To the editor:

As primary care physicians and Barrington residents, as parents, friends, and neighbors of students, teachers and staff at Barrington Public Schools, we applaud with gratitude the Barrington School Committee’s consistent commitment to maintaining safe and healthy Barrington Public Schools according to continually evolving public health recommendations.

We thank the School Committee for being thoughtful about how to address the challenges our community and BPS have faced and for the sincere efforts to navigate a course that prioritized the safety of our children, teachers and community while providing an effective educational framework for our children to grow and develop.

Collectively, we have learned so much about COVID19 over the past two years and how to keep a community safe; you worked hard to apply these lessons even when they kept changing. Unfortunately, as physicians, we have seen first hand the dangers of acting as if this pandemic were not deadly, not destructive, and not requiring community-wide interventions; we are saddened that often these actions were due to beliefs shaped by misinformation.

Thank you for valuing science and public health expertise when you consider the health and welfare of our children and when you seek strategies for their instruction and emotional development. At times this means wearing a mask as a small price to pay for safe group interactions or continuing the long history of mandating vaccinations against infectious diseases for those involved in public education in the US; thank you for listening when the CDC, the RI Dept. of Health, and public health leaders update what we can and cannot do to stay healthy and safe.

Finally, we want to express our support for you personally, especially when you’ve been attacked and harassed. Your voluntary service is necessary for our public school system to survive. Your service is exemplary to our community.

Sincerely:

Jonathan Leviss MD

Barrington

Anita Kaul MD

Barrington

Michael Johnson MD

Barrington

Tom Bledsoe MD

Barrington