By DANIEL SMITH
Dear Anchorage School Board Members and Superintendent Bishop,
First let me thank you for the Sept. 15, 2021 recognition of your internal data that demonstrates very few positive Covid-19 cases relate to close contacts and the change in your protocol that would have previously quarantined close contacts. I’m glad to see ASD using good data and moving in the right direction, finally.
I am also in receipt of your Oct. 1, 2021 letter to all ASD families. In that letter you state “As we begin to wrap up the first quarter of the school year, our COVID mitigation protocols have proven to be effective.”
This is an unscientific declaration. You have no control group with which to compare your experiment, an experiment on our children.
In that same letter, you asked for parental support “to partner in bolstering our students’ growth and development behaviorally, emotionally, and of course, academically.”
These are typically parental responsibilities I agree. I propose that these responsibilities would be made easier if our children were allowed a normal educational experience without the false promise of a non-protective mask that does not stop aerosols and virus sized particles.
You are requiring children to suffer hour after hour, day after day in an oppressive and unhealthy mask that is nothing more than a virtue signaling device in relation to the virus.
Your letter states, “We see struggles manifesting in elementary schools with student outbursts, including tears and tantrums. In our middle and high schools, students are acting out at times with harsh language and disrespect to adults and each other. Staff also report more physical altercations among students. Please remind your students that violence in our schools will not be tolerated.” Well you might want to ask yourself what’s different about this year. Maybe breathingone’s own recirculated air for 8 hours a day in an oxygen deprived environment might be a contributing factor?
I read in your letter the following, “This pandemic has in many ways brought division to our nation, state, and municipality. ASD is a microcosm of our community; if prejudice and discrimination exist in our community, it most likely will rear its ugly head in our schools.”
While I believe this is more of a set up for the introduction of Critical Race Theory in our schools, I must correct your erroneous statement: It is not the pandemic that has divided anything. It is our response to the pandemic that has caused the division of our community. If you take walk through any store today you will see about a 50/50 split of people who choose to wear masks and those who do not. Everyone is content, no one is acting out and people are freely and calmly going about their business. Masks are optional right now, outside of school.
I don’t know how much longer this mandatory mask farce will be tolerated. What I do know is that you are telling 43,555 enrolled ASD students that they are disease-carrying incubators and that they should be afraid of all other people as they are dangerous and this could lead to their untimely demise by associating with others.
Reference the following National Covid Survival Rate from the CDC for the period Jan. 1, 2020 through Sept. 11, 2021.
Children do very well against this virus. They have strong healthy immune systems. I understand there have been no COVID deaths in Alaska for age group 0-19 years.
As a reminder, you the ASD school board and Superintendent are doing this to our children. Nobody else. This is all on you. You have been elected or hired to make good rational decisions that benefit the students enrolled here. I question your authority to make personal medical decisions for students and staff. You are not doctors. Your reliance on CDC guidance should be reconsidered.
We need you to use common sense and logic along with your ability to observe what is actually happening in our schools and going on around you. The kids will only be hurt with chronic mandated masking. It is not healthy to wear a mask for 8 hours a day.
I refer you to Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Anne Zink’s position on mask problems when she summarized the ill effects of breathing through a warm moist mask for hours on end day after day, the bacteria they collect and that the wearer rebreathes.
Mandates transfer responsibility to you as they are your creation and you are responsible for any damage they bring.
The current situation is not tolerable. If this is such a deadly virus and masks worked, then why are celebrities and politicians immune from the same requirements you are imposing on our kids in Anchorage? I didn’t watch the Emmy awards or attend Barack Obama’s birthday party, but I saw pictures after the fact and there was not a mask to be found, except on the servants. This is a farce. You know it. I know it. We all know it. This is not a health mandate. It is political and medical tyranny for the purpose of power and control.
Children need to see each other children’s faces and their teacher’s faces in order to develop speech, expression and emotional connections. Teachers and students need to hear each other to communicate and learn. Masks inhibit communication. Wearing a mask day after day is very unhealthy both mentally and physically. We are at risk of raising a generation of kids who think this is normal. The mask policy is definitely not normal and very likely damaging to kids as well as adults. These masks are not meant to be worn all day, every day.
Following is from a 2020 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology.
Long term mask wearing is attributed to slowing thinking and loss of concentration.
Healthy adults are able to safely raise their pulse and breathing for short periods to levels much higher than the increases seen with masks. Indeed, temporary pulse, breathing, and blood CO2 increases are healthy and beneficial effects of physical exercise.
The argument that masks are therefore safe for healthy adults, however, ignores health problems associated with long-term, chronic mask use. According to data reviewed by the German scientists, “[e]ven slightly but persistently increased heart rates encourage oxidative stress” and arteriosclerosis.
Even “slightly increased breathing rates over long periods,” the German scientists note, may cause “high blood pressure, cardiac dysfunction and damage to blood vessels supplying the brain.” Over extended periods of time, “small increases in carbon dioxide in the inhaled air” have been linked with asthma, high blood pressure, and neurological problems.
Other harmful effects of mask wearing show up much quicker. In 2020, Chinese scientists reported experimental results with human test subjects using multiple common mask types, including surgical masks and N95s. They
found significant impaired thinking or concentration after only 100 minutes of mask use, correlating significantly with reduced blood oxygen levels in the test subjects.
The 2020 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology reported that 24 percent of 343 surveyed medical staff, who wore a mix of surgical and N95 masks while working their shifts, began to experience impaired cognition from one to four hours after starting their shifts. Readers of all professions who have been forced to mask up at work during the pandemic might sympathize with the article’s conclusion: “Wearing masks for a prolonged amount of time causes a host of physiologic and psychologic burdens and can decrease work efficiency.”
Please retract the mask mandate, resist the pressure to issue future such mandates and be the good example of wise and thoughtful leaders that we need you to be right now.
Masks are unnecessary and unhealthy. We need to immediately move to a voluntary mask policy.
Dan Smith is a lifelong Alaskan and Anchorage resident. The Anchorage School Board meets on Tuesday, Oct. 5 at 6 pm. ASD staff and members of the public are required to wear a face covering while inside the ASD Education Center (5530 E. Northern Lights Blvd 99504). More information on how to attend, testify, or watch online is at this link.
This my friends is the TRUTH!!! Please pass this letter around! Thank you to the person who truly cares for our wellbeing. I applaud you!
Excellent letter. Will the school board listen? No, The School Board, Superintendent and the Assembly have their own agenda. I would encourage parents to seek alternative education for their students.
The district will continue to place their students at health risks, some they don’t even know yet.
When you say “the Board” please do not include me. I am on the record opposing the ASD mask mandate and have made multiple proposals to instead make mask use voluntary and a parental decision. I have even been unfairly attacked in the newspaper by former progressive Board Members for my positions. Both of which by the way voted against my proposed policy requiring the National Anthem be played at least once a month in schools and for the current teacher contract which increased class sizes.
Dave Donley speaking only for myself and not the ASD or Anchorage School Board
The School Board are Woke Fools.
Good letter. The writer thinks it might change minds. What everyone has to understand is that not only do these people know they are dividing the community, they are enjoying it. Let me say that again: they enjoy seeing you and your kids suffer. Yes they do. Because in Their minds they are aggravating only the ‘deplorable’ people. Political speech is important. The Leftist believes that they are morally and intellectually superior to those they are upsetting. They will not change their minds. They abandoned reason long ago. Don’t believe me? Check out the US attorney general today. Merrick Garland says all dissenters at school board meetings are potential domestic terrorists. The writer of this letter no doubt some kind of target. So not only does your school board not care about your opinion they would gladly throw you in jail for raising for voice to them. This is where we are people. Four options: Hope the people who hate you take their foot off your neck, have overwhelming presence at every school board meeting which is exhausting for the working person, replace the board or move your family to conservative sanctuary in genuine conservative area.
Response from the Anchorage School Board:
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“HERETIC! Repent or die!”
Not to mention no one wears masks correctly. They are an irritation causing constant touching and adjusting of the covid sponge on your face. People then touch everything around them with contaminated hands which other mask wearers touch. Their now contaminated hands adjust their covid sponge and place germs in their direct path of inhalation. I watched 2 ladies at the store adjust their mask and pick up the same onion within seconds of each other. Combine this with a shot that causes the virus to mutate and hides symptoms and you have a self perpetuating threat to hold over people’s heads for a long time.
Thankfully my town, my community and my church never followed any of this foolishness (and we are all fine).
Don’t ask. Demand.
Learn from history. Civil disobedience time. No violence, but shit down the school system until they cave.
Yes you’ll be blamed for everything from hating kids to polio, but that’s gonna happen anyway.
Your elected officials don’t give a damn about you or your kids. Make them.
Hey Daniel, let the choices based off current medical information be up to those who went to college 9+ studying specifically that. Your lack of education in many of the statements thoughout this article is quite apparent to those with any actual medical knowledge.
There’s a reason they don’t have people come off the street and treat folks in a hospital.
Yet you provide no data yourself – just you and your high horse right?
Doctors who are propagandized by the political and medical establishment’s fearmongering campaign, and beholden to the political and medical establishment, you mean, right Steve?
Steve, if you could lift your head from MSNBC and CNN, you would know that there are literally tens of THOUSANDS of medical professionals who have bravely spoken out against the lies and insanity of the malicious Covidian fear campaign.
“… tens of thousands of medical professionals WHO HAVE SPOKEN OUT …”
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Obviously, with all the censorship, bullying, recrimination, employment terminations, and many other forms of retribution that those who challenge the official narratives on COVID are suffering, there are surely VASTLY more medical professionals who DO challenge, refute and recognize the lies in the official narratives, but who are pressured to remain silent.
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And yes, that “tens of thousands” number was not meant to be an accurate counting — there are likely MILLIONS of health professionals who do not believe the official propaganda and narratives on COVID-19. I have spoken to two such people myself, and I have no great contact nor associations with medical professionals in general.
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In short, Steve, you are trying to insinuate that there is a broad consensus within the medical community in regards to the official narratives on this pandemic, but even a cursory research on the subject will demonstrate that you are wrong.
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Why are you such a dishonest and disingenuous person? Who pays you to troll this site as you do?
Very well said! Extremely spot on with the logic and health implications for our children. Additionally, cancer thrives in an un-oxygenated environment. Every person with a child
in the ASD should stand up to the mask mandate. If you do not take a stand now, it will only
get worse.
Be ready to have Garland sic the federal bureau of intimidation on you Dan.
You’re obviously an insurrectionist. -sarc-
Well reasoned, objective, straightforward letter.
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It’s rather unlikely compulsory masking’ll go away because Somebody Important read your reasoned, objective, straightforward letter and said, oh shucks, he’s right, no more masks.
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Why? Compulsory masking seems like the latest, best attempt to draw parents’ attention away from the overpriced, underperforming debacle that is Anchorage’s education industry, while indoctrinating children further into the meme that obedience to government supercedes obedience to parents.
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Perhaps more to the point, an August 2021 AP news article reports: “(Oklahoma Governor) Stitt’s criticism of Biden comes after U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in letters to him and state school Superintendent Joy Hofmeister Wednesday that the school mask ban may violate the American Rescue Plan that provided $123 billion to the nation’s schools to help them return to the classroom.”
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(apnews.com/article/joe-biden-health-coronavirus-pandemic-oklahoma-f09ff3cf8e0920510b5e63537d774a9e)
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In other words, compulsory masking isn’t about education and health, it’s about money and control.
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Education industry officials can do this because Anchorage’s easily corruptible mail-in ballot scheme, and the Department of Justice, insulate them from accountability to you or anyone else.
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Department of Justice? Look at “Parents respond to DOJ, school boards’ statements: ‘I am what a domestic terrorist looks like?’ DOJ issued memo after NSBA suggested school boards might be facing domestic terrorism.” NSBA = National School Boards Association.
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(foxnews.com/politics/parents-respond-doj-nsba-domestic-terrorist)
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So, Daniel, you’re out-gunned, out-lawyered, out-moneyed, and they know you’re coming. What could possibly go wrong? Ask Marilyn and Paul Hueper in Homer what could go wrong, they weren’t even there.
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Winning this us-versus-them donnybrook may look like taking children out of Anchorage’s education industry, putting them in charter schools which emphasize classical education, and making damned sure Eaglexit happens soon and Eaglexiters take –no– part of the rampant virus that is Anchorage’s education industry with them.
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Left with few, if any customers the industry might well collapse, eating its own as it sinks.
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Resourceful, motivated parents might even figure out how speed up the industry’s collapse, then hire a team from some city or country where educational excellence is recognized to rebuild Anchorage’s school system from the ground up -without- those who wrecked it in the first place.
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Could happen, lotta steps between here and there. But you’d think a town which came back after the ’64 quake could fix the wreckage caused by its education industry, yes?
Mask or unmask, I don’t much care however, your supporting data is flawed. It doesn’t matter that every child might survive. A strategist would assume that these kids would be the mobile petri dish that brought whatever bioswill they encountered home to GrammaGram… or that handful of moms that are sporting major league fupas and a Marlboro habit, and are otherwise immunocompromised.
To demonstrate their control, to dehumanize and atomize them, and to instill blind compliance to authority, no matter how ridiculous or nonsensical the dictate. THAT is the real reason for forcing masks on children.
Actually there was a death from the Pfizer shot just today of a previously healthy 16 year old.
AK did not claim that that death occurred in Anchorage, Steve.
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Again, I will ask you: why are you such a dishonest and disingenuous person?
Looks like there is a second Steve-O
I went through and deleted the other one to avoid confusion. Thanks for pointing it out. -sd
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