From Claire Leeds, BSN, RN

Monroe

To the Editor: 

Winter is Coming, Delta is Here. Please reverse your July 26th decision to make masks optional for students and staff in the district. Please require masks for students and staff. Please do this to prevent student-to-student transmission in the schools — it worked last year (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/transmission_k_12_schools.html). 

Please do everything feasible to prevent large outbreaks in the schools. Please do this to prevent more quarantines than might otherwise occur (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-briefs/masking-science-sars-cov2.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fmore%2Fmasking-science-sars-cov2.html). 

Please do this for the immunocompromised children in the district. Please do this for the children with immunocompromised family members in the district. Please do this to protect the vaccinated community who may already be experiencing waning immunity (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/14151/?utm_source=gquery&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=gquery-home). 

Please do this to guard against the highly contagious Delta variant (on July 30th, the CDC released the results of an outbreak investigation in Massachusetts, which found that in a July outbreak of 469 COVID cases, 74% of those testing positive were fully vaccinated persons. The Delta variant was identified in 90% of specimens. 79% of fully vaccinated patients with breakthrough infections were symptomatic. Of the five people who were hospitalized for their symptoms, 4 (ages 20-70 years old) were fully vaccinated. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm?s_cid=mm7031e2_x). 

Dear Concerned Parents, please write to the school board (email addresses are available on the district website) to inform them of your support for required masking, and your reasons why, or attend the next school board meeting on Monday, August 9th at 7PM to voice your concerns. 

Dear Parents-Who-Want-Their-Children-To-Wear-Masks-But-Are-Unsure-Whether-It-Should-Be-Required: please consider that unmasked children and staff will create more circulating airborne virus when your child removes their mask to eat and drink, making the overall environment for your child less safe; please consider the protection universal masking provides against other contagious respiratory viruses, decreasing absenteeism (school and work) and confusion in cases of non-COVID illnesses. Write to the school board. 

Dear Community, even if you don’t have children in school, even if you’re vaccinated, even if you’re careful, please consider how the school board’s recent decision to make masks optional for students and staff district-wide affects you — more circulating, highly contagious Delta virus in the community, means greater risk to you — write to the school board. I don’t want to wait and see what happens in our community when Delta meets an unvaccinated and unmasked school population indoors over the fall and winter — please, let’s not run that experiment on our children, here. Require masks in school, distance as much as possible — it’s easy, it’s safe, and we know we can do it, because we have done it. At Northside our children are taught the school motto: Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Safe — we can live up to those words, too.