Letter to the Editor: Retired School Nurse Concerned With School Closures

I am a retired school nurse. I worked in the Chehalis School district for 23 years. I worked cooperatively with the Lewis County health department during all those years. Some of your staff may remember me. I am very concerned about the decision to close the schools. And yes, I said close. Online education is a poor alternative to in-person teaching. If you have been told otherwise you have been misinformed or flat out lied to. I am questioning your decision based on my concern for the wellbeing of children.

I am wondering if the decision to close the schools was based on facts. Have all the issues challenging kids right now been considered? Have you looked at statistics for suicide, child abuse, hunger, internet access, long-term effects of disruptions in education? Have you looked at the impact on special needs students, especially ADHD, autism spectrum and those who require ESL services? 

If you are working from the belief that online education is a viable education option you are uninformed or misinformed. While one-third of students have been successful with online education, two-thirds have not. 

Honest educators will tell you they have had many students who never contacted them during the three months school was online last school term. Teachers have had classes where none of their students signed in for a Zoom class. 

I know from personal experience of my six grandchildren, that only two were able to complete their work independently or with a minimum of assistance from their parents. Two children, both boys, took a great deal of determination, time and money to successfully complete the required assignments to achieve a passing grade. My grandchildren are lucky. They have college-educated stay-at-home mothers to make sure the work is done. How many of our Lewis County students have the same safety net?

Can our migrant children whose parents speak only Spanish and are working in blueberry fields year-round accomplish beginning reading and math? No. I volunteer in the resource room during the school year. It takes tremendous effort to help these kids with the simplest math and reading assignments. Multiply that hundreds of times in our county alone with homeless, drug and alcohol, mental health, and unemployment factors mixed in.

The health statistics alone do not support this decision to close the schools. Three deaths. Of course there are more cases, there is more testing. How many require hospitalization? How many are pediatric? How many are those that teach in our county.?

I don’t know what pressure you face from those at the state level. Frankly, I don’t believe your letter was generated in Lewis County. It is too generalized. I would ask you to serve the population you are hired and paid to protect. There are ways to minimize risk for the teaching staff. 

Protect the children from the political and social fallout from COVID-19, because that is a far greater risk than the virus itself. 

Marilyn Fenn

Curtis