[Update 1: This petition has been signed by over 300 people representing All BSD schools. Thank you! Please share this petition and help us reach the next milestone of 500.]
[Update 2: Latest reporting on why it is safe to open school now:
NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2020/10/21/925794511/were-the-risks-of-reopening-schools-exaggeratedTheAtlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/schools-arent-superspreaders/616669/NYTimes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/nyregion/schools-coronavirus.htmlWashingtonPost:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/19/covid-safe-keep-schools-open/]
Today, September 11th, marks the 186th day that the students of the Bellevue School District (BSD) are kept away from school. We are a group of students, family members, and staff of BSD calling the district, King County and Washington State to make the in-person learning OPTION a top priority and act with urgency to make the CHOICE available to our students.
The state and the county have opened up almost every aspect of the society except for school. It is scientifically unjustified and morally wrong to continue asking our young to be the ones to sacrifice and shoulder the burden of the pandemic.
Given that the conditions laid out by the state and county for hybrid model have been fully met, we urge the district to give students the option to go back to school without further delay; we urge the district, the county, and the state to work together and do whatever it takes to ensure that school stays open. While we are very appreciative of what BSD has done for remote learning and understand the huge challenges it faces, we believe more must be done for our young and therefore demand the following actions.
BSD to:
• Start the rollout of the hybrid model for elementary schools immediately and publish a detailed hybrid model rollout timeline for secondary schools within two weeks.
• Meet with community stakeholders and provide school-opening status report to the entire community on a regular basis.
• Commit to the immediate rollout of a fulltime in-person learning option once criteria set by the state and county are met.
King County and Washington State to:
• Revise the criteria used for school opening and replace incidence rate with new and more relevant metrics based on up-to-date scientific research.
• Declare school as an Essential Service and reaffirm our young’s constitutional right to education.
To get updates on the status of this petition and other school re-opening related topics, please visit
https://www.facebook.com/groups/schoolisessentialFACTS
COVID-19 is a very mild disease for the young.
The CDC stated that the risk of complications for healthy children is higher for flu compared to COVID-19 [1]. The majority of the children with COVID-19 exhibit no or mild symptoms [2]. It is extraordinarily rare for children, especially healthy ones, to die from COVID-19 [3][4]. Even during the peak of the pandemic COVID-19 caused 0.8% of the deaths among children between 5 and 14 in the US, and children in this age range were 16 times more likely to die from unintentional injury than from COVID-19 [5].
School setting is not a key driver of the spread of COVID-19 among students and the community at large.
Incidence rates among students were virtually identical in Sweden, where schools stayed open, and Finland, where schools were closed. Teachers in Sweden were not exposed to a higher level of risks compared to other occupations [6]. The European Center of Disease Control stated that child to child transmission in schools is uncommon and not the primary cause of COVID-19 infection in children. Observational data suggest that re-opening schools has not been associated with significant increases in community transmission [7] as child-to-child and child-to-adult transmission is far less likely than adult-to-child transmission [8].
Social isolation caused by school closure has already led to significant psychological stress among our young which may result in serious long-term mental health problems.
COVID-19 is causing a national mental health crisis [9]. Mental well-being of families with children has been hit especially hard by this pandemic [10][11]. The longer we keep the children out of school the more difficult it will be for them to re-integrate into the school learning environment.
Students in the marginalized groups are disproportionately impacted by school closure.
They are more likely to be from families hit hardest by the economic turndown caused by the pandemic and their parents are less likely to have the resources and ability to support remote learning. The longer school stays closed the wider the performance gap will be between these students and their peers.
Incidence Rate is a poor indicator to use for school opening.
While the Incidence Rate of the county has fallen at a slower pace partly due to expansion of test capacity, number of deaths per 100K is 1.5 now vs 7.1 at its peak. Case Fatality Rate (CFR) has dropped significantly to 1.2% [12]. Some researches have estimated Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) to be around 0.02-0.4% [13] and as low as 0.01% for those under 50 [14] as testing reports likely only capture 4-16% of actual cases [15]. Merely 2% of hospital beds in the county are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients [16] and average daily cases of hospitalization have dropped to 1 and death to 0 [10].
As concluded by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the academic, physical and mental upsides associated with returning children to schools outweighs the risks [17]. We have already learned to protect the most vulnerable, seniors and those with underlying conditions, from COVID-19, and the time has come to put school first and foremost. The failure to do right by our young cannot be allowed to continue.
[1]
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/symptoms/flu-vs-covid19.htm[2]
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-in-babies-and-children/art-20484405[3]
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3249[4]
https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/[5]
https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m2290[6]
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/c1b78bffbfde4a7899eb0d8ffdb57b09/covid-19-school-aged-children.pdf[7]
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/children-and-school-settings-covid-19-transmission[8]
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e2020004879[9]
https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/the-implications-of-covid-19-for-mental-health-and-substance-use[10]
https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/daily-summary.aspx[11]
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2020/08/31/peds.2020-007294[12]
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2020/08/28/peds.2020-016824[13]
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v1.full.pdf[14]
https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/53c0dc391be54f5d959ead9131edb771/infection-fatality-rate-covid-19-stockholm-technical-report.pdf[15]
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2768834[16]
https://www.kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/key-indicators.aspx[17]
https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return-to-in-person-education-in-schools/