Three months have passed in my efforts to make a change locally. As I mentioned in a previous article, I was concerned with Washington State mandating Covid-19 shots for any child attending public school. California had mandated this policy so Washington couldn’t be far behind. I brought these concerns to the Port Townsend School Board through public comment at their meetings and through email.
Have I made any progress? It’s hard to tell. The school board members are not required to answer questions during public comment periods.
At the first meeting I attended in October, I listed all the government actions taken against us during Covid that we had not said no to. I told the school board we needed to start saying no, and we needed to start with any Covid-19 shot being required for children to attend public schools.
At a second meeting in November, I mentioned an October 25th NBC News poll revealing that, of all parents with children under the age of twelve, only 27% will have their children get the shot as soon as it is available. I then asked the school board what they planned to do if 70% of Port Townsend families remove their children from the school system in the fall of 2022?
I was unable to attend in person in December, but sent an email to the school board listing the twenty-five states that have made masks optional in their schools without sacrificing the health of the students. Why isn’t Washington State on that list? I also let them know that in the Washington State Prison System, the Covid shot is not required for incarcerated individuals. I finally asked them to read the following short statement from Dr. Robert Malone MD., MS., Before You Inject Your Child:
Before you inject your child – a decision that is irreversible – I wanted to let you know the scientific facts about this genetic vaccine, which is based on the mRNA vaccine technology I created.
There are three main issues parents need to understand before they take this irrevocable decision:
The first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children’s cells. This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including
Their brain and nervous system
Their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots
Their reproductive system, and
This vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system
The most alarming point about this is that once these damages have occurred, they are irreparable.
You can’t fix the lesions within their brain
You can’t repair heart tissue scarring
You can’t repair a genetically reset immune system, and
This vaccine can cause reproductive damage that could affect future generations of your family
The second thing you need to know about is the fact that this novel technology has not been adequately tested.
We need at least 5 years of testing/research before we can really understand the risks
Harms and risks from new medicines often become revealed many years later
Ask yourself if you want your own child to be part of the most radical medical experiment in human history.
One final point: the reason they’re giving you to vaccinate your child is a lie.
Your children represent no danger to their parents or grandparents
It’s actually the opposite. Their immunity, after getting COVID, is critical to save your family if not the world from this disease
In summary: there is no benefit for your children or your family to be vaccinating your children against the small risks of the virus, given the known health risks of the vaccine that as a parent, you and your children may have to live with for the rest of their lives.
Dr. Robert Malone is not the lone voice on this issue. The Global Covid Summit, convened by the International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists has issued a declaration signed by 16,000 physicians and scientists stating in no uncertain terms that “Healthy Children Shall Not Be Subject To Forced Vaccinations.”
At the January 6th meeting I told the school board if there was a Covid shot requirement next year, I would be forced to pull my child out of the school system and I would be encouraging everyone one else I know to do the same. Parents should not be forced to choose between their child’s health or public school.
I told them that I came to these meetings knowing that what I ask is impossible because there is too much money involved, but I am still here asking because we are talking about our future, our children.
Since then I have learned that under just two programs, Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, (ESSER), and Governors Emergency Education Relief, (GEER), Washington State will eventually receive $2,604,821,223—that’s 2.6 billion with a B—dollars in taxpayer funds from the Federal Government.
The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction is allowed to skim 10% off the top for three things: learning recovery, reserve, and administration of the program. Port Townsend High School alone will eventually receive over $5.2 million in taxpayer dollars to operate during government declared emergency conditions.
As you can imagine there are strings attached, and just in case you didn’t notice, the disbursement of the funds is scheduled to run through the year 2024. If schools do not follow the many Covid-related proclamations of the federal government and our governor, the funds will simply be withheld from their monthly apportionments (bureaucratic term for the money needed for school operations), until they do cooperate.
The legal authority for this comes from reporting requirements in the applications filled out by school districts in order to apply for the funds, and anewsection of Washington Administrative code conveniently added over the holidays without public notice or consent.
Checklist required for schools to receive U.S. Department of Education funds (see page 7)
No one has summed up what looks a lot like strong-arm tactics deployed by the Governor and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OPSI) better than Informed Choice Washington, an organization of parents, families, medical professionals, and educators who are trying to shine some light on this subject. Here is what they have to say:
“This new OSPI rule is intended to undermine the school boards and districts that read the full body of science on the DOH’s approach to COVID-19, listened to the concerns of parents, teachers, and staff, and decided to operate their schools in a manner that provided the overall best environment for everyone. The new rule is intended to silence dissenting actions and dissenting opinions. Health is not the motivation for OSPI— securing and retaining all of the federal money flooding to schools is the motivation. That federal money is tied with COVID-19 masking, testing, tracking, isolating, and vaccinating strings.”
Indeed, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal, has stated that he is all in on the jab mandate and that this will be a state level decision, not a district-by-district choice. Knowing all of this it is hard not to believe that school boards have been intentionally removed from the decision-making process by the state bureaucracy. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be asking our school board members to refuse this money rather than risk the health of even just one child in our community.
Back at the January 6th meeting I also told the school board I could try and reason with them that the shot clearly doesn’t stop the spread of Covid. Why would three shots be required in less than a year if this was effective?
I could give them the data showing that children suffer far more from the side effects of the shot than from the symptoms of the disease.
I could urge them to look up the list of young athletes that have been injured or died from heart attacks shortly after taking the shot.
Instead, I wanted to appeal to them as a parent who just knows that this is wrong and has to stop. I pointed out that if there was the slightest doubt in their minds that this specific shot might not be safe and effective, then they had the moral obligation to protect the children of this community and carry this message up the chain of command to State Superintendent Reykdal and say no. I have heard nothing from any of the board members. One of them waved to me from a coffee shop window as I walked by.
On Wednesday, January 12th the Washington State Board of Health held a public meeting where they began the first deliberations in the process of adding Covid shot mandates to the list of vaccines required for attending public schools in Washington State. Seventy-five hundred (7,500) individuals signed up to make a public comment before the list was closed. Due to time and technical difficulties, only a small fraction were able to speak. No one I heard supported the mandate. There are so many more of us than there are of them. Start saying no.
Speak up by contacting the Washington State Board of Health at wsboh@sboh.wa.gov to let them know how you feel. The next Port Townsend School Board meeting is Thursday, January 20th at 5:30 p.m. School board members can be reached at sboard@ptschools.org.
On Thursday, October 7th, I attended the Port Townsend High School board meeting. Earlier in the week the Governor of California proclaimed that his state will require children to get the Covid-19 shot to attend school in person. I believe a similar mandate for Washington state cannot far behind.
The following are my comments from the two minutes of allotted time:
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.
Additional materials provided to each board member —
October 4th letter from the Attorney General of the Unites States to the Director of the FBI requesting coordination with local law enforcement to intimidate parents who disagree with the local school board.
Obituary for Jessica Berg Wilson a healthy and vibrant 37 year-old mother of two from Seattle. Did not want the vaccine, broke with principle because it was more important to be in the classroom with her daughter. She died on September 7th from a well-known side effect of the J&J shot.
The Nuremburg Codes with special attention to number one, “The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.”
We can all agree that a divide has been created by the Covid-19 panic. We can most likely all agree that we have little control over what happens nationally, or at the state level. Those of us who feel compelled to bring this community back from the brink should focus our efforts right here where we live.
I have started with the school board. Beyond my concern with the schools being segregated again, the main reason for my comments is in regard to the mandates. Mandates are not laws. They are the dictates of one man. Through his self-proclaimed emergency powers, Jay Inslee has subverted the political process while Washington State’s legislative branch of government has literally and figuratively looked the other way.
When the federal government actively opposes our rights, and when state government does the same, no matter what our political beliefs, we need to urge our local elected officials to stand against these mandates, if not for anything but to preserve our choice over what happens in this community.
For example, right now our elected officials in the county, city, port, PUD and school board are in the midst of a process that will likely mean they can no longer independently choose who to hire or who to contract with. Mandates from the governor will require all employees and contractors to have the Covid-19 shot. In this way, our local representatives have been, and will probably continue to, willfully give away the political power we have entrusted them with to manage what happens in our county. They should stop.
I will be following up, in a kind and respectful manner, with the Port Townsend school board members until they understand the real impacts to the community of the choices they are making. All of us need to act together, in a kind and respectful manner, to help our local elected officials find the courage to tell the state to back off until the mandates cease. If we don’t start saying no, this will never stop.
Addendum
As an update to the preceding report involving my comments to the Port Townsend School board on October 7th, I came across this interview with the Washington State Schools Superintendent Chris Reykdal from the October 14th broadcast of the Gee and Ursula Show on Kiro Radio. I think it speaks for itself.
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.
So now we know, and can plan accordingly. I am curious why our state officials have decided to follow the law for this portion of Washington state’s Covid-19 emergency response. It makes me wonder why the same caution hasn’t been used for adult vaccines. Regardless, I will believe what I am told by our state officials when I see it.
[This piece was submitted to the Leader and rejected by them. Writer Brett Nunn explains, “I first offered it to the Leader hoping to reach a certain audience and start a civil conversation. The editor wrote back “it’s not experimental and it’s FDA approved.”]
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Yes, I gathered with a crowd of my fellow Jefferson County citizens at the traffic light in front of Safeway on Sims Way in Port Townsend on Saturday, August 20th. We were a mix of health care providers at risk of losing their licenses, grass roots activists, and just regular people. We were there to oppose the governor’s vaccine mandates for health care workers and teachers; something all of us agreed was an egregious overreach of his powers.
We had plenty of people giving us the thumbs up, and plenty of people flipping us the bird, or yelling obscenities out their car windows.
I have mentioned before that when I moved to this town a couple decades ago to raise a family it was a tolerant place filled with interesting, creative and intelligent people from all backgrounds with many varied beliefs. Somehow it all worked. We didn’t always get along, but I would like to think we respected each enough to practice a live-and-let-live philosophy that really made life here dynamic, invigorating and relaxed.
Not so much anymore.
So in the spirit of the peaceful past I extend an olive branch along with a request for my fellow citizens, whom I know to be kind, well educated, and supposedly tolerant, yet drive by in their Tesla’s and Prius’s flashing rude hand signs while saying, “&*$% you, you’re an idiot.”
I need more.
You say I am an idiot. It’s hard for me not to feel the same towards you.
Where does that leave us?
Give me more.
Am I an idiot because I want health care workers in Jefferson County to have the freedom to choose what medical treatments they want, rather than have Governor Inslee order them to take a shot or lose their license?
Am I an idiot for taking an afternoon away from my family to stand on a corner with a sign because I want you and your children to have the same freedom to choose or refuse whatever medical treatment might be required by government in the future?
Or am I an idiot because denigrating someone who has a belief different than yours is far easier than striving to understand?
I understand the fear of the last year and a half.
I understand the peer pressure.
I understand it is just easier to “go along to get along” because we were told if we got the shot everything would go back to normal.
I understand all this.
What I don’t understand is why I should “&%$@ off” when our politicians and media are pushing experimental medical treatments for the whole population that we all should know by now were not approved by the FDA, the makers of which have no liability for short term side effects that are real (seizures, heart damage, paralysis) or long term side effects (which remain mostly unknown), that doesn’t keep you from being re-infected or passing it on to others, for which it seems a third booster is needed after only six months, all for a disease that has a 99%+ survival rate for the majority of the population?
That is what I know.
Please tell me what you know, that makes what I know, something I should “%$#@ off” about?
In the mean time I urge everyone to de-escalate. Wherever you are, strive to be an island of calm, no matter what the media is saying.
If the last eighteen months has taught us anything, we can’t rely on government, either state or federal, to be of much help here in Jefferson County. Each of us, as individuals, have to do our part to knit this community back together, keep it strong, sustainable, and self reliant into the future. We can’t do this while we yell “idiot” at each other.
Now tell me what you know.
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For years I have been making the Port Townsend to Coupeville ferry crossing often on a weekly basis. I call it the last great adventure on the west coast available to all. Wind, fog and tides often conspire to make the trip unpredictable.
Yes, it can be an adventure, but it has always been easy, even with the Wuhan virus, until two weeks ago when, on the Coupeville side, I pulled up in my vehicle and found an unfamiliar state employee in the ticket booth. He refused to scan my pre-paid card because I didn’t have a piece of fabric covering my mouth and nose.
I’m not asking for sympathy and I don’t feel the need to explain myself to anyone anymore. I do feel the need to shine a light on how we are being conditioned to give up our freedoms through dictates from state and federal government that are not laws, have not been debated by our political representatives, aren’t supported by scientific research even though the wording in the orders says they are, and often are based, if you bother to look, on nothing more than proclamations made on high by whomever the appointed “expert advisor” of the moment may be.
So what changed on the Port Townsend to Coupeville Ferry route other than the familiar friendly faces in the ticket booth?
You might remember a few months back, with the installation of the new occupant in the Oval Office, a flurry of executive orders. One of these was titled, Executive Order on Protecting the Federal Workforce and Requiring Mask-Wearing. It is a ponderous document ideal for curing insomnia and was pretty much forgotten by most of us as soon as it was signed on January 20. Unnoticed by many, under the authority established with the ruling, Washington State Ferries and the corresponding terminals were identified as part of the federal transportation system.
I read the order and noted that it requires all persons in Federal buildings or on Federal lands to wear masks, maintain physical distance, and other public health measures. Think about that for a moment, all Federal buildings, all Federal lands.
Besides the vast areas that this dictate covers, I will remind you that at the start of this national panic it was wear a mask if you can’t physically distance. Now the executive branch orders us to wear a mask and physically distance. Oh, and one other thing. There is no sunset clause. No end date. So unless someone else is installed as president in the next four to eight years and bothers to rescind this order, we can be required to wear masks forever anywhere the Federal Government and it’s petty tyrants have any influence.
This is only one example of how mass media marketing of China virus fear has been wildly successful in eliminating our freedoms. Think of all we have given up, most of us willingly; family, friends, health, fitness, education, income, jobs, travel, FDA approval of vaccines, and so much more that we have yet to comprehend, for a virus that has been proven to have a 99% plus survival rate,.
You may have thought that living way out on the Olympic Peninsula would insulate us from what happens in the other Washington. I offer my experience as evidence to the contrary.
I was eventually able to board the ferry, but only after a heated back and forth. I played by the rules and stated that health reasons preclude me from wearing a mask. The booth attendant stated that didn’t matter and refused to scan my ticket a second time. I repeated my statement. The attendant threatened to call law enforcement. I shifted my car into park to await the authorities. He made the call and the person on the other end of the line suggested he might scan my ticket from six feet away. He would not extend his scanner outside the confines of his booth. Upon stretching my arm out of my window as far as possible, the scanner read the ticket. I thanked him. He sent me off with the threat that if I persisted in not wearing a mask while seated in my car at the ticket booth, I could be charged with blocking a federal highway.
The whole experience was so completely ridiculous that it should be something to laugh about. It should be, but I am not laughing.
I leave you with this quote from Peter Skurkas writing for The American Thinker.
So today it’s “you shall wear a face mask.” What will the dictate be tomorrow? Perhaps the real story here is that the elites are conditioning Americans for proper behavior under a Harris/Biden administration. That behavior can be summed up in one word. Obey.
When the Port Townsend School District reopened the doors in September 2020 my family opted out of in-classroom learning. We opted back in at the beginning of November. My youngest was happy to return to Blue Heron Middle School even if it was for only two days a week. She attended a total of five days before the school closed because of rising COVID cases in the county. Everybody went back to distance learning.
Call me a malcontent, call me cranky, or call me somebody who just wants something better for my kids. Over the last several months I have observed the process of online schooling with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I know the teachers are working as hard as they can with what they have. I would like them to see what I am seeing. Staring at a computer screen for most of the day is not good for my children. It is not helping with their social or physical development. It is not generating a desire to be lifelong learners.
I don’t have the ability to teach my children everything they need to know at this point in their education. I imagine many other parents feel the same. This will be a lost year for many students in our community.
I look for answers from administrators that are also trying really hard to find a way through this. They offer a barrage of explanations, including assurances that officials are talking with each other regularly, data is being compiled, and statistics are being analyzed. But no one can say exactly what the metrics are for the schools to reopen. Meanwhile our kids fall farther and farther behind.
I am sent lengthy policy statements and a decision tree laying out a pathway to reopening, detailing a process that, if followed to the letter, seems to be practically impossible.
Like many experiences in this year of “Just Shut Everything Down” I am left wondering what has happened to the can-do approach that used to exist in our culture.
Have we come to a point in history where our only option is to stay home and isolate because anything that might involve the slightest risk is too much of a liability for the powers that be?
I can’t fight the bureaucracy, but I can share the next best option. It is not my idea, but it is a concept that is gaining momentum nationally. I believe it deserves full consideration by our state legislature:
Families should immediately be provided with a refund—a prorated portion of the money that would have been spent by the state in which they reside and by their local school district from the beginning of March through the end of the school year.
Those dollars should be placed in a restricted-use education savings account that parents could use to pay for virtual tutors, online learning, textbooks, curriculums, diagnostic tests, and other products and services, in order to maintain education continuity for their children during this crisis.
School Districts Owe Parents A Covid-19 Refund, by Lindsey M. Burke Ph.D. writing for the Heritage Foundation.
Washington State’s Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction has a biennial budget of tens of billions of dollars. If there is a surplus because the schools have been closed for most of the year, the funds should be returned to the parents to help them cover the cost of educating their children at home.
On Friday, December 12th, as a parent in the Port Townsend School District, I received this email from Sara Rubenstein, director of communications, telling me what the future holds.
On Wednesday afternoon Governor Inslee announced updated guidance for schools that may allow Port Townsend Schools to return to our blended learning model at some point in January or February, as well as resume some other school activities. We will make these changes no sooner than January 19th and most likely at the end of the semester if our county Health Department can support these changes. We will update families in early January as we see updated information on the case numbers and positivity rates after the holidays.
Maybe January 19, more likely the end of the semester – January 29th. maybe February. Maybe.
We have paid full fare for public schools and are receiving part-time learning. Our state representatives and the Superintendent of Public Instruction need to be told that the system is not working. They have the power and the responsibility to return any surplus funds. What we can do as parents is to make it clear to our elected officials that if they aren’t willing to find a better way to educate our children in a crisis, we are more than happy to lead the way.
