"You will never know if you have done too much, but only if you have done too little"

As a community, our response can not be to another parent "well if you are scared of the virus stay home". Our response to each other needs to be how can we come together to help keep each others families and children safe. What we can do right now is to is social distance, keep good hygiene, and wear a mask while we are at school. We need to keep all mitigation efforts in place so that  ALL kids can be in school learning together. 

The Wentzville Board of Education voted to go "back to normal with mask optional" for the 2021/2022 School year during their July 13th meeting. This means minimal if any mitigation efforts for social distancing masking, and/or encouraging good hygiene. On the day of that decision, the metrics of the St. Charles area had a 10.63% positivity rate, doubling the rate from just a few days prior on July 1st when our positivity rate was a mere 5.56%. A false sense of security as our numbers have been rising ever since, as we currently sit at a 16.25%, 3 weeks after that decision was made 

The cases of our youth are rising and currently makeup about 24% of our current cases in the St. Charles Area over this last month and about 15% overall. This will only increase as we get kids back in the classroom. The summer has shown that as we let our guard down when our numbers were low and looking good we caused our numbers to almost triple. In the United States, as of July 29th, 72,000 children were recently diagnosed with COVID that week/week prior. More kids are landing in the hospital and the ICU. This is NOT a drill anymore. We have to act now.

We do not know the long-term effect of what COVID will do to our children. This time around during our "4th wave", we have doctors of all specialties, nurses, nurse practitioners, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and more all coming forward to signing petitions and issuing letters pleading for us to do everything we can to prevent our children from getting this disease because THIS time it is different for the children. THIS time they are a target for the Delta variant. We have to keep our guard up and do everything we can to help protect our children and reduce the spread in our community. 

Please sign this petition. I know the mask is a small part of the larger equation of mitigation efforts but every little bit helps.