Hoover parents speak out about school reopening plan
More than 100 people showed up at Spain Park High School Monday night for a Hoover school board work session designed to get feedback on the school system’s proposed reopening plan as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some parents were adamantly in favor of the plan, which would bring students back to school Aug. 10 under much more normal conditions, while others warned that doing away with requirements for masks, contact tracing and close-contact quarantining could lead to a new spike in community spread and put more lives at risk.
Valerie Suggs, a parent of two students at Shades Mountain Elementary, said masking and social distancing right now are the only means of protection for children younger than 12, who are not yet eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccine for children ages 5-11 likely won’t be available until near the end of September, Suggs said.
“It would be folly to forego these protective measures,” Suggs said. “It would be a terrible shame if any of our children in Hoover became gravely ill in the coming months when we are so very close to having a greater degree of protection available to them.”
Suggs said the majority of parents in Hoover want their kids to be in school and have access to face-to-face learning with their teachers. They want the freedom to return their attention to their jobs and other responsibilities and want the periodic school closures and virtual learning days to stop or at least be minimized.
She said most people are willing to follow recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Alabama Department of Public Health for unvaccinated children to wear masks at school and stay at least 3 feet apart if it increases the likelihood that kids can attend school in person.
“Our kids proved to us last year they can be active participants in keeping themselves, their peers, their families and their community safe,” Suggs said.
She’s not a fearful person, but she understands she doesn’t have all the knowledge to make the best decisions, she said. She turns to her pastor for spiritual advice, her lawyer for legal advice, a financial planner for financial advice and doctors and scientists for medical advice, she said.
“The politics of this decision are very complex, and I am very sympathetic to that, but the science is very simple,” Suggs said. “I urge the members of the board to follow the science and continue to help us keep our children and our community safe.”
Sheree Cobia, the parent of students at Brock’s Gap Intermediate School and Bumpus Middle School, said science doesn’t actually back up the effectiveness of masks. The COVID-19 particles are five times smaller than the pores on most masks, Cobia said.
Cobia also spoke against the idea of requiring children to be vaccinated in order to come to school without masks. She cited statistics of 9,048 deaths and a myriad of health problems cited as adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccines.
Parents should always have a choice when it comes to the health of themselves and their children, she said. She doesn’t want to see children discriminated against because they don’t take the vaccine, she said.
If vaccinations become a requirement for not wearing masks, she’ll have to take her kids out of Hoover schools, she said.
Cobia noted that virtual school remains an option for people who are really scared or worried about getting sick.
Shilpa Gaggar, a pharmacist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said the statistics cited regarding adverse affects to vaccines are not based on medical science, but come from people self-reporting problems they believe are related to the vaccines.
“I can say that I stubbed my toe and it was caused by the vaccine, and it enters into the database,” Gaggar said.
Also, Gaggar said there is plenty of data that backs up the efficacy of masks. Yes, they are uncomfortable, but they work and are safe, she said.
Alabama has low vaccination rates, and there is a new variant of the COVID-19 virus that is shutting down summer schools and summer camps, Gaggar said.
“You could create a situation where we could eventually have an outbreak in a school, and because we are doing no contact tracing, it could be quite widespread before we would know that it had happened,” she said.
Cara Turner, another parent, said it comes down to a matter of rational risk assessment. The risk of an unvaccinated child in the United States dying of COVID-19 is two out of 100 million, Turner said. Children are more likely to die choking on a hotdog, riding a school bus or getting the flu or pneumonia, she said.
Children are more at risk from the negative effects of close-contact quarantining and staggered school schedules than from COVID-19 infections, Turner said.
Even during the height of the pandemic, there were school districts that successfully demonstrated that schools can stay open safely with in-person learning, and that was before the vaccine was available, she said.
“Overall, the risk to children is too low to ethically justify remaining restrictions,” Turner said. “It is now abundantly clear that restricting our children’s access to consistent in-person learning is not only foolish, but immoral.”
New Hoover schools Superintendent Dee Fowler said the current Hoover City Schools reopening plan is still very fluid. He has been on the job only since July 1, and the plan already has been modified twice, he said.
“We want to taper this plan to protect our teachers, to protect our students and to deliver the best education we can in the city of Hoover,” Fowler said.
After Monday night’s meeting, school board President Amy Tosney said she doesn’t expect the board to vote on the reopening plan. Instead, the superintendent and his staff will listen to the input provided Monday night and in other ways and make any changes deemed necessary, she said.
Fowler said he couldn’t say whether there would be any further changes to the reopening plan or not. He wants to give the school board time to digest the input received so far and provide any guidance they wish to provide, he said.