very confused that anyone who was concerned about getting kids back to the classroom would then be upset at a mask requirement that is MOST likely to keep schools open!
Inconceivable.
^^^Headline from a suburban Texas school district just now:
“400+ COVID-19 cases confirmed at Leander ISD, officials recommend shutdown”
Those who worry about keeping in-person schools open should be the ones most advocating masks for all.
HI everyone,
I think it’s wise to wear a mask when you can breathe into someone’s face or they can breathe into yours. For example, when I get a massage or facial or get my hair done, I like it that we are masked. In terms of schools, teachers and students get sick all the time. We’re in enclosed spaces for long periods of time. Many schools have poor ventilation. I taught with 20 kids in a small room with no windows one year. Have you ever seen what goes on in classrooms? Perhaps you think children are the models of proper hygiene. Students are always talking, coughing, and sneezing into their hands and into the open air. I’ve seen them eat, lick their fingers and hand in papers. I’ve seen them vomit in the classroom and kiss in the hallways. I’ve seen them use each other’s school supplies, water bottles, eating utensils. And this is in the middle of covid! Schools are a breeding ground for the spread of disease. I don’t think asking everyone to wash their hands and wear a mask in the middle of a pandemic is too much to ask.
This is simply untrue. Pasadena USD is complying with the state’s vaccine or testing program by Oct. 15 – Nothing more, nothing less. The 96% vaccination rate cited by a Board member? completely unsustantiated. Just saying so, doesn’t make it so. The State mandate leaves a big giant loophole – it allows teachers and staff to opt for testing rather than getting the vaccine. Want to look at school districts that are getting it right? Culver City USD – mandatory vaccines for staff AND eligible students. Now, there’s a news story about Board members and staff making heroic effort. I believe that every student deserves to have a vaccinated teacher and a vaccinated staff member serving them.
Pamela,
I already posted about Culver City.
96% vaccination rate by staff $ teachers seems celebratory or suspicious. Please Pasadena USD Board Member Jennifer, share with this intelligent blog how PUSD came to require individual documentation from these employees, when the state had not yet done this. Was this a battle? Any kickback from the unions?