The COVID-19 pandemic has changed significantly since August, when superintendents made the decision to start school remotely. Transmission is now growing exponentially. People are dying from COVID-19 in Clark County.
Contract tracers at Public Health are overwhelmed and shifting the responsibility to our schools and infected individuals. Teachers and students are testing positive and exposing people to the virus in schools. Students and staff are having to quarantine after attending in-person kindergarten.
Amidst all this negative news, three safe and effective vaccines provide hope. With the dual reality of a surging virus, but the prospect of vaccines that could be widely distributed within this school year, local school districts should put hybrid plans on hold and move kindergarten back to remote learning. In 1971, John Kerry asked Congress “how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Nearly 50 years later, I ask local school superintendents a similar question: How can you ask staff and students to expose themselves and their loved ones to this deadly virus when a vaccine is months away?
