Results From the BSD Board Meeting....(hint, you're not going to like it.
Brief Summary
Masks stay on
The board will revisit mid-Feb and district administration plans to present an "endemic operation plan" with recommendations
YouTube Video of the meeting Time Stamps 1:14:15-21:38:50
Doctors Nassir and Bramwell reversed course with their recommendations (first recommended 'masks optional' last Friday and then on Monday decided against it) and would not acknowledge adverse effects for masking of children. They did not discuss unnecessary quarantine. E-mail them your stories and studies showing the harms of both and remind them that most of the state is not doing any of this with minimal, if any, consequence. mark.nassir@saintalphonsus.org bramweke@slhs.org WE THINK THESE TWO WERE THE ULTIMATE REASON WHY THE BOARD DECIDED TO KEEP MASKS ON. We'll dive deeper into these two doctors at a later time.
Board member comments:
Trustee Hawes pushed back on the hospital administrators for reversing course even though we haven't seen an increase in hospitalizations or cases
Trustee Langley keeps talking about how she's frustrated about low vaccination rates and how if more people would get vaccinated, we wouldn't be in this position
Trustee Oppenheimer kept talking about how proud she was that they were able to keep kids in school 5 days a week even though 164/167 school districts are able to do that without all of these policies and many of the other districts have higher attendance than Boise
Trustee Schmidt (new board member) asked some good questions, read comments aloud, and acknowledged kids are being harmed by masking. But said that it's a tough choice because kids get harmed either way without actually quantifying HOW or HOW MANY kids (or people) would be harmed if masks and quarantine were to be dropped. He also referred to using a mask in an operating room, but classrooms aren't operating rooms nor should they be treated as such. Kids don't have to scrub in and out nor do they wear caps and gowns nor are they around people who are undergoing surgery.
They all kept saying they HAD to do different things, but they don't. They are choosing this. The CDC and CDH recommendations are just recommendations and they are supposed to be taking that information and making their own informed decisions and operating plans. Most of the state isn't masking, contact tracing or quarantine and they're keeping their kids in school at higher rates than we are with minimal difference in spread. Even if spread was double during the peak of Delta without masking and quarantine, that would mean roughly 1% of kids per week would have been COVID positive as opposed to 0.5%.
All board members said the comments and e-mails received are about 50/50 so we need to be encouraging others who aren't speaking out to make their voices heard
What can we do now!! A lot.
We need to be pushing them for a parents survey and telling them to look at the staff survey from last week so they can see what people want.
E-mail the Idaho State Board of Education board@osbe.idaho.gov TODAY to tell them NOT to move toward enrollment-only-based funding. The short version is that districts like Boise who have done masking and quarantine have lower average daily attendance than districts that prioritized keeping kids in school. Moving toward enrollment-based funding would mean they all get the same money, rather than the districts that prioritized education being rewarded for doing so and districts that didn't needing to deal with the financial consequences of their decisions.
Many of these operating plans are based off CDH recommendations and, at the last CDH board meeting, there was also very little recognition of ill effects of masking. E-mail boh@cdh.idaho.gov by 8:00AM on Thursday 12/16/21 in advance of the Friday Board meeting to refute the two CDC studies they are citing to justify the mask mandates (you can refer to the two blog posts), to provide studies and data showing the harms of masking, to provide personal stories of how the current policies have affected your family.
This is NOT over. Continue to spread the word about our group.
Sign the Petition.... gathering more like minded parents, staff and students is what we need most.
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