“Enough is enough”. That’s the basis for impassioned remarks delivered tonight by Wabash District 3-48 school board member Ryan Peter at the end of the board’s monthly meeting. Peter said the district must do everything in its’ power to return to a normal learning environment when school resumes in August….
Peter said the remote learning enacted by the district during the schools shutdown brought with it students forming committees to pool their assignments and at least one student he knew of who paid someone else to do their work. Peter concluded his remarks by throwing down a challenge to the board…
No other board members responded or comments after Peter concluded his 4 and a half minute statement.
Full Text Of Ryan Peter’s Statement:
The word of the last 3 months has been……essential. Who is? Who is not? We are all essential and there should be no disagreement that school is essential. Our students sitting in classrooms is essential. The structure that a classroom and school day provide is essential. For some of our students, the structure and routine of a school day is about the only stability they have.
Many parents have suffered the last few months, being falsely labeled “non-essential” and losing their job, or having to give up a job to stay home with kids who cant go to school, but at the same time can’t go to the babysitter.
One unemployed parent I recently spoke with shared that she has been forced to spend all her savings and what little she had put away for her child’s college education on groceries and rent. Things like this are damaging our students and families beyond measure.
As our Governor continues to move the goal post every month, with the latest plan of keeping the state locked down another 5-6 months, we as a board must say enough is enough. There are already threats of school not opening this fall, and we as a board must ignore this mandate should it come to fruition. This is May, and we need to begin now figuring out how to open our doors in August.
In Dr Bleyer’s report this month he stated, “It is the hope of the faculty and staff to return to normal. This whole experience has been deflating to everyone.” This sentiment is held by nearly every parent I have talked to in the district.
Virtual learning has been as successful as can be expected, but it is not the answer for elementary and high school students. I had a parent tell me Saturday night her child and classmates formed a group to do homework. Her kid did the math assignments and traded his answers for another’s who did English assignments. There was a student for each subject in this group. In another example, the basic concept of supply and demand is being taught well in the district as I learned of a student who was flat out paying for all their completed assignments to turn in online.
Wabash County has had one case of Coronavirus since this all began. This is a fact. We are not Chicago, this is not a hotspot. No where around us is a hotspot. Georgia has opened, and CBS reported this weekend that new cases in Georgia are continuing to fall, directly contradicting what the health experts told us would happen. In New York, Governor Cuomo reported recently that over 60% of the new cases were from people adhering to the stay at home order and practicing social distancing. Once again, our experts were wrong.
To the contrary, a story from Reuters in London reported that research published in the Lancet Child and Adolescent Health Journal stated:
“We know from previous studies that school closures are likely to have the greatest effect if the virus has low transmissibility and attack rates are higher in children. This is the opposite of Covid 19. Policymakers need to be aware of the equivocal evidence when considering school closures for Covid 19, given the profound and long-lasting effect they will have on children—particularly the most disadvantaged. Experts not directly involved in the research said its findings were important and confirmed what many suspected: That the public health benefits of school closures were not proportionate to the social and economic costs for affected children and families.”
This district must figure this out now, so that we can have students in the hallway in August. I do not want to hear about how we cannot. We need to figure out how we can, just like the falsely labeled “non-essential” parents had to figure out how to make ends meet the last 3 months.
This board and administration have the tough task and responsibility of setting the precedent for how future boards can deal with a similar scenario.
Those who trade freedom for safety will soon have neither. If you, as a board, deem this feat impossible without the permission and blessing of JB Pritzker or the health department, then it is time for we, as a board, to begin strategizing how to return our $4 million dollar tax levy back to the taxpayers of Wabash County for services not rendered.”