Yesterday, someone shared our petition in a popular local Facebook group (a HUGE thank you to you). As a result, almost 100 people have signed this petition in the last 24 hours. We'd like to welcome everyone to our growing band of concerned community members who support a universal mask mandate in TESD!

With a very vocal anti-mask faction getting louder, our work is nowhere near done. Our social media and news feeds have been filled with disturbing videos from school board meetings, both around the country and close to home. There is an anti-mask protest planned for the school board meeting this Monday, August 23rd.

What can we do? Well, many of us normally don't feel comfortable sharing our opinions and concerns with administrators and/or elected officials. We don't want to "bother" them. But, these are not normal times and the anti-maskers certainly don't hesitate to shout their opinions loudly and often.

The stakes are too high for us to be quiet. We can show our support and concern in a constructive, rational, respectful way by:

• Sharing this petition widely. Every time we reach a milestone number of signatures, our school board and local leadership gets notified.
• Emailing the school board (schoolboard@tesd.net, gusickr@tesd.net, groppec@tesd.net) with your support for the mask mandate and mitigation strategies.
• Asking questions. The mask mandate is a great start, but we need to hear how it will be enforced, what lunch and PE and other high-risk activities will look like, what will happen when classes are quarantined and not able to go to school, and the metrics the district is using to pivot to virtual if needed. Ask the school board and the principals to show us a plan.

The power of sharing is exponential. To all of our new friends, please, share this petition with your friends, family, colleagues and neighbors via text, email and social media.

Again, thank you for being in this fight with us! Keep pushing!