Hello petitioners! We can’t believe it has only been 24 hours since the beginning of our petition! Thus far, we have received almost 500 signatures in support of a smarter, more compassionate way to reopen our schools! We wanted to send out this update to remind our supporters how important it is to continue sharing this petition, and also to provide further information to those interested.

Some policy clarifications

Our petition is purposefully somewhat open-ended as it mainly serves to counteract the pressure of groups which would prefer a set date on which we would open regardless of circumstances. However, we do feel our supporters and other prospective signatories could benefit from some further information about the students, staff, families, and community members organizing this petition:

• We are not an anti-reopening group: we are here to promote a delayed, amorphous reopening. We are worried that making decisions about a reopening from several months prior gives incentive to community members to push for reopening no matter what.
• We support the teachers’ union as they negotiate the hybrid model with the district. The teachers’ union best represents the interests of teachers at the district level and we are here to support them in assuring a reopening which would help them feel safest. We are worried about the criticism revolving around the teachers' decisions: this isn't about laziness or unwillingness to work—it's about what is best for the whole community. Our community needs to drop the teacher-related cynicism.
• We hope people across our district’s territory, regardless of individual relationship with the district, sign this petition. An irresponsible, uncompassionate school reopening has the potential to open a floodgate of exponential growth of COVID-19, right when flu season is oncoming. This decision affects every person in every demographic of our area.
• It’s not just about safety: while this is our biggest concern, we’re also worried about learner outcomes in the hybrid learning environment. Teachers have reached out to tell us just how difficult this environment would be for our students: they will be seated, masked, and separated from their teachers and peers at all times. The teacher may have to manage a second group of students that is on Zoom all while teaching their in-person class. In general, we worry the split attention of the teacher, lack of tools like small groups, and increased danger to health make hybrid much less desirable than full-online.

Arming yourself for debate

As a team of community members dedicated to bringing change in the way our society reopens, we hold in high esteem the power of civil discourse. You may have seen some of our members engaging in debate on platforms such as Nextdoor and Facebook, and we want to arm our supporters with the tools to deal with those who hold different viewpoints from our own:

• Kindness: there is no utility in continuing a feud between the online and in-person camps. We should recognize that our community is in pain without in-person schooling and empathize with the people who want schools reopened. We called our campaign “Compassionate Reopening” because we want to capture an audience that supports and cares about reopening, but wants it done more safely than the district’s current plan. When debating, please be kind and compassionate.
• Factual information: we believe the facts are on our side—science does not support a return to school. Use information from reputable sources such as scientific journals or unbiased newspapers to support your arguments, and cross-check your information to make sure you are being a responsible online citizen.

Know your common arguments: some of the supporters of the January 5th hybrid model have arguments they like to use and reuse. Know the easy rebuttals:

• Comparing COVID-19 deaths to car deaths: Often, supporters of the January 5th date will say “We don’t close streets and they have a similar death rate to COVID-19 in our county!” We don’t want to spend our time fact checking people, but we like to point out that car crashes don’t typically cause exponential-growth chain reactions in the same way a COVID-19 infection does. One COVID-19 infection can lead to 1.5 to 3.5 more people becoming infected on average, according to scientists in the UK (cited from the Wall Street Journal). Those 1.5 to 3.5 new infections will themselves cause, on average, another 1.5 to 3.5 new infections, and so on. Rarely do we see a car crash that causes another 3 car crashes, let alone those new ones continuing that cycle.
• Comparing COVID-19 to the flu: Please don’t let people get away with this. The flu has an R0 Factor (the number of new cases any given infected person will cause) that is substantially lower than that of COVID-19. Furthermore, the flu death rate of years prior will probably not be the same as today: before, we only really dealt with influenza in any given season. This year, as the flu season starts up, we are still dealing with COVID-19, for which we still don’t have a vaccine or veritable treatments. Fighting both at the same time will take a great toll on our community and may leave an impact on our health resources and infrastructure for some time after the end of the flu season.
• The Brown University’s 47-state and 200,000-student study on the effects of school reopening: we recently received a comment about a Brown University study which found a case rate of 0.13% among students and 0.24% among staff. Although we (and scientific reviews in The Lancet, a scientific journal) would call these rates conservative because of the study’s small sample size, we decided to take the bait and run some math. The SRVUSD has 32,000 students and 4,500 staff, approximately. Using the conservative case rates, this would mean 41.6 infected students and 10.8 infected staff. According to UK scientists (cited out of the Wall Street Journal), the R0 factor, or the number of new cases from one case, of COVID-19 is 1.5-3.5. On the conservative side (1.5 new cases-per-case), our total of 52.4 school-related cases would lead to about 131 new cases. In the worst case scenario (3.5 new cases-per-case), our total of 52.4 school-related cases would lead to about 236 new cases. Keep in mind, the R0 Factor (number of cases caused per infectious people) remains for the new 131 to 236 cases—they will cause new cases as well, and COVID-19 starts to grow exponentially in our community. Ask people to look at their own facts with more realistic logic and it becomes evident that the science is not on the side of reopening.

We will continue to update our petitioners as things progress! Thank you so much for your support as we work to ensure a safer and more compassionate reopening for all members of our community! If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to contact me at npa.gtz[at]gmail.com.

Yours sincerely,

Nic Prescott and the Compassionate Reopening Team