The Rochester Public School Board threw shade on their own COVID-19 Advisory Team during the Jan. 5 meeting. Many rhetorical questions served only to reinforce the board’s biases. Melissa Amundsen used the opportunity to educate herself on the particulars of COVID-19, including variant strains and long-haulers. Julie Workman reassured herself that the county’s low death rate could be attributed to RPS’s learning model. Give credit to Superintendent Michael Muñoz for recognizing that the proposal laid out by the Advisory Team was “conservative” and announcing that he was prepared to have Pre-K-2 students back fully in-person as soon as Jan. 19.
More importantly, why was the Board adjudicating the expert recommendations of public health professionals like Drs. Anthony Fauci and Michael Osterholm in the first place? Surely, their Advisory Team had already considered the public health concerns. The board’s purview should be limited to ensuring that community resources are best allocated to educate children in the classroom, while minimizing risk to students and staff. Conspicuously absent was the presentation of any teacher feedback or data on how students have fared over the past 10 months.
Ultimately, the board determined that in-person learning for elementary students in Rochester posed an unacceptable risk to our community. They have no qualifications to make such an assertion as evidenced by their cognitive dissonance, which allowed them to subsequently permit high school students to return to sports. No, parents cannot “hold on just a little bit longer” with distance learning. Our children deserve better representation.
Nicholas Pulos, Rochester
