The School Committee Wants Your Input Prior to Thursday Evening’s Zoom Meeting

By Scott Smyers, Corinne Hogseth and Two Anonymous Parents

The Acton-Boxborough School Committee is meeting Thursday August 19 and they will be discussing masks in schools. Although many parents think most members have already made up their minds, Please Submit Emails Because They are Limiting Public Comments to ONE MINUTE. 

Here are examples of emails already submitted by some parents:

Dear Superintendent Light,

Please DO NOT require students to wear masks in fall of 2021. It is obvious to anyone with the most basic risk analysis skills that masks do more harm than good for our children.

School Committees and Administrators across Massachusetts and the country did a terrible job after more information was available regarding COVID (prior to going back in the Fall of 2020). This is not surprising because these decisions SHOULD NOT BE MADE by the ABRSD/MTA, but by individual families and their doctors.

The CDC has very little credibility with most Americans and if ABRSD follows their guidelines, ABRSD will not regain credibility parents expect from our District.

I do not envy your decision on this topic because you will never satisfy everyone. But it isn’t about a consensus of constituents (in this case, better termed an angry mob of mask bullies). It is obvious that many parents and some teachers in the ABRSD remain hysterical “squeaky wheels” and will never be satisfied because their benchmarks are unrealistic. The Administrators and SC are supposed to focus on the well-being of children and masks will do NOTHING to benefit the students but requiring masks WILL CONTINUE TO CONTRIBUTE TO STUDENT’S DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND FEAR.

Do the right thing. No mandatory masks. If teachers and students want to wear masks, fine.

Thank you for your consideration.

–Scott Smyers

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Hi Adam,

I’m writing to state my strong objection to every aspect of Peter Light’s recommended mask mandate for all students this fall. This recommended policy contradicts science, ignores 17 months of data from all over the world, cherry-picks sources and simply lacks common sense. Also, it’s cruel on multiple fronts.

You provide absolutely no possibility for unvaccinated staff or students to ever be maskless.  And because we know that vaccinated individuals can still get and transmit the virus, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to mandate masks on only one group. Masking unvaccinated individuals creates a system in which people are displaying their medical status. Acton-Boxborough is not a place that welcomes diverse ideas or beliefs. As we’re seeing on local social media, the subject of vaccines and masks is no different. This policy would open unvaccinated students up to harassment and bullying.

People have spent the summer at camps, traveling, attending Red Sox games, hosting sleepovers and socializing with our friends, all without masks and without any notable community transmission. In July, there was a meeting of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. In the photograph on Twitter, not a single attendee was wearing a mask. Just a couple weeks ago, there were four sold out concerts at Fenway. Over 35,000 middle-aged, maskless fans, shoulder-to-shoulder, belting out Billy Joel tunes! I know for a fact that there were many Acton & Boxborough parents in those crowds, and I’d bet my last dollar there were teachers, too. And good for them! But two weeks later you’re recommending we mask up our kids again?! Our preschoolers?! No other country in the world mandates masks for their toddlers. This is straight out child abuse.

This is what we know:

• There was not one single known transmission of covid-19 in our schools last year.
• Worldwide, schools are among the safest places to be for students and teachers.
• We know the efficacy of the vaccines is dubious and that there are known severe risks that certainly outweigh any benefit for healthy, young individuals (per CDC reporting and Pfizer interim data analysis).
• We know there’s a very high number (estimated over 50%) of naturally immune individuals in Massachusetts.
• We know kids are at nearly zero risk of serious disease due to SARS-COV-2. We’ve known since March 2020 that this virus poses the greatest risk for the very old and very ill.

Instead of celebrating these facts and letting our kids live their lives, we’ve sacrificed their education, their mental health, their social needs and all factors necessary to their growth and development at a crucial point in their lives. It’s got to stop.

We need to get back to healthy, and we need to do it now. To that end:

• Start the year mask-optional. This is supported by our very low community transmission rate and high vaccination rates. 
• Any policy regarding mandated masking of our students or closing the schools must be transparent, informed by empirical data and truly data-driven.
• Knowing that fully vaccinated individuals can transmit covid-19 as easily as unvaccinated, there must be no disparate treatment of the two groups.
• Any decision to mandate masks should be based on local hospitalization rates, period.

If people want to wear masks, fine. There is simply too much evidence of harm and too little evidence of benefit to justify the forced masking of anyone.

Regards,

– Corinne Hogseth

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After reading through Peter Light’s proposed suggestions to the start of the school year and beyond, I would like to share my opinion specifically on the part of the proposal related to when Acton and Boxborough (AB) are in the “low” level state of Covid transmission, and specifically that vaccinated children can be unmasked while unvaccinated children are to be masked in the junior high and high school.

We now know, as stated by the CDC due to data in pockets of covid outbreaks, that anyone with Covid-19, whether vaccinated or not, can transmit the disease. It is “thought” that it is less likely in vaccinated individuals, but no data has been shown if it truly is less likely. We just have the data that covid is now transmitted by either group due to the Delta variant.  This means anyone can still spread the disease. So, to treat these two populations, vaccinated and unvaccinated, differently in the schools, if AB is in the “low” level of transmission will be very harming to the children, and is not scientifically warranted. If the rates of Covid are low in town, then there is no harm to anyone in the school if everyone is unmasked. It apparently has been said that >85% and >80% of the children in the HS and JHS respectively, are vaccinated, so Peter Light’s proposal to put a “red flag” on the 15%-20% of children in the HS and JHS to have to wear a mask, when either vaccinated or unvaccinated can spread it, is not only non-scientifically sound, it will create a likely environment of ridicule, shaming and bullying on the unvaccinated children. AB has made great strides on promoting inclusiveness in all aspects of diversity (race, gender, etc) in our population, why then stop here? Unvaccinated people have legitimate reasons for not getting the shot, ranging from potential danger/risks due to allergies, risks of myocarditis (which the FDA has now added as a significant risk factor to both Moderna and Pfizer vaccine fact sheets), unknown long-term effects of these experimental drugs, plus more. I’m actually astounded that this suggestion is even being proposed. Bullying, shaming, and the potential mental hardships faced by the 15-20% of this population of children that would occur following this, would be all on the superintendent and the school committee. I doubt the CDC is promoting any school system to do that.

My first suggestion is if AB is in the “low” zone of transmission, then universal unmasking at the HS and JHS be instated.

My second suggestion is to revisit the metric of the “low” zone of transmission as the cutoff point for mask wearing. The CDC has stated that a “low” level of transmission is 10 cases/100,000, “moderate” is 10-50 cases per 100,000, “substantial” is 50-100 cases per 100,000, and “high” is >100 cases per 100,000. The CDC has suggested wearing a mask indoors if only a region is in the “substantial” or “high” rate of transmission. There is no scientific rationale to look at only one metric for determining mask-wearing, as well as only considering the “low” zone of transmission as the only acceptable outcome for mask wearing. It makes more scientific sense to consider >50 cases/100,000 as the cutoff point (based on CDC suggestion), but also take into consideration hospitalization rates in the community. More people are probably going to get the Delta variant of covid, but the data is also showing that not as many get hospitalized.

–Parent of high school students

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I am dropping you a quick note to request that you not require our kids to wear masks this school year and also not require distancing, at least for the K-6 group.  

My concern is that the lockdowns and remote learning have already taken such a toll on our children, and they deserve to have a normal year this year. I’m concerned that if the masking and distancing are extended to this school year, that we will have more dire consequences: more mental health issues, more alcohol and drug use, more eating disorders and more suicides. These issues have already increased in my own Acton-Boxborough circle, as a direct result of the lockdowns that were forced on our country and our very community last year.  

As you well know, schools are NOT super spreaders and the effectiveness of masks (especially the cloth ones that are touched all day by kids/teens) is questionable. Students are at such low risk of getting very sick from COVID and I assume that all staff and teachers that want to be vaccinated, have been vaccinated by now. My concern is that despite the safety of vaccines, our children will never be free of the masks and distancing. There may always be a form of Covid, and there is certainly colds and the flu that typically run their courses through communities each year. The fact is, A-B schools are not a place of high risk of transmission of COVID at this point, even with the Delta variant, given the age make-up of the community and our community’s high vaccination rate. 

I’m concerned that the loudest voices in our community are having so much influence on leadership’s decisions regarding COVID restrictions, that there may be a tendency to succumb to that pressure instead of depending on science and raw numbers. I hope that is not the case, but I know that the pressure is real in this community due to a high level of fear, despite the vaccines and science, while the voices of the minority, such as mine and the students’, become less important. I hope that you will weigh the costs and benefits of this important decision, especially for our students’ sake, as the decision will have long-term consequences for their emotional well-being. There really is only so much our young people can take and I’m concerned about what more mandates will do to our community as a whole.  I believe that the price of more restrictions is too high. Please hear me on this and weigh the social-emotional and mental health risks of more mask-wearing and social distancing at least as equally as the physical risks of COVID when making this decision. The long-term consequences of the former could prove to be much more dire than the latter in our community, given our high vaccination rates and low risk profile of the school environment.

–Parent of a 6th grader