Children at Washington State’s Lakewood Elementary school are being forced to eat lunch outside in close to freezing temperatures, for “safety.”
QUICK FACTS:
- Parents of students at Lakeview Elementary School in Kirkland are raising concerns over a policy that is forcing their students to eat lunch outside in the cold winter weather.
- Jody Isaacson, who has a first- and a third-grader enrolled at Lakeview, said she was not aware of the problem until her two daughters started saying they did not want to go to school anymore, which she said was “strange” for them.
- Jody Isaacson’s husband reached out to school administrators regarding the outdoor lunch policy, which was set in the spring per social distancing protocol.
- The family was told by Lakewood’s principal, Heather Frazier, that students would continue eating outdoors as long as temperatures did not drop below 38 degrees, Fahrenheit.
- Frazier went on to say via email that families would be notified the Sunday before school whether students would eat inside or outside, based on the weather forecast for that week.
- Frazier signed the email with “stay warm.”
- Parents said that teachers are being allowed to eat their own meals in their warm classrooms while children as young as 5 years old are being made to sit outside in 39-degree weather, according to mrcTV.
“Our kids are political actors in a show they don’t want to be in,” Isaacson added. “When we are putting kids in 38-degree weather because we want to put on a show and pretend we’re doing something about COVID, … it’s just completely absurd.”
JASON RANT FROM KTTH RADIO QUIPPS:
- “School forces kids to eat outside in frigid, rainy weather, days after snowstorm.”
BACKGROUND:
- An email sent on Jan. 1 by the principal Frazier states: “On Sundays during January-February, I will send a brief message indicating whether students will be eating indoors due to frigid weather in the coming week. This week students will remain eating outdoors as temperatures are expected to be above 38 degrees.”
- Lake Washington School District Spokesperson, Shannon Parthemer, said the 38-degree threshold was chosen because it’s the average temperature in Kirkland in the months of December, January, and February.
