December 13, 2020

Your “Response to Outreach and Superintendent Update” (December 11, 2020), which purports to address the over 120 parental comments at the last Ann Arbor Board of Education meeting as well as the recent letter from nearly 130 local physicans and pediatric providers, was not a good-faith response. Rather, it was a defensive reaction to the medical professionals and parents of the community. It’s not clear if this is a response from the Board of Education, to whom the comments were directed and who are our elected representatives, or if this is from you only. In either case, it was deficient because it:

1. Avoids the key question, creating a strawman argument instead: You respond exclusively to something that was never asked — “an immediate return to school.” The letter and comments ask AAPS to “set a target date for return, for example, mid or late January” because “the risk of school-based COVID-19 spread is low, and is far outweighed by the harms of 100% remote learning.” You cite data about how it’s not possible to return now; however, you never actually respond to the request to set a target date nor to the data showing the low risk of in-person schooling.
     
2. Marginalizes science and the community: You refer to parents’ and pediatricians’ data-based view as “anger among some.” This is demeaning, inaccurate, and dismissive of the 99% of public comments at the last Board of Education meeting and the nearly 130 medical experts. This marginalizes what is the dominant view of the local, national and global health and medical professions (e.g., the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci) as well as the more than 100 parents who are speaking out publicly. You ignore the data from the physicians, which is peer reviewed, and even cite Dr. Fauci, ignoring the fact that he believes children should be back to in-person schooling. You also ignore the pediatricians on the letter who are seeing “rising rates of insomnia, anxiety, depression, obesity and oppositional behaviors.” You are using data without context while failing to reference the bulk of the literature. In fact, the position that is in the extreme minority is that of AAPS. At least 90% (likely approximately 95%) of school systems across the country have had some in-person education or set a target date to do so. Marginalizing the scientific and community viewpoint should be beneath the leader of a school system as proud as AAPS.
     
3. Treats failure for children to meet their teachers and peers as a success: In dismissing the approach of the vast majority of schools, which have had in-person learning but have also sometimes had to retrench when trends rise or outbreaks occur, as “unfortunate,” you are conflating success with failure to try. In local private schools and surrounding districts that have had some in-person learning at the start of the year, parents tell us their children have benefitted from being able to meet their teacher and peers. That is hardly surprising, and it is worth noting that even when these schools have moved back to virtual, their school leadership are not dealing with the flood of negative public comments that AAPS is encountering. Saying that AAPS has a “benefit” from never having students engage in person is at best counterintuitive, and certainly doesn’t seem to value the perspective of our students, parents and local experts in children's health..
      
4. Suggests parents are liars for citing the Washtenaw County Health Department (WCHD): Your assertion that “Any statements that the WCHD is not supportive of the AAPS approach are inherently false” is inaccurate. According to WCHD’s statements about AAPS metrics, “We do not have a position on this” while WCHD called the original metrics — which have only changed slightly — “unachievable.” Please explain how that qualifies as “supportive.” Moreover, other Washtenaw County school districts had already returned to in-person education and plan to do so again in January. Is it your assertion that these districts are ignoring WCHD and that only AAPS is following their guidance by keeping children out of school? If so, please provide evidence rather than impugning the integrity of parents who received information directly from the WCHD.
      
5. Defaults to disproven metrics: You say that you’ll review the metrics and make adjustments if needed. However, there is no commitment or timeline to actually make the adjustments nor to seek the expertise to do so. The metrics set in the Fall are not relevant today given what we now know about COVID-19 and the impacts of students being banned from in-person learning. Nearly 130 of our community’s physicians and pediatric providers have made a specific recommendation, which remains unaddressed in favor of vague proclamations of “adjustments.” 

What you laid out and called a response is exactly what the letter from the doctors and pediatric nurses warned against: appearing to be “singularly focused on avoiding a return to in-person class at all costs” and never even “attempting” to return. The AAPS community deserves a target date for return and real leadership from the AAPS Board of Education and Superintendent that reckons with the real harms inflicted on many children as the result of prolonged school closures and acts in the best interests of our children and community.