To the Editor:

I refuse to be silent anymore: Our Board of Education is failing our children.

The Newtown teachers are fantastic. They consistently go the extra mile to help children succeed, but the current state of remote learning is not working. The BOE needs to step up and think creatively in order to keep our kids in school. As we’re all painfully aware, this is a new world, and the old way of doing things is nowhere near sufficient.

Has anyone considered the impact of remote learning on students in kindergarten through second grade? My kindergartner is behind, despite daily support from me, and I am not a teacher. Our poor kindergarten teachers are doing their best to manage all the challenges. Have their needs been truly been considered at all? They spend their days trying to engage five-year-olds on a computer for hours. Have you met any kindergartners? Hasn’t enough been taken from them already? Has the BOE thought about them learning to read and write through a computer? This age needs experiential, social, and interactive learning. The added demand on teachers to engage a class full of our youngest students five days a week seems to me to be an impossible task.

I write this letter for two reasons. First, as an advocate for my three children. I see them struggling at home and if I do not do what I can to make my voice heard, then I will be failing them, too, and that I will not do. Second, to let other parents know they are not alone. This is not about needing childcare; this is about the social, emotional, and educational impact extended remote learning is having on many children. So, to the other parents feeling like me, begging for the BOE to come up with a creative solution to bring our kids back to the classroom, you are not alone.

In surrounding towns, schools are allowing volunteers in the buildings to help reduce teacher/student contact and cover staffing vacancies. This could allow K-2 to remain in school while older students are hybrid or remote. Similarly, other towns in our area have rearranged their schedules so the same teacher — music, for example — sees the same children, ten days in a row. That reduces the number of people who need to quarantine in the event of a positive COVID case.

Please, Newtown BOE, think outside the box, engage the parents and the wider community, and come up with a way to keep our youngest students in school.

Kara Dogali

Monitor Hill Road, Newtown December 11, 2020