Statement from the Buncombe County Association of Educators:
The Buncombe County Board of Education plans to meet this Thursday evening, February 4, at 5:30 to discuss the re-entry plan after the current plan ends on February 12.
We understand how very stressful this is for everyone, and we want to be back in the classroom too. We know how important this work is, even long before the pandemic revealed that truth to the world. It has always been our desire to serve our children and families within our community, and we have been working tirelessly to deliver a quality remote option in the face of a pandemic with rampant community spread, particularly surrounding the Thanksgiving and Winter breaks. Every one of us owns the responsibility to live up to the call for safe conditions for our children and the adults who serve them.
We will still advocate for a SAFE re-opening, and call upon the community to partner with us to achieve that common goal. Together, we can do exactly that.
The Buncombe County Association of Educators eagerly supports a SAFE re-opening of classrooms to in-person learning, and we strongly urge the Board to support the following recommendations:
- VACCINATE all educators & staff who want the vaccine before they are required to back into school buildings.
- Continue to faithfully implement and ENFORCE the 3 Ws of washing hands, waiting six feet away from others, and wearing masks.
- Identify and follow a safe metric for reopening of 5% positivity rate or lower if in Plan B and 3% positivity rate or lower if in Plan A.
- No worse than YELLOW designation as measured by NC state Alert System.
- FULL TRANSPARENCY of virus infections: Not just “active” cases and clusters but total infections, clusters AND # of confirmed person-to-person infections in each school and the week those occurred.
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