Jennifer Alvey, a mother of 5 students in the Chandler Unified School District in Arizona blasted the district for their tone-deaf hypocrisy. The distract practically outlawed prom for all students and tighten guidelines on the already strict graduation ceremony plans. Shortly after which, they threw a huge retirement party for a retiring staffer.
As you can imagine this was a slap in the face to students and their families…
“Parents felt like the district just took a page out of the Marie Antoinette playbook there and said, ‘Let the seniors eat cake,’” Alvey told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday.
In addition to canceling prom, the district limited the attendance to graduation to just two guests, “which means most kids can’t even include their immediate family in their graduation ceremony, one of the big events of their life.”
“But we’re also OK with going ahead and having a reception with food, buses, transporting guests in [with] everyone in close quarters on those buses, to celebrate our retiring superintendent,” Alvey added.
She then noted that “we would want to celebrate our retiring superintendent, but we also as parents don’t understand the double standard, why the district has certain things that are OK for the adults in the district and then the kids’ interest in the district are getting entirely overlooked for the seniors.”
The Chandler Unified School District (CUSD) in Chandler, Arizona, is hosting a retirement party for Superintendent Dr. Camille Casteel, the Daily Wire reported, noting that “a concerned parent group” told the outlet that a reception will be held and guests are allowed to bring four additional guests. The media outlet also noted that guests will be bused into the party using shuttles.
“We want to be a team with our school district. We want to be a team with the people who we trust, who watch out for our kids’ best interest,” Alvey said on Sunday.
She then noted that “as we have gone, especially through the last year and looked at a lot of the decision making that’s come down, none of it has been with reference to what is best for the kids, for their growth, for their development, for their emotional, physical well-being.”
“It has very much been an entirely different conversation than anything you would expect from an industry that’s in charge of educating and supporting our children into adulthood,” Alvey continued.
Daily Wire reported spokesman Terry Locke said masks will be required even though the event is scheduled to take place outside. The White House announced over the weekend that it’s going to loosen the restrictions for wearing masks outdoors.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Toronto, said he supports the anticipated guidance from the CDC. He added that more research is showing that very few Covid-19 infections happen in outdoor settings.
Thus far, the school district has made no indication that it might reconsider the graduation restrictions or if they are at least considering holding prom outside. At the time of this report, prom still remains canceled.