This is a copy of letter sent to Deputy Premier, Health Minister and Newmarket-Aurora MPP Christine Elliott. NewmarketToday welcomes your letters to the editor at [email protected]. Letters may be edited for clarity and brevity. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication).
**********************
Hello Minister Elliott,
We want you to know how distressed we are about the careless way your government and the York Region District School Board are proposing to open schools. We received a notice saying only that school would start in September, but class sizes would remain the same.
Our son is going into Grade 6. We have been offered no real opportunity to say how we feel or to express our distress about this. We were only asked if he would attend or not.
He was in a crowded portable last year and there is no possible chance for safe distancing. Are we expected to have our children and their teachers be part of an experimental study to see how many will get COVID-19, how many will have long-term effects, how many might even die?
So far, the studies about school openings and children have been very different, some showing children are not strongly affected when they contract the virus, but others are showing long-term effects. The studies also have been conducted in widely different circumstances, with some schools taking very good precautions while others have not. So no randomized studies can be referred to.
As well, some studies show children do not pass on the virus easily, while others show the opposite. There is no clear evidence that children can safely return to school. Sick Kids Hospital said that schools should open safely with safe distancing, masks and good ventilation. There is no way any of these criteria are being met.
At the beginning of this pandemic, we were impressed by the Ford government’s handling of this crisis, but in the case of school openings, you have just dropped the ball and passed all responsibility to the various schools and boards. It is shameful that you would subject our children to such risk knowing that they, the children, are aching to get back to school, while parents are wringing their hands about what to do.
There has been plenty of time to plan this carefully, but instead school openings are being done in a rush with a hope and a prayer. It is just not good enough!
Irene Bazos and family, Newmarket
