AN INDOOR HIGH SCHOOL PEP RALLY IN THE MIDST OF A DELTA SURGE?
Mask-optional school environment and an indoor pep rally? I think we've found the definition of insanity at Flower Mound High School.
I had found out that my local high school, Flower Mound High School, was planning an indoor pep rally this Friday. Students who did not wish to attend had to spend that time waiting in the cafeteria.
Mind you, this is in a mask-optional environment that Lewisville ISD has continued to promulgate despite an unprecedented strain on health care resources in the Dallas/Fort Worth area as the Delta variant continues it’s unchecked spread.
This is what I emailed the Lewisville ISD school board, district officials, and the principal of Flower Mound High School earlier today:
To the district board, district officials and school leadership:
Am I to understand that in the midst of the Delta variant surge with hospital and critical resources not just in Denton County but all of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex are under unprecedented strain that an indoor pep rally is still going forward at Flower Mound High School on Friday?
For 20 years in my private family medicine practice, I addressed the medical needs countless LISD students, staff and their families after earning my medical degree in 1997 from the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas and completing my residency training and chief residency at the University of Kansas Medical Center. I retired from private practice last year to join the Indian Health Service where I am routinely deployed into Native American reservation communities to assist in meeting their medical needs. I have seen COVID loss and tragedy first hand in my work with the IHS.
It is absolutely inconceivable to me as someone who has spent decades steeped in science and medicine as a physician that such an indoor gathering at Flower Mound High School is even considered. To allow students to not attend and instead wait in the cafeteria is not an acceptable alternative as they are being given the choice between two highly dangerous and ill-advised environments.
I spoke in the most explicit terms before the board on August 9th about the danger presented by the Delta variant.
Let’s set aside the fact that the recommendations of numerous medical governing bodies like the American Academy of Family Practice, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Centers for Disease Control and others that represent decades of medical and scientific expertise have strongly recommended the need for universal mask use in our schools.
Let’s set aside the fact that in numerous responses to concerned parents that that the district is dangerously continuing on a mask-optional course despite expert recommendations from physicians and scientists.
How is putting a large number of students and staff in a mask-optional environment (either at the pep rally or the cafeteria) when the most contagious and dangerous COVID viral variant is spreading unchecked in our community a good idea?
The time to be a responsible institution in our community is now. As of this morning there are only 3 ICU beds left in Denton County and only 83 hospital beds left. For a county of over 887,000 people. Oxygen supplies for DFW area hospitals is dwindling rapidly as we deal with the surge of unvaccinated COVID patients. Pediatric and adult hospitalizations are increasing an rates we have never seen prior in this pandemic.
This is no longer about choices or the assumptions of risk. We are dealing with unprecedented public health emergency. The continued disregard for the science and medicine of this pandemic escapes all logic and reason in my years of experience as a physician.
The likelihood of presiding over an adverse event in a student or teacher when they get infected with the Delta variant continues unabated. What do you plan to tell their families when you have received numerous warnings particularly from physicians like myself?
What do you plan to say to their families when common sense measures have been clearly outlined ahead of time by multiple medical and scientific governing bodies?
May the light of humility and deference to the wisdom and expertise of those in the medical community come to you before that day.
Joseph P. Santiago MD
Father of two LISD students, one of whom is too young to be vaccinated
I sent that email at before lunch today and as of 8:00 pm tonight I have gotten two automated responses.
One came from school board member Allison Lassahn and the message body was completely blank:
The other reply was also automated and came from the school board president, Tracy Scott Miller:
“The current procedures in place in LISD are Administrative decisions and not Governance items for the Board.”
So who is in charge at Lewisville ISD in the midst of this Delta variant surge? Is it the school board or is it the superintendent? From what reply I have received, it sounds like the district leadership is being thrown under the bus by the school board.
When school started on August 11, there were 24 reported cases on the district’s COVID dashboard. A week later there were 276 cases and a week later (the week of August 23-27) there were 396. Yesterday the district began releasing daily numbers and up to noon yesterday, there were 83 new COVID cases in the district.
One of the middle schools in our district has had a unusually large number of absences this week of sixth graders- that’s right, the age group that is too young for COVID vaccination.
This is the email that went out to the families of that middle school today:
These measures amount to what I can only characterize as “hygiene theater”.
Too little, too late.
Entirely predictable.
Entirely preventable.