​The School Board will be voting tomorrow evening on whether or not to continue to keep students out of school.

​Send an email to let local elected officials know that you want kids back in school.  Send your own message to vbcpsschoolboard@googlegroups.com and citycouncil@vbgov.com or just click on the "Safer in School" link above. 

The automatic email texts states:

Studies show that there is very minimal if any spread of the coronavirus in schools.  Virtual learning is creating more disparities in education.  Working parents have to choose if they will stay home with their kids to help with with school or go to work and pay the bills.  Keeping our schools closed is hurting students with special needs and contributing to the increase in anxiety and depression among our students.  The CDC has reported that emergency department visits for middle and high school aged students has increased 31%!  Please vote to send all option 1 students back to school immediately.  Virtual learning is not working for the majority of students and they continue to lose motivation.

Please consider clicking on the link above to send an email to all city, state and VHSL leaders in order to show support for Youth Sports and Extra Curricular Activities. The email link above will send a message to all VIRGINIA BEACH Local and State leaders as well as to the Governor and VHSL Staff Leadership.  All you have to do is click on the link above, add your name to the bottom of the message and hit send.

​Alternatively, you can send your own message or use this text to send to your local and state leaders if you live in a different city.

Message:

Governor Northam, State and Local Leaders,
​
Long term isolation has led to a mental health crisis in our communities, especially in children.  The CDC found that compared with 2019, the proportion of mental health related visits to emergency departments for children aged 5–11 and 12–17 years increased approximately 24% and 31%, respectively, during COVID isolation.  

In addition to in-person school, athletic and other extra-curricular activities such as band and other arts are imperative for the mental health well-being of children and the continued shutdowns that further isolate our children must end.  

We are calling on Town/City, State, and VHSL officials to allow youth athletics and other extra-curricular events and activities to move forward and to eliminate any unreasonable decisions to limit our youth in their sports and other in-person extra-curricular activities.  Canceling and not allowing sporting events at public facilities for student athletes is negatively impacting our youth.  Also, all VHSL sports should be able to utilize the full amount of time in each quarter, period, match, etc  For example, the new rule of reducing wrestling periods by 1 minute is arbitrary and will negatively impact the student athletes and will do nothing to reduce the spread of COVID.  Facilities that host athletic and other events that contribute to improving mental health and well-being of children must be allowed to open and to host events.  

Please help stop this mental health crisis in our children.

Thank you

NOTE:  The health metric in the reopen plan suggests a 7 day rolling average based on number of cases per 100,000 of the total population of the Eastern Region.  To break that down and make it easier to follow, also provided in the plan is what the daily case rate would need to be (not based on population, but the number of actual daily cases in the region) to meet each metric.

Find out more about how the candidates feel on issues such as Grading, Valedictorian, Students Safety and Vocational Education.  https://www.studentsfirstvb.com/issues.html