Dear CUSD: Enough is Enough…Open the Schools
To school board officials and teachers at Capistrano Unified School District in Orange County, CA.
All along this bizarre journey we have been told that education is about the children, and yet it is the children and parents who have been consistently placed last in these considerations. You may tell us it is for their safety, but we no longer believe this. Not only because there is currently overwhelming evidence that children are not particularly vulnerable to COVID nor are they particularly effective carriers, but also because we are now looking at a string of broken promises from our state and district school leaders.
While parents have given up their work or simply been forced to leave their children home alone, they’ve done that very painful thing with the knowledge that school would return soon. First in the spring, then at the end of summer, and now in the fall…which is under threat with yet another delay until January of 2021. Under no circumstances is that time frame acceptable to parents or our children.
While the teacher’s unions and district staff assure us this is all about students, our children continue to be isolated from peers, denied their typical social structures and school activities like sports and creative arts.
They are being stripped of vital developmental interactions, the kind that will help propel them through the grade school-to-collegiate system. This is the system we are all told we have to work within to achieve future academic opportunities. We currently stand on the precipice of wiping out those opportunities for an entire class of students. Those who are depending on sports or club scholarships, those who have sacrificed so much of their bodies and their time to perfect their chosen crafts to move on to college…those students are being robbed of all this. Yet you continue to allow this chaos as parents become more and more desperate; as we watch our precious children sink further into depression, discouragement and fall behind in vital work.
While we understand the pleas of teacher representatives to consider the health and safety of staff and classroom educators, this is yet one more example of how the kids are coming last. There are far more students in our district than teachers. If public school is all about the kids, why are their needs coming last? It is certainly understandable that some staff simply don’t feel comfortable returning to the classroom. Those who don’t should give up their jobs in favor of another line of work that might accommodate their health needs. After all, we parents have been giving up our work to accommodate the needs of CUSD staff and teachers. Sometimes you don’t get to do the work you want to do because circumstances simply don’t allow it. I’m not sure why CUSD teachers should be any different than the rest of us. Perhaps another option would be to instead let the vulnerable teachers to Zoom into the classroom, rather than expecting thousands of students to Zoom into the teacher.
There are options here, but yet another closure is not one. I think I speak for a majority of CUSD parents when I say we’ve had enough of this. Our voices seem to be the least important, even though without our children there is no such thing as school. The lack of empathy from the district to even be considering another pushback so late in the year is shocking and disappointing.
We have done everything asked of us and more. We’ve supported our teachers, rallied to figure out how to manage our children’s education and the work that puts food on our tables. We’ve been nothing but cooperative, patient and understanding. The favor has not been returned.
The parents of CUSD demand an immediate return to in-person classes, and we insist that this latest attempt to push back the reopening until next year (particularly when there is little evidence that is even necessary as a health-measure) be abandoned. We’ve been here for you…it’s time for you to be here for us.
If you need to make special arrangements with teachers who don’t feel good about returning, then do that. Do not make our children responsible for the well-being of grown adults who can make their own decisions about where and when they want to work. Our children do not deserve this and each day we wait to return to their routines is another day their bonds weaken and their spirits sink.
While parents sacrifice work and pay to keep their children home, staff continue to receive full pay and benefits. We understand teachers have been struggling to readjust and we admire that, but this arrangement is starting to feel grossly lopsided.
Enough is enough. This is unsustainable. No one can live in this type of uncertainty for this long without dire consequences, particularly a child. If we want to avoid a mass exodus from our public system, and perhaps school board election consequences, send our children back to school in October as promised.
Signed,
Kira A. Davis, CUSD mother
