Sample Letters
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1. Advice on parents’ obligations to send children to school and to explain what could happen if they choose to keep them home for COVID-19 safety reasons. Includes suggestions as to parents’ options should they decide to defy the Government’s direction to send their child to school.
2. The following is general advice as to the operation of the law and not necessarily applicable to any particular family or child’s situation.
3. Refers to the laws of NSW, but it is likely that other States and Territories will have similar laws and people living outside NSW should seek suitable advice or make their own enquiries.
ADVICE RE KEEPING CHILDREN HOME FROM SCHOOL
CSS is also challenging the Department of Education’s right to force you to send your child to school - Learn more here
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The following is a template you might find helpful if you are a parent who does not want your child to return to the classroom in view of the present risks.
It is based on general legal advice provided to Covid Safe Schools Inc. and this letter is provided to you as a guide only and not as legal advice.
We hope it will be useful to you but please personalise the letter and seek your own legal advice to suit your particular circumstances.
Copy/paste/edit suggested text from the .PDF file for your State/Territory:
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The following is a template you might find helpful if you are a teacher who does not want to teach in the classroom in view of the present risks.
It is based on general legal advice provided to Covid Safe Schools Inc. and this letter is provided to you as a guide only and not as legal advice.
We hope it will be useful to you but please personalise the letter and seek your own legal advice to suit your particular circumstances.
Copy/paste/edit suggested text from the .PDF file for your State/Territory:
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The following is a sample you might find helpful if you want to contact MPs or politicians regarding safety concerns with the return of children to the classroom in view of the present risks:
To the Honourable …
My name is XXX and I am writing to you as a parent/teacher/concerned citizen of a NSW Public School aged child. I signed the ePetition to Parliament asking for stronger ventilation mitigations to be provided in schools that received over 8,800 signatures from concerned citizens of NSW. I am also a member of COVID SAFE SCHOOLS, an association of parents, teachers and community members advocating for protections against COVID-19 transmission in schools and other educational settings.
I am writing to you, as the MP for XXXX/Minister for XXXX, to ask that you please do more to protect our children.
Research from the UK reports that 7-8% of children who contract covid-19 are diagnosed with long covid. Their symptoms include fatigue, loss of concentration and signs of heart and lung disease. The NHS has announced here they are building 15 new paediatric hubs to help care for the estimated 340,000 people that may need support for the condition including 68,000 who will need rehab or other specialist treatment. These are alarming figures, and we should be doing everything we can to prevent this from happening to our children in Australia.
Instead, the NSW Department of Education and NSW Health have refused to mandate mask wearing for children under 12s who cannot currently be protected by vaccination. The Air-Audit conducted was a paper audit of formula projections, which have been disproven by field-testing in classrooms with Co2 monitors.
Here are the stats on NSW school closures in Term 4:
- 25 closures week one (online learning)
- 26 closures week two (online learning)
- 47 closures week three (K, Y1, Y12)
- 86 closures week four (All years)
A total of 184 school closures in four weeks.
Children aged 0-9 make up the majority of cases in NSW and the figures are climbing.
There are 6 weeks remaining of schooling this year and the risk to Primary school aged children of contracting covid-19 in the classroom during this period is high. Vaccination rates in the classroom are 1:26. There is limited mask wearing (my child is only one of three in his class who chooses to wear a mask) and natural ventilation -- opening windows -- is insufficient, without real-time Co2 monitoring.
We do not yet know the long-term effects of covid, and our future generations are at risk.
Mitigation measures are affordable, available and evidence based. They include:
* Mask mandate for all Primary and High School aged children
* Real-time Co2 monitoring in teaching spaces
* HEPA filtration to reduce airborne transmission in teaching, bathroom & communal spaces
* A centralised flexible learning program for children who cannot attend face-to-face learning
I implore you to act immediately to protect our children.
Kind regards,
This information in our sample letters is provided in the public interest. Please support our work by donating here.
Gather a list of emails for your local & federal politicians as well as education contacts.
Do you have a letter you’d like to share? Or a response from a Minister or School? Send it through to hello@covidsafeschools.org.au