Ask Buncombe County Board of Education to Commit to Reopen SAFELY!

North Carolina and Buncombe County are still in some very risky days of this COVID pandemic, but our school board is considering a decision to send all students back into school buildings on Monday, Feb. 15th. We all want to reopen our schools to in-person instruction as soon as we can RE-OPEN SAFELY. But right now, this is very risky decision because:

  • 14 NC educators have died from COVID across this state. This virus is hitting home for public school employees.

  • Vaccines are coming soon, but vaccines are NOT yet available to Buncombe Co. school workers.

  • More than 13,000 people have been infected with COVID in Buncombe County. 253 have died.

  • Public health experts across the globe agree. Communities need to get their positive virus test rate below 5% before they can say they are getting a handle on the pandemic. Buncombe is not there yet.

Given the rate of viral spread in Buncombe County and the death of 14 NC educators from COVID, WE KNOW reopening schools right now is a risk. Please join educators and parents and send a quick letter to all of our school board members. We call on the Buncombe County Board of Education to reopen our public schools when we can RE-OPEN SAFELY.

What does “RE-OPEN SAFELY” mean?

  1. VACCINATE all educators & staff who want the vaccine before they are required to back into school buildings.

  2. Continue to faithfully implement and ENFORCE the 3 Ws of washing hands, waiting six feet away from others, and wearing masks.

  3. Identify and follow a safe metric for reopening of 5% local positivity rate or lower if in Plan B and 3% local positivity rate or lower if in Plan A.

  4. No worse than YELLOW designation as measured by NC state Alert System.

  5. FULL TRANSPARENCY of virus infections: Not just “active” cases and clusters but total infections, clusters AND # of confirmed person-to-person infections in each school and the week those occurred. Data should be reported in real-time and maintain a running record.

Why are these guarantees necessary to RE-OPEN SAFELY?

HARD FACTS our School Board must acknowledge:

  • 14 North Carolina educators have died from COVID.

  • 13,000 Buncombe Co. residents have been infected. 253 have died.

  • Buncombe educators under age 65 have NOT been vaccinated yet, as educators in 23 other states are being vaccinated.