Vancouver resident Valerie Anderson raises questions about the Vancouver School District’s approach to addressing COVID-19 during the 2021-2022 school year
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and do not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com
This week marks one of the most anticipated, and for some students, parents and public school district employees, most dreaded beginnings for a school year. As almost everyone is aware, there are many hotly contested issues as students head back to the classrooms, many of which have been previously addressed by the editor of Clark County Today and by letters written in to the opinion page. Critical Race Theory, Comprehensive Sex Ed, mandatory masking for students, and vaccine mandates for state employees, including teachers have been hot topics everywhere. But, as our children head into the classrooms this week there are a few issues that have not been the subject of discussion because few people even know about it.
Allow me to inform you: There are plans to have PCR testing ON THE STUDENTS in the schools on a weekly, possibly twice weekly basis. (Yes, we have verbal and email confirmation from the schools and the district.) And students will be tracked using their own cell phones and URL stickers on chairs, desks and tables in classrooms and cafeterias. (Yes, we have actual pictures and verbal confirmation from the schools.)
If you’re not like me, and your blood doesn’t instantly boil upon reading this, or if you’re just not in the loop in medical and technology fields, allow me to simply ask a few questions that came to my mind, and perhaps you can find your own answers, because I certainly haven’t gotten any.
PCR Testing for COVID-19 in schools
I work in a medical clinic and we do regular COVID testing and there is a strict protocol involved in testing. So, these are the questions that I asked Dr. Snell, the superintendent of Vancouver Public Schools. I did not receive satisfying answers to any of these questions.
• Will school personnel administering the tests be properly donning and doffing full PPE (eye wear, mask, gown, gloves) between each student they test?
• How will they be tracking the chain of custody for biological samples and maintaining HIPAA privacy for patients and health information and test results?
• Do they have a secure medical software system to maintain and track testing results?
• How will they be reporting testing results to the Department of Health?
• Who will be informing parents or guardians of results?
• Do they have registered nurses available to give medical advice if needed?
• How will biological waste be disposed of?
• To whom will test results be disclosed?
• What is the turnaround time for results?
Additional concerns raised by other parents are regarding the chemicals present on the swabs used for testing. You didn’t think it was just a q-tip, did you? Have any of you been tested for COVID? I have! It’s not pleasant! Are you OK with NON-medical personnel ramming a chemical-laced stick up your healthy child’s nose into their fragile nasal membranes twice a week, or worse yet, “letting” them do it?
If my child is sick, I will take him to the doctor. Isn’t that what parents do?
One last question: Who is paying for all these tests? The DOH, or the public schools? Never mind. It’s you. YOU are paying for it. The taxpayers.
As for the URL code tracking:
Have you had a few minutes to have the back part of your mind mull that over? Have you come up with a few problems? Let’s get the most obvious one out of the way: What if a child doesn’t have a phone? We asked that question and were told, “That’s OK. The teacher will use their phone and do it for them.” What now? So, now, we have teachers and students using their personal cell phone devices to “tag” themselves (or others?) all over the school building. But what if the student moves to a different table or chair after scanning in? What if the chair they are sitting in now becomes the COVID “hot seat?’’ Cell phones are constantly out of pockets or backpacks and in use, (so much for focus on education!) and in photo mode. The phone you provide for your child is now being used by the public school to DO THEIR JOB FOR THEM. Did you ask them to track your child using their (YOUR) cell phone? I surely did not!
A couple of last questions to ask regarding both issues:
What do you think the school district will do with the information they gather from testing and tracking? What if there is a false positive (believe me, I can tell you for sure — it happens all the time); does your child get deprived of their education, sports and activities even when they are completely healthy?
If your child is healthy, if they are all wearing masks, if the teachers and staff are all vaccinated, if everyone over the age of 12 in Washington state who wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated … why do CHILDREN need to be tested? Why do CHILDREN need to be tracked?
Do the masks work, or not?
Do the vaccines work, or not?
It’s time. It’s time to start asking the hard questions, even if you haven’t up till now. Your child’s future depends on it. In some cases if you’d like to look into teen suicide rates, your child’s LIFE depends on it.
And if you have already asked those hard questions, and you haven’t already pulled your children out of public schools, it’s time to teach them how to say no to an adult. It’s time to let them know that their body is private and nobody touches it without their permission. And if someone tries, they should say NO! And run away if they have to.
It’s time to tell them that the phone you gave them is your private property and to help keep them safe. And unless they feel threatened or ill and they need to call you, phones should stay stowed away in backpacks. Whatever teachers want to do with their phones is up to them.
Finally, if you don’t believe me and want to find out for yourself if PCR testing and URL tracking will be implemented in your child’s school in VPS, please, by all means call or email your school’s principal and ask. And if you have questions. Ask! And if you don’t like what you hear, TELL THEM! Right now. Before someone physically assaults your child, or uses your personal devices in a manner you never intended for them to be used.
You are the parent. You are the taxpayer. You are the boss.
It’s time to start acting like it.
Valerie Anderson
Vancouver
Great questions. One more question to add, what are the act’s being used for the PCR tests. If above 28 it’s excessive & will produce false positives
Hello Valerie,
Please see links below as they answer many of your question. It appears that testing is optional if a child has symptoms but requires the parent to sign off on testing and actually administer the test. The school just processes it for them.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTbdxd6EgyWMeHtfrPgci8PsjUUL6goB21oayZdykKDJ2QPGujv-o9Lj-5hyPDp9PfwDMGtthLFfNVM/pub#h.d1zsnn80n3av
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/15Ov8buBh2wUYg2aF6GZbKjVbXqvbFpg5jZwiJj7eJp8/mobilebasic
Yes, that’s the condescending and placating answer I’ve been given over and over again by the Superintendent of Schools, except that’s not the information we’re getting from boots on the ground at the school and athletic level. It’s not optional. Not if they want to participate in indoor sports, cheer, and possibly choir, band and orchestra. The answer one parent was given from a school official when she said that unless her children had been recommended by a doctor to be tested for Covid she would decline the tests: “Well, I guess your children won’t be participating then, will they?”
This is not a convenience offered for parents. This is a barrier to equal access to educational services, resources and activities.
And still no one is answering the question: why is an educational institution involving itself in the medical affairs of students and families when they are clearly not equipped to do so? Are the schools going to start testing children for HIV/AIDs, hepatitis and tuberculosis, too, then allowing or prohibiting participation in sports and activities based on test results? Whatever happened to the concept of universal precautions? If masks are necessary for vaccinated teachers to keep from getting Covid, then ALL students are a DANGER to teachers and should be treated as such regardless of testing. OR, maybe, the teachers, who, a year ago were clamoring to get to the front of the line (ahead of the elderly and medically fragile) to get vaccinated should trust the efficacy of the vaccine and quit treating their students like carriers of the black plague.
Honestly, I wish they would just pick a narrative and stick to it. Are the vaccines effective? Then why are the children forced to wear masks? If the children are forced to wear masks and the masks are effective, why are the vaccines necessary? Pick one.
And what is the point of testing?
Oh! I know! And you know, too. The excuse they are looking for to close schools down again! Or, to deny access of education to those who do not comply.
DO NOT COMPLY!
The “educations institution” is involved in these dictates because of the State’s governing body of legislators. The Federal govt. comes into the picture because they provide “Funding” for schools all across the Nation.
That fact is then broken down into WHO your governor is. We know there are States wherein governors are fighting two and nail both against mask mandates and forced vaccinations on educators.
The point being, NOT all State Governors are following these mandates. It’s all about WHO your governor is.
1 inch at a time towards control…AND creating more fear.
Never thought the country would come to this but it has….the country has failed and the only thing left to do is break it into separate pieces each having nothing to do with a centralized government. Let’s form a new union and let the liberals have whichever states we can be agreed on. Then let’s look back in 30 years and see where they are at…never mind just look at California today and that would be what it would look like….case closed.
Based on reading/watching hundreds if not thousands of articles by specialized physicians from ’round the world, they uniformly state that:
The PCR test is very faulty. So faulty that the FDA and CDC is ending its use December 31st, 2021. The inventor of the test emphatically stated that if you up the count thresholds, it will measure every virus, bacteria, and other perfectly harmless things in your body.
Masks: most all physicians, especially those specialists online ALL say, these masks are utterly useless. Even Dr. Fauci admitted that months ago. Weren’t you online when he said that? Cloth masks aren’t the least bit better.
Vaccines: the growing evidence, especially in Israel, is showing the largest vaccinated rate of any other nation on earth. Besides the death/severe illnesses rates, the specialists are pointing out that a very large part of the vaccinated population is showing up with Covid-19. Solution: Israeli’s are being vaccinated 2- 4 times.
The CDC supposedly counts ALL deaths and injuries from the vaccine, but they are purposely discounting these vaccine deaths/injuries to show ONLY 1% of those who have died from the virus, or have contracted heart disease, thrombosis, neurological impairments are actually being counted at VAERS.