By Scott A. Teschky
I fully support opening schools 100 percent in class, on time, as well as resuming all fall sports.
The negative effects of this closure thus far on our kids are already measurable. I see it in my family. We need to take the fear and emotion out of the decision-making process and look at the data and the facts. After all, isn’t that what we are constantly being told, follow the science?
From the CDC, 30 kids under the age of 15 have reportedly died from COVID-19. One hundred ninety kids die every year from the seasonal flu.
We don’t shut the schools down for the seasonal flu, the student stays home and comes back when healthy. 436 commit suicide, 625 from homicide, and 4,114 who die from drowning or other unintentional death.
The science also shows that kids don’t spread the virus as easily, if at all. Add to that the recent news that 300 Florida testing sites have reported 100 percent positive results in error, which has fueled the current panic and news reports that Florida is out of control. This is not true. The reported positive test rate is ten times higher than the actual number.
There is no factual data to support schools being shut down or sports, not resuming. Europe and Asia have had schools in session for months with no major issues.
We are in a never-ending cycle because of the indecision currently taking place. Fall sports summer conditioning was to start on June 8, 2020. It has literally been pushed off every week to where we are now looking at July 27, 2020, to start.
Will it be pushed off again?
This kicking the can down the road approach can go on for another year if we allow it, and it does not serve the best interests of the students or the community.
Get our kids back to school and fall sports underway. The negative consequences of not doing so will be felt for years to come if not irreparable.
Scott A. Teschky has lived in Coral Springs for six years. He is a senior project manager for a company in Fort Lauderdale.
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8 comments
There is no way the schools should open up until we have 0 cases for atleast 8 weeks. Your extra curricular activities can be paused for the greater good of our community. Homeschooling is NOT a new idea. Public School is new in the world of schooling. Its not a big deal to have your kids e-learn from home until we are all in the clear. I attended CSE and CSM and a graduate of MSD.
Obviously you didn’t read the article, or are just unable to absorb facts that go against your preconceived fears. Either way, your the type of useful idiot controlling the narrative, and making people like the opinion writer, myself, and many other rational people lose there minds. If your afraid, stay home forever for all I care. But the time has come to end this nonsense and open everything back up fully.
Wow! So much bad science, it’s hard to know what to address first. But let’s first say, that I am a huge fan of the idea of opening up our public schools. I realize that families depend on schools not only for the education of their kids, but also for child care to allow parents to work. I understand that it has been very difficult for parents during this crisis, and am very grateful that my kids are old enough that they’ve been able to handle the virtual learning with much less supervision than younger children. But in order to reopen the schools, we need to get the virus under control first. This can be done. It has been done in every other country that has had it as long as we have. Why are we having so much more trouble than everyone else? Because HALF of our government representatives are lying to us and telling us things like, “it’s no worse than the flu”, “it’ll be gone in a couple of weeks”, “drink bleach”. If no one had been listening to those morons we would be ready to open the schools by now. Unfortunately we are not.
Now to address a FEW of the inaccuracies in your article.
– The outcome of a COVID infection is not necessarily death, or no problem, there are many, many people struggling with long term effects from having “recovered” from novel coronavirus.
– The extremely high positive rate was NOT why anyone was concerned. It was almost immediately discovered to be an error. The cause for concern is the extremely high number of new cases. This is a leading indicator for the extremely high number of deaths we will have in the state in just a few more weeks.
– Europe and Asia CONTAINED their virus first, THEN reopened schools. They did the work, so they got their cookie. You want the cookie even though we haven’t done the work. This is the same problem we had with reopening restaurants and bars. We weren’t ready, we reopened anyway, and now we have sky-high new cases.
– There have been no scientific studies reporting that children do not spread the virus as easily. Only that they don’t seem to be affected as severely.
– You know WHY only 15 kids have died of coronavirus? Because we’ve been keeping them home!
Opening schools is something we absolutely need to do. But we have to do some work first, we have to get our number of new cases down drastically, and that isn’t going to happen until mask use is mandatory for EVERYONE going out in public, and ENFORCED. And quite honestly, it will probably require restaurants to be switched back to carry-out only, and bars to remain closed.
What about the negative consequences of teachers getting sick and many dying? Children getting sick and many dying or having permanent disabilities? Dying and permanent disabilities are irreparable; requiring extra schooling to catch up is not.
if we can do Home Depot and Publix, then why not public schools?
you obviously only get your information from mainstrem news outlets. The survival rate for people under 60 is 99.7 percent. Multiple studies show children have almost zero effect from this virus and are not good spreaders of it. Many countries have had kids in school, almost none passed infection to older people, or other kids in multiple studies done. This info is easy to find if you dare cliick on something other then cnn, msnbc, or fox, or a local news outlet. Your fear is not based in any sort of reality, but unfortunatly the chicken littles like yourself are controlling the narrative. The american pediatric association also belives kid belong in scholl this summer. Thats 67,000 pediatricians that agree on that. But go ahead keep listening to 1 guy and say you believe in science.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-janette-nesheiwat-reopening-schools-benefits-far-outweigh-coronavirus-risk
Totally agree………great opinion.