With a special shout-out to the legislator’s most vocal proponents of universal mandatory masking of children ages 2+: @Becca_Rausch@MarjorieDecker@MindyForMA will you take the pledge to #MaskLikeAKid on Nov 1st?
Tales from the Ground: Middle schoolers in Sudbury MA received a survey this week called "Lunch Seating: Problem Solving For Winter". They were asked: Do you prefer to eat lunch on a floor mat, a chair (w/ lunch on lap), or a bucket that "can serve as a seat or small table"🧵(1/)
Students had been eating on individual desks spread out in the gym, but that space is needed as colder days arrive. **Of course** we can't even consider allowing children to eat in the regular cafeteria with their masks off😯. So students "voices" & "help" are needed ⬇️ (2/)
We were informed of this by multiple parents whose children were upset enough to alert them of this absurdity. Vaccination rates among 12-15 year olds in Sudbury? 95% have received one shot, and 88% fully vaccinated. (Yes, we know some middle schoolers are <12). (3/)
The CDC has not even voted yet to authorize the vaccine for 5-11 but @MassDPH and @MASchoolsK12 are already asking school leaders to “urge parents” to get their children vaccinated. Pretty easy to see why we’re in a crisis of misinformation & distrust 🤯 doe.mass.edu/covid19/on-des…
This is the exact reason why we’ve called for a transparent, active, and fact-based messaging campaign on the *actual* data on kids + covid from @MassDPH. Sign and share:
And it’s not just parents calling for more positive messaging of the real data from our public health authorities - infectious disease doc from @TuftsMedicalCtr is asking for the same ⬇️
Today we sent a letter to the Baker administration, urging @MassGovernor to provide a clear answer: what is the end-game, the off-ramp, the objective for in-school mitigation measures on students who are in their third disrupted year of public education?
🧵 1/
As one million MA public school children walked back through the doors for in-person learning, they were met with a patchwork of inconsistent, overly restrictive, non-evidence based protocols that go far beyond the public health measures in any other venues in the state (2/)
Day after day @BringKidsBackMA is contacted by hundreds of parents desperately seeking to understand why their children are sitting in plexiglass stations or on the gym floor to eat their lunch, while children in the next district eat normally at cafeteria tables; (3/)
Students may be back inside school buildings, but there's lots more work to do: view our testimony to the @MASchoolsK12 Board of Elementary of Secondary Education today to hear re: the concerning experience inside those school buildings:
Thread🧵(1/)
All along, we had said our first goal was to get children back in buildings; then, we would focus on “picking up the pieces” of what’s going on inside of buildings. Sadly, there is quite a bit to “pick up”...
Here are examples from districts across the state:
(2/)
Children’s’ school libraries still closed, books that must quarantine upon return, and children unable to perform upper‐level science labs because they aren’t allowed to touch the lab materials. (3/)
Parents are getting used to the shaming from elected leaders: Kudos to these Lexington parents for speaking up when *elected* School Comm member @kathleenlenihan publicly mocks them.
This is why we applaud 👏 @MASchoolsK12 disrupting local control
This, folks, is what us parents are getting used to dealing with from @MASCSchoolComm elected leaders ‼️
Simply because we are vocalizing that our children need to be prioritized and that any semblance of routine and in-person schooling is sorely needed. Shameful! #openschools
Bargain for labor all you want but @massteacher PLEASE for the love of all things STOP telling us that you’re doing this for the students. You must not have heard the very concerning calls from doctors to re-open schools for these STUDENTS who so badly need it. (1/n)
In case you missed it @massteacher, some quotes from the folks who really are standing up for students ⬇️