I am your ally, not the opposition.

Eighteen months ago the governor told us who was essential and who wasn’t. We didn’t say no.

Then the governor told us to isolate at home, no church, no funerals, no gatherings. We didn’t say no.

Then they told us to put fabric across our face and stay six feet distant. We didn’t say no.

They told us to cancel school and send the children home. We didn’t say no.

They told us to cancel the holidays, don’t gather with family, grandma or grandpa have to die alone in a locked-down care facility. We didn’t say no.

At the start of this year they told us the only way out was an injection into the bodies of all adults. They said, “If you do that everything goes back to normal.” We didn’t say no.

Many got the shots. Nothing went back to normal.

A few weeks ago they said, no matter whether you are healthy or not, if you don’t show a vaccine card, you can’t go to restaurant or the theater. We didn’t say no.

Now they are saying if you work for or contract with the government, healthcare, or a school, you have to get the shot or you no longer have a job. We aren’t saying no.

Has any of this made a whit of difference?

Our community is being torn apart. We have to start saying no.

We all see what is coming next, a mandate that all children must take the shot if they want to attend school in person.

You have been elected to represent the parents of this community. We did not put you here to be a rubber stamp.

You must put aside personal opinions and say no to this mandate, not for me, but for the good of the community, for all the children of this community. Keep the schools open to everyone. If parents want the shot for their child they have every right to get it. If they don’t want their child injected, no entity should be allowed to use, and I quote from the Nuremburg Code, “any kind of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion” to convince them otherwise. We have to have that choice.

The Federal government is not listening. State government is not listening. We need to start right here in our own town. You have been given political power. It is time to exercise that power and say no.

If we don’t start saying no, this will never stop.

Thank You.

Ursula:  Welcome back to the Gee and Ursula Show. As we have been reporting, there have been Covid outbreaks in schools and that has led to hundreds of students across the state to quarantine. It has also forced some school closures. We saw a quote from State School Superintendent Chris Reykdal saying that all parents should be preparing for more closures this year, but he didn’t anticipate a complete shutdown of all schools. So we wanted to invite the State Superintendent to join us to talk about that a little bit more and Chris Reykdal is on the line right now. Good Morning Chris. 

Superintendent Reykdal:  Good Morning. 

Ursula:  So talk to us about that. I feel like we are paving the way to get parents prepared for the idea that we could be talking about vaccine mandates for students. Is that the direction we are going? 

Superintendent Reykdal:  What we’ve been trying to say to folks is we’re still in the middle of a pandemic and people need to be prepared for all the twists and turns we’ve already experienced. We’ve got a million plus kids back in school. It’s going really well, but it’s super hard. A lot of contact tracing, exhausted staff with teaching, and they’re going through all these public health metrics. There are some places where local health jurisdictions have said we’ve got too many cases in the classroom and maybe they’ve shut the classroom down for seven days, or ten days, or fourteen days.

Our message is we don’t expect any of that stuff, but everyone should be prepared in case there is something in your classroom that would cause your student to be out for a week or two, but so far it’s going pretty darn well.

The question of student vaccines is a very different question if that is what you are connecting. 

Ursula:  Yes, absolutely. So where are you on that front? I know the Seattle School District has raised the idea that once it has been approved for the younger ages or given emergency approval that it could be a requirement at least in that district. 

Superintendent Reykdal:  Yeah, we are going to take a statewide approach on this. It is not going to be a district-by-district decision. What I have continued to tell the governor and public health officials and I have been very public about it, is, this needs to go through the process that it would go through for any kid vaccine requirement, and we have lots of vaccines that are required of our students in this state, and we have been doing it for decades with really high compliance by parents, or they have an exemption process, and that means it is full federal approval, not just emergency. It goes through a federal panel, and our local, and when I say local, I mean our state board of health, and each of the fifty states, goes through a process. My message is, get on with it, expedite that, still go through it so it is medical professionals, and doctors, and it is public health experts ultimately recommending this, and it is not an executive order. That’s where I am at and I think they will do that and I think that will take quite a bit of time. So, I still do not anticipate a student vaccine requirement this year. I do think people should be prepared for that next year, that it will be on the list for the other vaccine requirements that our students comply with.