The purpose of this petition is not to discredit the efforts being made to protect our children from additional risk of contracting COVID-19, but to bring light to the need for our children to have a structured, consistent environment to learn in. 

We appreciate the State’s valiant attempt to mitigate risk to our children in schools by developing the hybrid learning system.  However, this system does not best suit the needs of the children, their families, or our teachers.  There is abundant literature that points to school years being absolutely critical to children’s development.  Not having them engage in regular, five day a week in person schooling is impacting not only their education, but their social, emotional, and mental well-being.  Parents are being asked to take on the additional responsibility of instructing their children at home, in addition to their normal careers.  The home is generally not an environment that is conducive to continued use for teaching.  There are too many distractions of their everyday life.  This puts tremendous undue stress on families and can create significant discord. 

National and local statistics show the prevalence of COVID-19 cases in school aged children is minimal.  Many parents, as evidenced by the signatures on this petition, feel the benefit of their children returning to a five day in person school week far outweighs the risk of them becoming sick from the virus.