Last Thursday, at the school board meeting, Superintendent Brian Ewert announced that he plans to have everyone back in school, in person, on Monday, March 15. This came as a surprise to many as he did not discuss this decision with anyone, including teachers, and the decision has not come without concerns by any means. The Lions’ Roar staff would like to air these concerns and problems with this announcement.
First of all, in general, this decision feels mostly like the district is willing to put all of the students in danger in order to make itself appear more successful. With pressure from the government at a federal and local level, it can be understood that our district has had pressure to transition back to in person school. However, if we are basing our decisions on the recommendations from the CDC, we can see that they don’t recommend we be in school based on the data in Arapahoe County. Isn’t that supposed to be more important than any kind of pressure from any organization or person?
In the past, we’ve seen how the district has bent the rules to fit their plan – the metrics that they made up to track COVID-19 in our district were changed in October to add two more metrics and moved our status up from red to green. Even when we went into the red category, it wasn’t until much later that we actually transitioned to all remote.
Now, with this new announcement, it feels like our superintendent is being, to an extent, reckless with how he is dealing with this. More than ever, it feels like our voices as students haven’t been heard, and other minorities who are louder than us will be prioritized by the district. As students we should feel like the district is putting our best interest in mind when making decisions, but here, that has obviously not been the case.
We hope most of all that our superintendent hears what we have to say and understands the problems with this new transition. Although the biggest problem will be the amount of people getting sick once we go back, it also includes the lack of furniture for everyone, not just in classrooms but in the cafeteria as well. Additionally, even though teachers have begun to get vaccinated, most are getting their second dose only a few short days before March 15th, leaving not enough time in the slightest for them to be fully protected.
There are a lot of students who are excited to go back to school, however, there are more that are scared for their health and want this transition to be delayed or not happen at all. Unfortunately, based on the actions the district has taken, we feel like it is completely out of our control, and there is nothing we can do to stop this from happening.
The hybrid and remote schedules have been difficult and stressful, but for a lot of students going back to school in person would be more stressful than it has been, as there would be so many more factors at play that put us at extremely high risk of getting sick.
This transition has many layers to it that all contribute to the problems presented, but the biggest problem here is how students’ voices are being ignored, despite the fact that this new change will put us at risk, more than we ever have been before. We want to see the district think about this decision in the next four weeks leading up to March 15, using that time to listen to students and hear what they have to say.
