editorial: School year opening to tough test

Fasten your seatbelts, and no, we’re not referring to the last summertime gasps of roller coaster riders at Silverwood Theme Park.

Whiplash alerts are being issued instead to students and parents in our three largest local school districts, which start classes Tuesday.

In the roller coaster’s front seat of controversy, as usual, is Coeur d’Alene School District. CDA has felt the wrath of the national movement to humiliate, intimidate and frustrate school board members, administrators and teachers because of perceived offenses ranging from brainwashing their kids with liberal ideas to forcing masks down young Americans’ freedom-loving throats.

The summer has seen public comment sessions at school board gatherings, including Thursday night's beat-up fest, that skip the request and recommendation stages and plunge straight into threats.

If we’re united as a community in anything, it’s that we all agree the start of this new school year is not where anyone wanted it to be. The pandemic did not go away, but instead is wreaking havoc at record-breaking levels here.

The 2020-21 nightmare - remote learning, mass quarantines, mask mandates and an overall drop in the quality of education, an impact that might be felt for years - is auditioning for an encore.

If you’re a parent, where do you stand? In deciding what’s best for your kids, how do you also take into consideration the well-being of others - other children, staff and faculty in our schools? The families of children who might spread the virus?

If genuine consideration prevails and parents choose masks and vaccines or opt for remote learning instead, we can all get through this school year with minimal damage done. If not, the region’s health district may have to make tough calls, the kind that will certainly rip open wounds that haven’t had time to heal.

The days of complaints about a teacher’s short skirts or the much-maligned cafeteria meatloaf are over. The new normal is to make demands and threaten lawsuits or job loss if you don’t get your way.

No, role models aren’t what they used to be.