Dear School Board Members:
I'm just back from dropping my wife off to teach school [....]. We loaned our second car to our daughter-in-law who is finishing her student teaching [elsewhere in Utah]. On the way to dropping off my wife, we stopped off at 6 a.m. when the store was open to pick up bags of ice for the Science projects today as my wife is the Science team lead. We did the same Monday when the sidewalks were so icey themselves. My wife will call when she's ready to come home. Usually it's about dinner-time, so she is putting in 12-hour days, sometimes more, and then there's the grading and prep time at home. I'm not trying to give another hard-working-teacher sob story, just context.I am aware that many teachers are in favor of going to 4-days of students in school because it is easier to manage in a lot of ways. There still remains an increased risk of covid transmission when you double the number of students in school no matter how hard you try to implement distancing and mask-wearing. As you should know, cases are climbing in Utah and around the country. Last Summer, Governor Herbert said he wanted to see the case rate below 400 before schools opened. We barely made it and now we are well over a thousand a day. The hospitals are nearly full.
