Dear Governor Newsom,
I am writing you this letter from Anaheim Hills in regards to the agenda being pushed by both the Orange County Board of Education and the Orange County Board of Supervisors, for full reopening of our schools WITHOUT options for hybrid, or virtual learning, and no masks. I am truly baffled that these elected officials, are pushing to dump our children and educators into an unsafe environment while a highly contagious pandemic is occurring. These same people point to other countries that are opening up their schools with no problem… except our own country has NOT had a handle on this pandemic – we haven’t tested enough, and there are people who think it’s a political hoax. We have 4% of the world’s population, with 25% of the COVID-19 infections. Some people don’t want to follow safety protocols as they scream about “my freedoms!”. It is obvious to me that these ultra-conservative, anti-science “officials” only wish for the economy to get going, without any regard to the safety of our children and teachers. Here are just some questions I have about this subject of reopening our schools: Where are the funds coming from to make sure that schools have all the supplies necessary for opening safely (ie: cleaning equipment, plexiglass, sanitizers, handwashing stations, thermometers, masks, etc.)? I’m also expecting that cleaning schedules will be increased to ensure that things are sanitized properly. Will we be hiring extra staff to ensure that all this extra cleaning happens? Will all the schools have full time nurses available? Should a child or staff member get sick and need immediate medical assistance, it would certainly be helpful to have an RN on campus. How do we address the students who have a fever the morning of, but have been given fever reducer by a parent/guardian before school starts so they can attend? That fever will come back once the medication wears out, but nobody will know until it happens. Is it COVID-19? Maybe, maybe not – we won’t know until that person is tested. In the meantime, an entire school population has been unknowingly exposed to this person. What is the ideal number of students per classroom? In areas where weather is varied, are students (who are often taught in older buildings with outdated HVAC systems), are classes going to be taught INSIDE with recirculated air, or outside (weather permitting)? If inside, why? Restaurants and bars have been closed because studies show that the virus can remain active up to 3 HOURS in indoor air (and can travel long distances via the air ducts of ventilation systems), why should students/teachers be exposed this same way? If outside, do schools have the accommodation for extreme heat? Rain? Cold? Snow? We all know how hot it gets in all parts of California (especially southern California). Are teachers expected to constantly monitor mask wearing and social distancing while simultaneously teaching children? Lower elementary students are known super spreaders – we cannot expect the youngest students to remember not to play with their masks, or touch their faces all the time – they simply don’t have that maturity. Children also forget to social distance when they see their friends. How are teachers/school staff expected to tackle this for several hours every day? Two adults per classroom? Again, do we have the funds for this? What happens if a student or a teacher test positive for COVID-19? Does the entire class need to be quarantined for 14 days? Who will teach the class (online) if the teacher is infected and seriously ill? Will the teacher need to use their sick days? What if they have reached the maximum number of days allowed? Will the school district be paying for their extended leave of absence while they have COVID- 19? If the teacher’s family falls ill, and they need to take time off to care of them? Are the allocated sick days part of this as well? Do we have enough substitutes to cover in this scenario, and will they be prepared with the curriculum? What protocols are in place to ensure that teachers and students that are considered high risk are kept safe? We can’t forget about the people who have asthma, diabetes types 1 or 2, high blood pressure, pregnancy, cystic fibrosis, cancer (remission), lupus – these may be teachers, school administrators, or students (my seven year old falls is asthmatic). Will the students need to be separated from the general pool to be taught elsewhere? How about the teachers with any of these conditions? A good chunk of the teacher population are older individuals, and can fall into any of these categories. How about addressing the students whose parents do NOT believe in wearing masks, or social distancing (thus ensuring that their kids follow their beliefs as well)? How do we protect the students, teachers AND their families, who are trying to protect themselves by following safety protocols? What happens if a student contracts COVID-19 from school? Will the district/local government cover their hospital bills if their families do not have the funds to cover? Will the school or school district be liable for the exposure, because obviously the proper precautions have not been followed. If a teacher or a student dies from COVID-19, do we have enough counselors or psychiatrists to help with the grieving process? How can we push for full re-opening of school when all our local school boards are having their meetings via Zoom because it is safer? Hypocritical much? Is it safe? The science says it really isn’t. I can see that unless something is done, our children, teachers, and school staff are going to be exposed to the veritable petri dish of “who has or doesn’t have COVID-19 and have we been exposed?”. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Regards, Katrina Downey Concerned Parent OUSD
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My opinion is that this statement lacks signature by specific doctors, committees, and reviewers. If I was on that team, I would have added comments on the following:
1. Community-based infectious disease threat is needed on a real-time basis. This function needs to reside in the county public health authority and build upon real-time contact tracing systems that identify potential and currently confirmed cases. OCHCA needs to work with OCDE and all school districts to make this happen ASAP. 2. Assuming you can align the community contagion assessment, the school health programs need appropriate school nurse and physician staffing by doctors who have graduated from US medical schools. The City of Chicago assigned such teams to every K-12 school in their jurisdiction during the epidemic of 1918-1919 with testing and medical assessment of each and every child in each and every school. In 2020, surely, the state and county should mobilize public health emergency funding to allocate such staff. 3. Assuming that the medical teams are assigned to each school, the teams should be tasked with weekly testing of each and every classroom, all pupils, all faculty, and all administrators as part of community based disease surveillance. This may or may not involve pooling of samples to run as an aggregate, as Dr. Fauci has been discussing recently. 4. Given the amount of testing required, I would suggest that rapid diagnostics be moved from urgent care centers into each school health program such that these rapid tests can be executed by the assigned licensed school health teams. Once multiple weeks of negative results are established, testing frequency could be modified according to the threat assessment in item 1. A very deep understanding of either the medical regulations or the educational code are needed to review such recommendations. Here are my credentials: I have held a California medical license for 25 years. I am a board-certified pediatrician, formerly involved with the AAP in the mid and late 1990s, retired from clinical duties, and do not have a profit motive for referral of patients. I am not building nor own a multi-site pediatric group seeking referrals for employee or contractor physicians. I have no financial or political conflicts of interest. I am not aligned with any political party and am registered as "No Party Preference". I sat for two one-year terms as a student representative on the Los Alamitos Unified School District Board of Education from 1983 to 1985. During that time I was involved in opposing recall of the board of education, which dealt with school closures and sales of school sites in the post-Prop 13 realignment of California school funding. I also was one of three student candidates considered for the California State School Board in 1984. I am an alumnus of K-12 public education in Los Alamitos Unified, an Orange County school district. I have many relatives and friends who have cumulatively served for centuries of day-to-day classroom and administrative experience in public K-12 education. We need to protect the schools and the children with cogent thoughtful insight written by a team of infectious disease, virology, epidemiology, public health, and community based pediatricians. Plus, those guidelines need input from attorneys, review by operations, review by union representatives, and review by parents. All local school districts in OC are recommended to convene an expert committee to review the above recommendations and execute these tasks or equivalent tasks to safeguard our community's children. I have recommended these steps privately for four months and encouraged OC Board of Supervisors, OCHCA, and several school districts to consider these steps. It is appropriate for OCHCA and OCBOS to coordinate on these needs in order to assure that school health programs are appropriately funded to support K-12 education in the 2020-2021 academic year. Please implement the public health recommendations and medical recommendations that are nearly unanimously supported by the OC medical and public health community. This week my 4-year-old learned how to put on and take off his own shirt. He learned this new skill in about 2 minutes after 4 tries. Now he is an absolute pro. Later that day we visited our local library and both my 6 year old and 4 year old wore masks while we browsed the stacks and they washed their hands once we returned home.
Our kids go to school to learn. It defies all logic that school children across our district cannot also learn to wear a mask at school for their own safety, for the safety of staff and faculty, and for the safety of our entire Orange County community. The anti-masking and anti-social distancing theme of the the panel held on June 24th by this body defies recommendations of the CDC, the Orange County Health Agency, the Orange County Board of Education, the State Board of Education, and most recently the American Academy of Pediatrics who released their guidelines recommending a return to school with mandatory masking for all students in Middle and High School and for elementary school students when possible among a the number of other safety measures. This body holds an advisory position over individual school districts and the Orange County Department of Education. You can not set policy. Therefore, the only purpose for this one-sided, biased panel could have been to sway public opinion. To amplify the voices of the anti-mask, anti-social distancing faction of OC residents. These anti-safety residents have gathered in large groups with zero safety precautions and screamed in the faces of Union Leaders and county officials with no masks. They have threatened death to a public health official who was forced to resign for her own safety. You have failed in your stated vision to offer the kind of leadership that our county needs while battling a global pandemic that has taken the lives of 330 people across our county and over 128,000 across our Nation. I hope that the Trustees across our county disregard the information presented by this Board on June 24th. I hope that my fellow residents remember the actions of the OCBE when they head to the ballot box in November. Brooke Harper Parent PYLUSD |
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