Student petition circulates to halt in-person learning at Cheyenne Mountain High School
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Students at Cheyenne Mountain High School started a petition to ask School District 12 for more transparency and remote-learning options amid the pandemic.
The change.org petition now has more than 200 signatures, along with comments from several signers, who appear to be students, alleging that they don't feel safe with the school's current precautions.
When KRDO spoke to three students from Cheyenne Mountain High School, they told us that they really want more data from their district. Right now, District 12's COVID-19 dashboard only shows the total cases and contract-tracing investigations since the start of the school year. Students want to know how many active cases they have at any given time -- something that several other local school districts provide, like District 11 and District 2.
KRDO reached out to District 12 Superintendent Walt Cooper, who told us that the number of active cases across the district changes daily. He said their district does not have the resources to update their dashboard with that information.
The students also talked about the inequity that comes with partial in-person learning. They mentioned that when they have to quarantine or isolate, learning options diminish. While they believe teachers are doing the best that they can, splitting students up and having some in-person, and others remote is making learning at home especially difficult.
Superintendent Cooper echoed concerns about half in-person and half online learning. During District 12's Board of Education meeting Monday night, they will discuss bringing all students back into the classroom in March.
That's not the solution the students were hoping for -- the petition asked for a few weeks of fully remote school to allow current cases to resolve.
According to Superintendent Cooper, Cheyenne Mountain High School has 8 active cases. He said that out of the hundreds of contact tracing investigations, almost none of the positive cases in the district came from in-school transmission. Superintendent Cooper stands by the district's safety precautions, saying that the data doesn't lie and their numbers are moving in the right direction.
The students ultimately acknowledged that they know there is no one easy solution for the district moving forward, they're just asking for more transparency.
For more information on the current petition, click here.
