When my family returned from Lancaster, California to the Nestucca Valley in June of 2020, the world had changed. Returning to the rural Oregon Coast after living in northern Los Angeles county through the COVID and George Floyd riot lockdowns seemed like an escape from a modern dystopian Egypt to the Promised Land. We knew Oregon’s governor had adopted most of the same restrictive COVID mandates as California’s Gavin Newsom, but we also believed our rural area would be less affected. How effective could a mask mandate be in a community of farmers and loggers? How many people in a small town would actually succumb to the Black Lives Matter mantras? Unfortunately, we underestimated the power of fear (in regard to irrational COVID beliefs) and lure of virtue signaling politics.

At the beginning of COVID, Nestucca Valley School District seemed to follow the same trajectory as most of the school districts in our nation. They closed in mid-March 2020, initiated a type of distance learning (public school at home) and developed all kinds of programs to facilitate continuing previous services, such as free lunches. Infamously, this included universal promotion and graduation despite student performance or participation. Perhaps the only positive advantage the graduating class of 2020 experienced was their “graduation” was moved to the majestically beautiful Cape Kiwanda. This was one of the few outside graduations ever permitted by Nestucca Valley School District. Whether the graduates and their families remember this graduation as a gratifying capstone to the their K-12 education is arguable, but it was undoubtedly memorable.

While there were plenty of complaints and frustrations with the initial COVID school closures at NVSD, the general sentiment was that there was both a novel virus and draconian state mandates for the administration to mitigate. In general, parents and community members accepted loss of school post Spring Break of 2020 as an unavoidable annoyance. However, as it became evident that the school was not going to open in fall of 2020, parents became increasingly frustrated. In our rural district, this was not merely based on the inconvenience of the use of schools as free daycare. This a region that still lacks internet or cellular service in large swaths and it made the comprehensive distance learning model unrealistic.

Furthermore, up until the COVID closures the school had been the focal point of the community: Community involvement and support for the school was extremely high. This loss for both young and old of the prime gathering place of the community was felt deeply. The lack of social interactions for the children of the district created a communal, generational scar. At the time, some of us knew this and rejected the premise that this virus was as an excuse for denying children their previous social norms. What remains to be shocking is that the administration of Nestucca still maintains all these losses were justified, contrary to scientific or empirical data since published and observed. Even more shocking was the willingness, especially of Superintendent Wharton, to adopt polices more draconian than those of the state of Oregon.

To illustrate this issue to those who are outside of our school district or have chosen to forget, consider these three examples:

1. Nestucca Valley School District was quite possibly the longest closed school district in the state. The largest school district in our county, Tillamook School District, re-opened in December 2020, but Nestucca opened post Spring Break 2021. That is one year of school closure.
2. Nestucca maintained some of the most invasive and authoritarian mandates in the state of Oregon, a state nationally ridiculed due to their COVID mandates. While it is true that technically most school districts in our state “required” student masking in their buildings, very few enforced them with such vehemence. According to many witnesses this included: Threatening of teacher licenses for refusing to enforce student masking, denial of employee medical exemptions from masking, outside masking for students during recess and sports activities, mask mandates for all adults on school premises (unless inside their cars), and requiring student masking outside THEIR homes to receive food drop offs from the school’s federally funded free lunch program.                           Then there was the COVID vaccine mandate. Again, Oregon was one of the worst offenders for attempting to forcibly require all adults to take the COVID vaccine. Oregon Department of Education at one point had a policy that required education employees to receive every CDC approved COVID vaccine and booster. Every single one. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/ORED/bulletins/2ee82d4 Although, a staff member could apply for an exemption it was made clear at the March 2022 NVSD board meeting that all religious exemptions for part-time employees were rejected by NVSD. In fact, volunteers (mostly parents) were not welcome in the school through mid-spring 2022. After much public outcry, volunteers were allowed back in the school and for after school activities. However, they were forced to comply with vaccination requirements or have a religious exemption personally approved by Superintendent Wharton. Volunteers (and part-time employees) were also expected to sign a strict quarantine agreement should they test positive for COVID.
3. Nestucca moved the 2021 graduation to the new grade school and limited attendance to a few guests for each senior. Instead of electing to use the gym at the high school or any outside options, NVSD chose to host the 2021 high school graduation in their new K8 Building. At the time the venue change, traditionally Nestucca High School, was not made available to the public and effectively limited potential attendees. Another last minute change, according to seniors and their family members, required graduates to submit a limited guest list (less than 10) so that a list could be compiled. As a person who had been invited to this graduation prior to this demand (and a defiant attendee) I can testify that a list was kept at the door of the venue and guests were verified before granted entry. I will leave the rebel employee unnamed who approved my entrance, but I am forever grateful to them . Their kindness allowed me and my oldest daughter to attend the graduation of a dear friend of our family whom I had had the privilege of mentoring.

The above is just a glimpse of Nestucca’s COVID abuses. Having spoken to numerous parents and community members about this issue I have concluded a whole book could be compiled concerning this time period. As a conclusion to COVID specific challenges I would like to remind the reader of one of the most ridiculous and audacious COVID mandates made personally by Superintendent Wharton: She publicly stated that families receiving food deliveries via the school bus must wear masks outside their own homes or else the bus would refuse to stop.

Here is a copy of Superintendent Wharton’s letter to the community.

I became aware of this because at the time I lived in a neighborhood with many school children. The neighborhood was on a 1-mile graveled loop that I frequently ran, walked, or biked around. When I witnessed children outside in masks only during the time that the school bus delivered food, I asked my neighbors why their children were in masks outside. They informed me of this requirement by the Superintendent. Outside play at this time of the pandemic was one of the few times children congregated in our neighborhood. It was only while the bus was delivering food, that they were not allowed to see one another’s faces. As any normal person would be, I was horrified. I found the above letter to the community on the school website and filed a complaint with the school district. Here is the complaint I filed.

The NVSD board’s ruling is below as the first email. The related emails follow, and are in backwards chronological order.

In utter disgust and frustration, I wrote my first letter to the editor to the local newspaper, the Headlight Herald. As my letters have been a major point of contention raised by the October 2023 letter read by Superintendent Wharton, this letter is included below. Alternatively, here is the link o the Headlight Herald article. https://www.tillamookheadlightherald.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/letter-nestucca-superintendent-off-base-with-mandatory-masks-order/article_880aa0be-3429-11eb-b5f7-d34c73850bf0.html

I then filed my second complaint against Superintendent Wharton with the Teacher’s Practices and Standards Commission. This complaint was initially assigned to the same investigator that handled the first complaint. This investigator had admitted to me that I had a valid concern about the school website falsification (see https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/apprehendedbychrist.com/430) but asked me if I would “just drop” the first complaint because it would not change the outcome of the passed school policies. I immediately requested that this complaint be reassigned. To their credit TSPC reassigned the complaint to another investigator. I also filed a complaint with the USDA and Oregon Child Nutrition for what seemed to me a denial of services to underprivileged children based on a political agenda and gross misconduct. Superintendent Wharton’s claim that these investigations have been financially costly to the district in nonsensical. Either she required masks to be worn for food distribution to private homes or she didn’t . The only reason it would have been costly is if the district consulted their lawyers outside of their contracted coverage, the school district refused to comply with the investigation, and/or were found liable and were forced to pay a fine. In any of those cases that fault would lie with the administration of Nestucca Valley School District.

COVID abuses aside, this time period brought with it numerous other issues. These issues will be covered in Part 2 of Wharton File #3.