Thankfully, the “true American spirit” is now on display in our Carlisle Area School District!
Kudos to all our CASD students for wearing their masks during the first weeks of what we hope becomes a full academic year of face-to-face instruction for all who choose that option. Kudos also to all our CASD parents, teachers and administrators for supporting our students.
Understandably, most CASD students would prefer not to wear masks any longer; however, they should continue to do so due to the escalating deadly threat from the COVID Delta variant, coupled with inadequate COVID vaccination rates across America and the world. By wearing a mask, each CASD student demonstrates a commitment to protecting the health of everyone in our school buildings—displaying the “true American spirit” and proud tradition of collaborative shared sacrifice to pursue the common good—which in this case is public health.
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Speaking only as one of nine public servants on our elected CASD board, I continue to strongly support our CASD Health and Safety Plan, mask mandate and everything else we are doing to protect the health of all our public school children. After carefully absorbing the input of all those expressing disagreement with these measures—in addition to scientific studies and the words of countless frontline medical providers and doctors—I remain convinced that wearing masks is a vital mitigation strategy that helps protect all our public-school children, their families and our entire Carlisle area community.
My strong support for our CASD mask mandate continues despite a recent letter signed by our current elected representatives in the Pennsylvania House and Senate, which seeks to persuade school districts to repeal mask mandates, stating, in their exact words:
“In keeping with the true American spirit, parents should be the ones to decide how they address this. They should be allowed to decide what is best for their child. Those that believe masks are necessary can themselves, have their child wear a mask. And those that believe masks are unnecessary, or damaging physically or mentally, or are simply a petri dish that serve no purpose but to further the spread of germs, then they can opt to send their children to school without masks.”
Although the “true American spirit” recognizes appropriate times for individual needs and rights to take precedence, there are times when the survival and health of our community, commonwealth and country demand that we all make sacrifices. Given our deadly common enemy—the mutating COVID Delta variant—one child wearing a mask or not impacts all nearby children, their families and potentially all of us. Therefore, now is the time to make shared sacrifices and ensure that everyone in our schools wears a mask.
The “true American spirit” has a long and proud tradition of shared sacrifice to support the common good—proven at iconic places like Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, the beaches of Normandy and everywhere Americans sacrificed their lives for our safety and security. The “true American spirit” also shines through every time a volunteer loads a grocery bag at Project SHARE, teaches children at our Carlisle YWCA or YMCA, tutors an adult learner at our Employment Skills Center, or countless other such commUNITY-building examples.
In the pre-dawn hours of Dec. 20, 1989, while parachuting into combat in the jungles of Panama with over 1,000 teammates of the 82nd Airborne Division, I participated in the “true American spirit” as U.S. soldiers of nearly every race, creed, and socio-economic background worked together, sacrificing our self-interests to support the common good: the security of all Americans.
Today, our youngest American heroes demonstrate the “true American spirit” and protect all of us by wearing masks in our Carlisle schools. We should celebrate and honor their service to our community! Perhaps all of us, especially our current elected representatives in Harrisburg, should follow our children’s shining example.
In what many considered a “time of maximum peril,” a new American president simply said, “Ask what you can do for your country.” We have arrived at another such perilous and potentially transformational moment. Many of our current state and national political leaders misunderstand the “true American spirit” and its powerful potential for collaborative shared sacrifice to improve the quality of all our lives.
Thankfully, the vast majority of us do understand that potential, as well as the current need for all our public school children to wear masks. Larger questions worthy of future discussion include, “How can we better tap into the ‘true American spirit’ to govern ourselves in a way that reduces political polarization and strengthens our Carlisle-area commUNITY?” Meanwhile, “let us begin” with this question, “What can we do to help all our public school children—our newest American heroes—regain what was lost to COVID?