“School boards must listen to the people
We want to thank The Gazette’s Chad Arnold for his balanced report (“School board won’t act on vaccine survey”) on Feb. 21 about the Duanesburg Board of Education’s refusal to survey its parental community regarding how residents feel about any future vaccine/mask mandates in their district.
Board President Mitchell was quoted as saying that “distributing the survey and sending a letter expressing the district’s views” would create “unnecessary animosity for the district.”
The Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake school board had the courage to survey its parental community last fall and found that a significant percentage of parents would home-school their kids rather than subject them to a mandatory covid vaccination.
This prompted them to send a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul expressing their concerns.
Our group, NY Informed Saratoga, has similar letters from 23 other school districts sent to Gov. Hochul. The main theme of all those letters is that a vaccine mandate would provoke an exodus to home schooling that would be fiscally devastating.
The Duanesburg Board of Education members were sent copies of many of these letters, yet failed to act.
A similar proposal for a survey in Ballston Spa schools was voted down twice, 5-2, as upstate boards of education seem afraid to step forward and take a political position on issues, even though they are all elected in a political process.
Our stance has always been, the board of education is supposed to reflect the wishes of the community that elected them. If you don’t know what your community wants or how they would react to a mandate, how can you possibly represent them?
Jim and Celeste Shear
Glenville”
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Shearm Jim. Schenectady Daily Gazette 24 Janaury 2023.