Editor’s note: The author is a seventh-grade student in Waterville schools
The school board and teachers in Waterville are compromising the safety of the children who go to its schools. The schools made a rule so if kids have to be told to pull their masks up, they are sent to the office to get a new mask, and if they still won’t wear it, they would be sent home to ensure the safety of the people in the building.
However, not one kid has been sent to the office and kids are, literally, screaming in the hallways and in classrooms with their masks pulled all the way down, not just below the nose. Kids in classes have it below their nose all the time and teachers stay silent.
I understand the number of kids that will not listen is overwhelming but what they are doing, which is nothing, is not helping. Not only are they not enforcing the rule they made, but they also are not quarantining unvaccinated kids that are close contacts. I had a friend show up to school whose dad had COVID. Not only do they allow this to happen, but they will not offer a remote option for the kids that care about their health, and their families’ health. The school board dismisses anything that people say when they call them out on it, gaslighting anyone that has a different outlook.
The worst part is where their priorities are. The school board has openly said that the only thing they are worried about is keeping kids in the classrooms. Not teaching them, not keeping them safe, but keeping children in rooms with a disease that if they got it, they could die. Their family could die.
The school board has to be replaced. After what they have done to the kids, my friends, to families, they cannot be trusted.
Gabrielle Johnson
Waterville
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