Official statement from BTU Executive Vice President Erik Berg on Curley School remote days:
“The state should not be playing politics around school schedules or gambling with the health of students and their families. The idea that the state is not going to give students credit for learning days that are remote under these circumstances strikes most parents and educators as bizarre. Instead, the state should be focusing on improving their own implementation of pool testing and ‘test and stay’ programs in order to keep students safe and to ensure the continuity of in-person learning. We all want to be teaching in-person every day, but when public health officials warn about the safety of doing so, we need the state to listen. The BTU strongly supports that all days of remote learning declared necessary by public health authorities in emergencies be counted toward the 180-day requirement. We join with BPS families in calling on DESE to reverse their misguided approach – and we have also called on both BPS and DESE to improve their management of their testing and tracing vendors to reduce the chance of further outbreaks. Amidst this kind of public health crisis, state bureaucrats should be listening to local families, and not threatening them, especially when the state itself is still cutting corners on safety measures and has failed to make the necessary robust investments in testing capacity.”