Sure enough! We just discuss school closures in NYC as being under the control of the teacher’s union there when the same group pops up in NOVA demanding the same action! (https://patch.com/virginia/ashburn/nova-teachers-unions-call-return-virtual-schooling-watch).  Just like a copy-cat crime. Someone starts the process and others follow!

NYC schools showed no trend in COVID-19 cases occurring because of in-school class attendance (https://freemannews.com/2020/11/20/families-blast-school-closures). Prince William County Schools (PWCS) have had no negative trends either. Yet the teachers’ union in PWC has added its voice to those of Loudoun and Fairfax teachers’ unions to ask Governor Northam to issue a mandate that requires 100% virtual learning.

Fairfax has a higher occurrence of COVID among the population than has  PWC. The teachers’ unions don’t cite school statistics as the reason for wanting to close schools. Instead, they look at the population occurrence, which is a different statistic entirely. Why jeopardize our students’ academic success and social development by an incorrect logic based on wrong reasoning?

Parents planned with their children’s school reentry in mind when they arranged for child care, going back to work and other necessary life readjustments. To close the schools again only throws a family into confusion that was just beginning to be disentangled.

It sounds like the teachers’ union is more interested in their own welfare than that of their students. The union also is not correctly interpreting statistics—and teachers ought to know how to do that if they’re teachers.

The Family Alliance hails Dr. Walts, his team of teachers and his staff in pushing ahead to make classroom re-entry a reality for PWCS students. Please resist the herd instinct and don’t follow the example and voice of the counties to our north! Our parents and students are relying on you to make choices based on logic and that benefit them first! We support you!

— Posted by Tom Salmon for Doris, a fellow member of the Prince William and Manassas Family Alliance