Wachusett Schools Close 1 Day Before Reopening, School Committee Member Says 79% Of Parents Who Voted To Return Did So “Under Duress”
The Wachusett Regional School District was supposed to open with hybrid learning on Thursday of this week. As we’ve seen from countless parents, remote learning is a spectacular failure and is abusive to children. Many parents send their children to “learning pods” where they sit in rooms with other children of working parents and do their remote learning, which completely defeats the purpose of closing schools since kids are gathered together like that. Daycares are open, and often have dozens of kids in an enclosed indoor area with no masks on. Catholic schools are fully functional, as are public schools in many states. Clearly it can be done and the world will not end if schools open.
It’s personal for me because I live in the district, but what happened in the last 24 hours is symptomatic of a much larger problem, and it’s coming to a town near you. At the last minute the School Committee decided to have a vote to delay the reopening until January 19, because COVID will be fixed by then. The entire meeting was rigged, as every medical “expert” that was brought in conveniently said that we should keep schools closed.
At the 2:11 mark Julia Pingitore, who works at UMass and is on the Paxton Board of Health, explained that she has a 6 and 13 year old, and she wants to remain in remote completely because “I want her to stay with her brother.” Must be nice when your kids are old enough to babysit each other so you can go to work. Everyone who isn’t so fortunate has to quit their jobs. Not her problem.
She points out that we “could” overwhelm hospitals, which was the same lie we were told when we all agreed to stop living our lives for 15 days to stop the spread in March. Except hospitals around here are not “overwhelmed” at all, which is why they always say that it “could” overwhelm the hospitals. But we don’t shut down public schools and deny people their civil rights because something “could” happen. We’ve already fallen for this once before.
She also pointed out that kids didn’t know they had COVID until they were tested. Almost as if we’re hiding from a virus that’s so far removed from being a threat to children that they don’t even know they have it. And if you don’t know you have a virus inside of you, then you’re not really sick.
At the 2:33:30 mark Superintendent Daryl McCall pointed out that although there’s been an increase in “cases” (due to increases in testing), there has not been a corresponding increase in deaths. Don’t worry though, because according to him that’s coming.
“You’ll notice theres a small increase here (in deaths) but that will continue to rise.”
Where’s the evidence deaths will continue to rise? Oh right, he has no evidence to back up that opinion. But he’s closing down schools anyway, which saves the district significant amounts of money and thus makes his job much easier.
At the 3:21 mark a School Committee member basically said that she didn’t want to have an opinion on whether or not to schools until she heard from a medical expert. So they brought on a doctor, who was never introduced, and whose credentials were never listed. It sounded like “Dr. Wice” or “Dr. Weiss,” but it’s hard to tell. Either way, why is this cherry picked doctor, who coincidentally thinks we should remain locked down until COVID disappears, the person chosen by the superintendent to give advice to the School Committee? This is an exact quote from him
“This COVID thing is not gonna end, it will end in a year or two when we get the vaccine going.”
“Don’t send the children back early, don’t perpetuate the COVID at this time, and think of the community as a whole.”
He wants us to wait a year or two until we get a vaccine until we allow our kids to return to school. He doesn’t care about the well being of the children, or constitutional implications of this. He just doesn’t want to be “overwhelmed” at work. Imagine firefighters or police officers were this cowardly? Imagine they told us we couldn’t use wood stoves because we don’t want to overwhelm the fire department? Or we couldn’t drive cars because we might crash and overwhelm the police department? When you sign up to be a doctor you are signing up to treat sick people, not prevent healthy people from contracting an airborne virus by closing schools. He should suck it up and do his job instead of forcing parents to quit their jobs.
For the record, hospitalizations are nowhere near what they were during the height of the pandemic, when hospitals in the Worcester area were never overwhelmed.
Then there was this woman.
At the 3:24:40 mark School Committee member Laura Kirshenbaum made reference to this survey that parents in the district completed:
As you can see, 79% of parents in the 5 towns voted to go back to school, including over 80% in all the elementary and middle schools. But according to Laura these parents are idiots who had no idea what they were voting for.
“I would like to question the assumption that 80% of our community is choosing hybrid honestly.”
“People chose the hybrid model under duress. There are some people who chose hybrid because they did not see a viable remote plan moving forward.”
Silly parents who think they know what they want for their kids. They only made those comments because they were under duress. Unlike people like her, who are making decisions to shut down public schools for an entire year over a virus with a 99.9% recovery rate that has not killed a single child in Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, during the height of the pandemic she posted this.
In fairness, this could’ve been an old photograph, but campaigning for office doesn’t help stop the spread of a virus, which apparently concerns her deeply.
She actively supports a movement that held mass demonstrations with no social distancing.
Laura has fallen for hoaxes before that fit her narrative.
Althea Bernstein made up a story about being burned at a stoplight in downtown Madison by Trump supporters. Anyone with a brain realized at the time that it was a lie, and months later the police confirmed that it was. A person who is this gullible should not be deciding when your kids get to return to school, but they are.
She also shared a link and wrote “life lesson” with a video about how “all whites are racist.”
So take that for what it’s worth.
The School Committee voted 16-4 to keep schools closed until January 19, but we all know they’ll just find a reason to keep them closed again a couple days before schools start. Meanwhile kids all over the district are upset and crying because they found out that the adults who run their districts simply do not care about their emotional well being. Sorry kids, nobody cares about you.
The vast majority of parents in the district want schools to open, but they were ignored because the vocal minority is always louder. This post got lots of likes and positive comments.
Posts like this are meant to shame and blame people who have lived their lives for the past several months. It’s your fault schools are closed because you at a restaurant, not the School Committee’s fault. They had no choice. After all, a doctor no one knows said they can’t, and doctors run your town now. But the arrogance was just off the charts.
“I wear my mask 100% of the time, including outside.”
Except, you don’t.
You went trick or treating with your family without masks on two weeks ago. Thanks for lecturing everyone else about how this is all their fault though.
She was far from the only one.
This is not a binary decision, Sandra. Grandma can live and kids can go to school. Grandma should just be careful since she’s more at risk. But any grandparent who wants children to suffer so they can feel safer is a selfish, cowardly person. Since she has no kids in the schools, this is no big deal for her.
Don’t worry though, according to Sandra your kids are not at a disadvantage academically.
Except for kids who don’t have the parental support, need special ed services, or are sexually abused in their homes. Those kids need to stop crying and lower their expectations for the duration of this pandemic so that Sandra can feel safer. She comes first.
Plus, getting an education is really no different than turning on an XBox.
Great point Trisha. Why even reopen schools when the pandemic ends? Seems like a waste of money when we can just plop them down in front an XBox.
Then there was this genius.
Shae dear, our children’s health is not at risk from COVID. That’s not how any of this works. You also appear to have recently graduated form high school, don’t know the first thing about being a parent, and clearly are not very bright. Please refrain from speaking whenever possible. Thanks.
Finally there was Shannon Doherty.
“Y’all think teachers should do the job you don’t want to do.”
No, I think teachers should do the job they signed up to do, and so do many teachers. I also think I should be able to do my job, which pays money that I need to feed my family. At this point I think most teachers want to return. It’s just the doctors, health boards, and gutless School Committees taking their marching orders from these hand picked “experts” who are keeping the schools closed.
But it’s just a year of education right?
Who cares about an entire year of education? School is overrated anyway.
The lesson here is that local elections matter more than national elections, and nobody votes in local elections. Do you know who’s on your School Committee? Do you know when elections are? Do you know who’s on the Board of Health? Because these people have tremendous power over you, and when they go agains the will of the people they should be removed. I called all 7 members from my town and only one returned my call (one of the 4 who voted to reopen). If you live in this district I highly recommend you contact them by email which can be found here. A petition has also been started by parents which can be signed here.
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