Help Reopen Carlsbad Schools! Get Kids on Campus!
Schools are Safe! If you value in-person education, please help us make an impact as the first community in San Diego County to legally challenge our school district's unlawful school closures. Whether you can give $20 or $200, any amount will help us return our students to the classroom and begin to remedy the suffering and injustice forced upon our students who have been stuck at home for the past 9 months. We want to set a legal precedent that will force all other school districts throughout California to offer in-person instruction to their students - as required by California law.
The Carlsbad Unified School District took millions in taxpayer money for reopening schools but has still failed to do so. The majority of students asked to return to campus, but our reopening date has been canceled 3 times for arbitrary reasons that have nothing to do with our virus rate (the lowest in San Diego County) or the actual safety of our campuses. Instead, CUSD is being controlled by the state and local teachers union (one of their employees sits on our Board!) which has now directly threatened to keep CUSD schools closed through the Spring. Even many of our own teachers want to return while their union refuses!
Carlsbad is a close knit community with world class schools that are quickly being tarnished, and we are tired of watching our students languish at home in distance learning while their grades and emotional and mental health continues to decline. We have held protests and rallies, collected petitions, written thousands of times to our Board and Superintendent, spoken at school board meetings with tears of desperation after witnessing suicide attempts, made public records requests for the failing grades they were trying to hide, and been featured on the news. Despite countless medical experts telling CUSD it's safe to reopen schools, and despite the data from thousands of other school districts which have proven it to be safe, CUSD continues to ignore the harm from school closures and refuses to reopen.
CUSD is required by California law to "offer in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible" and was permitted by local health authorities to open all schools to all grades in September. Instead, CUSD has in effect done the exact opposite by offering in-person instruction to the least extent possible, keeping middle and high schools students out of the classroom while only offering elementary students a few hours of in-person instruction for 2 days per week.
Families for Opening Carlsbad Schools, a group of hundreds of Carlsbad parents, has therefore decided to take legal action against CUSD to force the District to comply with state law and offer in-person instruction to the greatest extent possible - i.e. full-time in-person instruction for 5-days a week for all grades.
We are asking for donations to fund the legal challenge and our efforts to ensure that schools remain open once the District complies with the law, including the registration of substitute teachers, purchase of safety equipment, and efforts to educate teachers, staff and students on compliance with the safety protocols to keep the schools safe and open.
Our first goal is $20,000, which will allow us to mount the legal challenge to force our schools to fully reopen and register substitute teachers so we can stay open. Any contribution is appreciated, but we are asking for a minimum donation of $100 for our initial campaign. We will be applying for non-profit 501(c)(3) status, which if approved, will allow the donations to be considered a charitable tax deduction.
On behalf of the 6 million students in California who are suffering from school closures and need to be back in school, please support our efforts to return them to school and get them out of remote learning!
Thank you!
