COVID-19: Provide Feedback to your School Board

Parents: now is the time to provide feedback to your school board members regarding your district's plans for this coming school year.

Schools provide an essential service in our communities that go beyond teaching kids to read and write. For many families, schools provide essential childcare for working parents. Schools are a safe place for children who live in abusive environments. Schools provide meals for students who do not get enough food at home. We go on, but the bottom line is schools are important to the overall wellbeing of many thousands of kids.

School districts are balancing the need to keep their faculty and staff safe from COVID along with their responsibility to fulfill their mandate within our communities. I fear many districts are erring on the side of "what's best for the district" rather than what is best for families.

Our schools are like a cruise ship with many thousands of people involved--students, faculty, staff, volunteers. When the school district opts to forego a regular school schedule, it is as if they are putting the students on a lifeboat and setting them adrift, hoping they find safe passage to another place. The reality is, many students will not.

The district is better serving its families by owning their responsibility as an essential service and working with partners in healthcare, social services, and churches to best meet the needs of their community.

Now is the time to act on behalf of the well-being of our school-age children within our communities. Contact your school board members and let them know you value their essential service and ask them to accept the high level of trust and responsibility families have given to them. They are essential and they cannot default on this responsibility at a time so critical to our families.