Despite ‘Science and Data’ Forsyth County Schools Consider Delaying Return to In-Person Instruction

WINSTON-SALEM – At this point the question of whether or not kids can safely return to school should be settled. Actually, it has been settled for months, as study after study confirms that the risk of children suffering from, or transmitting the coronavirus in school settings is minimal. As in studies of 90,000 students across 11 districts in North Carolina producing ZERO cases of students passing the coronavirus on to a staff member.

So, imagine the frustration boiling up in parents and students in Forsyth County where district leaders say an extended delay to a return to in-person instruction is likely. High school students there were scheduled to return to class Monday.

From WFMY NEWS 2:

“[…] Regan High School 10th grader Abigail Bach said she’d be devastated if her chance to learn in person is taken away from her.

“I don’t even think I will even log onto my classes because we have waited so long to do this, to go back to school and get something,” Bach said. “We’ve waited forever and they keep pushing it back and trying to delay our human interaction and our human right and its just not fair.”

Suzan Larimore has a freshman at Walker Town High School.

“I just feel like he’s going to fail freshman year all together without being able to be in the classroom and get the instruction he needs,” Larimore said. “Kids aren’t meant to sit in front of electronic devices for this long.” […]”

The current plan isn’t even a full-time return to in-person instruction; it’s a staggered couple of days on, several days off arrangement. Even then, that’s only for smaller high schools. Larger high schools are looking at four days of in person instruction A MONTH, and actually happy to get even that.

That is what will be delayed in service to Pandemic Panic. Beyond the education bureaucracies making the calls, though, a sizable portion — 40% — of the public school parents indicate they will keep their kids on a fully remote schedule. The reason may be more complicated than at first glance.

Either 40 percent of parents are similarly terrified of their kids catching and passing on the coronavirus — a risk repeatedly dismissed by science — or a smaller portion of them are COVID cautious while the remainder simply oppose the fits and starts of a sometimes on, sometimes off COVID class calculus.

Either way, for every person that would rather stay at home, there is at least one more (probably two) whose education is being decimated by the prohibition on in-person schooling fueled by completely irrational Pandemic Panic.

Read more on the Forsyth County decision here.