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To the editor:

On Feb. 2, a letter was sent from the governor’s office signed by the governor, Ms. Truitt (superintendent of public instruction), Ms. Cohen (secretary DHHS) and Mr. Davis (chair of state board of education).

At a time when clarity and transparency is so critical, this letter is a deceptive, political distortion of the facts regarding the ability of schools to open classrooms to their students. At a time when the school administration and staffs have worked diligently to ensure adequate and quality education to the children, this letter falsely puts the onus on the schools to “make sure our children will have the opportunity to be back in classrooms.” It further asserts “…it is too important to wait when we can act safely now.”

Any parent reading this letter would legitimately be upset that our children are not in classrooms now as this current situation has put a terrible burden on families as well as the schools.

The deception of this letter is the fact that putting children back into the classroom is subject to schools meeting the requirements of the DHHS “toolkit” referred to in the letter. This tool kit requires six feet between students to meet the social distance requirement. There are no middle schools or high schools where students can maintain a distance of six feet between them.

The fact this is not made clearly known to parents puts the responsibility of keeping children out of the classrooms in middle schools and high schools on the local schools rather than it being due to the required DHHS instructions.

This is not a time for such political deception and those who signed this letter are not representing the best interests of the children, families and school personnel mislead by this lack of clarity.

David Carroll,

Mocksville

Carroll is a member of the Davie Board of Education