When back-to-school time came in the fall of 2020 and FCSD moved to a hybrid schedule, every household with school-age children had hard choices to make. Several factors weighed in on our family’s decision to keep our daughters in full time remote learning for the first semester, including: my ability to work from home every day, our children being fairly trustworthy to get their work done, and my uber-pessimistic belief that everyone would be in full time remote learning by Thanksgiving due to the world’s inability to keep spread of the virus in check.

Then the schools proved me wrong. With intense cleaning protocols, proper social distancing, mask usage, and all the extra hours spent by teachers and staff we managed to minimize the spread from our children. The data (not just here in Fairfield, but nationwide) bore out that the pre-variant virus, in an indoor environment with active mitigation, was not as contagious among kids as we all feared. That was a huge sigh of relief from most of the parents I know.

Because of that, after Christmas we decided to send our girls back to Pence and the Middle School in hybrid mode. Not long afterwards the community infection numbers dropped even more and we were back to full time school for the rest of the year. Most parents agree that in-person learning is critical for our kids’ development so I applaud all the extra hours and hard work that went into making that a reality to finish out last year.

A good school board is one that does not dig in their heels along ideological lines but instead stays open-minded enough to absorb constantly changing contradictory data to make informed flexible decisions based on what is best for the students, facility, and community at that moment. We are lucky to live in a community of intelligent, thoughtful individuals where a diversity of ideas can come together in a respectful dialog about what is best for our schools. I look forward to working together with every board member for the betterment of our schools and children.