One week ago we presented our letter and 700+ signatures to Edina Public School Board. Thank you for being a part of that effort.

The following day, as people continued to join this effort, EPS announced a tentative plan to resume the choice of hybrid learning for secondary students with a goal date of Feb. 16, but no stated full-time in-person goal like surrounding districts. Assuming the schedule stays as printed, edina secondary students would have had 25% of possible class-time in-person for 2020-2021 school year. Our school will be among the worst for number of in-person school learning days, trailing nearly every private school and many larger public schools, many who have been in areas with similar or higher case rates.

We believe there is extensive data and science to support safe, in-person learning choices. We have a strong desire to be a part of the solution to make this happen, along with 1,000+ people who have signed our petition.

if you’re willing to be apart of the solution to give students and teachers an opportunity for more in-person learning by researching current practices put in place by schools who have 5 day/week in-person learning models or would be willing to help research how others schools have mitigated a risk of staffing concerns, please let us know.

in the meantime, take a look at this video produced by teachers4openschools and hear how thousands of other schools in our country have resumed in-person learning by building on shared information.

What’s next? As some of our students return to classrooms and others wait, some of you have written and asked what’s next. We are requesting transparency of data from EPS in a dashboard-like setting, if they can’t do it, we will.

Dashboards have universally been utilized around the world to help with mitigation efforts. Safety and school are not mutually exclusive. The majority of current edina students have expressed a desire for learning in-person. Let’s get the system in place to make that happen...it’s been 10+ months!

More info daily on our website at edinaparents4progress.com