
Photo Courtesy of Advisor Scott Nairne.
As the writers and editors of San Luis Obispo High School Expressions student newspaper, it is our responsibility to represent our student body and voice our concerns and the concerns of our peers.
In light of the school board decision on November 17 to return to on-campus learning, the staff at Expressions has decided to express student concerns regarding this decision.
Frankly, we feel that returning to school at this time is far too dangerous due to the irresponsible conduct of some of our fellow students and their blatant disregard for others’ safety, not to mention the dramatic increase in cases in San Luis Obispo County, moving us from the red tier into the purple tier.
We stand with board member Walt Millar’s dissent on returning to in-person instruction and we hope that the board will reconsider and hopefully reverse their decision on returning to campus before it is too late.
It’s not that we don’t want to return to campus. However, we are concerned for families of both students and staff, as well as the general health of our city. We are deeply worried that this decision will negatively affect all those around us. It is out of good conscience that we write this and plead that the San Luis Coastal Unified District school board reconsider their decision on resuming in-person instruction.
We must remember that on March 13 of this year, schools closed down due to one case in the whole county, but with 766 active cases when the board voted to return us on the hybrid-learning model, they still voted 6-1 in favor of returning to campus.
It is SLO County’s second day in the purple tier.
Cal Poly currently has 850 quarantined students after resuming partially in-person learning. Cuesta College is not returning to in-person learning for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year. It saddens our staff to see the district not follow the examples nor learn from the mistakes of other educational institutions in our county.
The San Luis Coastal Unified Teachers Association survey showed that over 70 percent of secondary school teachers prefer to stay on the distance learning plan for the rest of the year. For school to be as beneficial as possible to students and teachers alike, both parties have to feel safe and in agreement that returning to in-person learning is a safe option.
While we understand that most students learn better in person, and we agree with this, we need to understand the other circumstances surrounding COVID-19 and we need to think critically. Can we trust ALL students to be responsible on and off-campus about this virus?
We have seen the way our peers have reacted to and handled this pandemic, and this is why we do not have faith that students will respect the suggested COVID-19 guidelines upon returning to school. Over Halloween weekend, we saw our peers throw parties and participate in unsafe practices that are known to lead to the spread of COVID-19, an obvious contributing factor to why SLO County has seen a sudden sharp rise in cases, pushing us back into California’s purple tier.
We don’t want SLOHS to go down as another Cal Poly.
It will be too big of a task to micromanage students, and unless we have rapid result testing, there is no way to reassure that COVID-19 does not find its way onto our campus.
Realistically, we do not see us going back into red tier two weeks prior to the set reopen date on January 21, 2021. Even so, if we did stay in the red tier for two weeks, we’d be on a very slippery slope. We can easily slip back into the purple tier (or to where SLOHS can cause the county to go back into purple).
The date of our coming back to campus is concerning as well. This is after winter break, where we cannot trust families and students to not have big gatherings for New Year’s or the holidays, whether they celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other winter holiday. We also cannot trust our classmates to stay safe and to follow the recommended guidelines while on campus.
We publish this statement with concern for our beloved staff and the families of our students and hope that the district board will take our concerns into consideration and reconsider the vote to reopen January 21, 2021.