Dear Editor:
An open Letter to the membership of the Upper Grand District School Board and its trustees.
The way this school board has arranged this temporary home schooling for in-class students – and I won’t call it temporary “remote learning,” because it is nothing of the sort – is nothing short of a complete disgrace and total abandonment of students.
To leave the students entirely to their own devices and rely 100% on parents to supervise their work, help them with the subject matter, grade it, and submit it for attendance credit is a complete cop-out and dereliction of the duty to education.
This appears to be the only alternative to in-class students with immuno-compromised parents who can – forgive me – ill-afford to accept the severe risk in-class learning represents to their health through this latest wave of the pandemic.
This immoral and irresponsible approach is a slap in the face of taxpayers, parents and students – and especially the elderly and vulnerable.
With the abandonment of testing, reporting and quarantining of infectious staff and students, the immune-compromised and otherwise most vulnerable have been relegated to being simply considered collateral damage and acceptable casualties of providing our children with a basic education.
Gandhi once said, “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
How low we have sunk as a society! I am absolutely appalled – as we all should be.
Provision should be made for these students to temporarily join the synchronous learning classrooms that are so well run and organized until it is reasonably safe for them to return to in-class learning.
Michael and Wendy Kurylowicz,
Rockwood