Year 3 of "The Pandemic" has begun and after two long years of utter failure in addressing the spread of the coronavirus, NJ and the FRSD are moving backwards, doubling and tripling down on failed policies and threatening all-virtual learning once again.

Something needs to change.

As we now face a spike in cases of a variant that is being compared to the common cold, as well as a potentially dangerous psychological environment termed a possible "mass formation psychosis" by an expert from UC Davis and the Salk Institute, we call for the following from the FRSD:

1) Resist the urge to further harm the children of this district and continue in-person learning.

2) Lift any and all recommended COVID-related mandates and restrictions on children in schools; urge individuals to take whatever health-related precautions they deem necessary for their safety; and learn to live with this virus as we have all others.

This isn't going away. Lift restrictions or acknowledge a state of "permanent pandemic" and permanently codify all authoritarian and harmful mandates into FRSD bylaws in perpetuity - then face voters with these actions on record.

As a prominent US senator stated this weekend: "Record numbers testing positive for a sore throat is not a crisis. And people in the hospital for car crashes testing positive isn't a surge. The real crisis is irrational hysteria."