Everyone's starting point, whether you are the President of the United States, the superintendent of the district, a teacher in a classroom, or a cafeteria worker or anybody else affiliated with schools and children, is we want to be back in school and that in school learning is by far the best method of educating children. That being said, it's only the teacher and the cafeteria worker who will be risking their lives.
District after the district is coming up with a plan after plan to return to school just as the nation is inarguably in much worse shape than when the country shut down. If you live in any other region besides the North East, you have seen an uptick in cases and deaths.
Let's take Florida for example, the state closed the schools when there were less than a thousand cases. Governor DeSantis, in a rambling interview, said children were fine with returning, while not mentioning teachers once. He did this while Florida was averaging over ten thousand cases a day, including a record-shattering 15,300 in one day.
To give you some scale, it took Florida 111 days to reach 100 thousand cases of the disease, and just 13 days to reach 200 thousand, we will be at 300 thousand in less ten days after that. At the height of the pandemic in New York, they had a little over 11,000 cases, and all of South Korea, a country with 59 million densely packed together citizens, haven't had 15 thousand cases total.
Given these facts, how does rushing to open our schools make sense? The answer is it doesn't, but that doesn't stop our leaders from making plans to open schools, and the main reason they give is distance learning just did not work for some, and you know what? I agree.
I think we have to admit that distance learning did not work for many of our easily distracted, English as a second language, and special needs children. Many children did fall through the cracks. That being said, distance learning did not fail. In fact, when you consider how educators flipped the switch from in campus learning to distance learning with limited resources in what was basically a weekend, it was wildly successful. Sadly, however, instead of building on that success and making it better, so fewer children fall through the cracks, our leaders seem insistent on forcing teachers to go back to brick and mortar schools will people will inevitably get sick or worse.
Also, where I think starting in school education should be a non-starter, I think schools could be used as centers to make sure fewer children would fall through the cracks. That handful of students that every school has could be recruited to come in where they could get the assistance, supervision, and aid that they needed.
Let's face it we won't be able to social distance, in schools where there are hundreds and thousands of children and adults but we could if there were fifty. Even with masks and plexiglass shields, we won't be able to keep hundreds or even thousands of children and adults safe, but we could probably keep fifty safe. Also, let me make clear this would not be traditional school for these children. This would be using schools to make sure they got the resources they need.
To me, this where the vast amount of teachers and students teach and learn remotely sounds much better than all the hybrid models' superintendents are throwing around. Invariably younger children are in school for more days, and the older students are in school part-time and learning online part-time.
It is unconscionable to me that the teachers in our lower grades are being offered up as sacrificial lambs and that the powers-that-be don't understand that even if it is just two or three days a week, putting hundreds perhaps thousands of people together is a recipe for disaster.
The bottom line is it is not a matter of if but when the coronavirus makes its way into schools that open up in hot zones. That means people will get sick or worse, and schools will close. Which means we will have risked lives for what? The people in the classrooms, students and teachers and cafeteria workers and custodians and secretaries and everyone else at the schools will have risked lives for what?
Any leader, whether it is the President of the United States or a superintendent of schools that needlessly risk lives, especially when there are other options, has failed us.
District after the district is coming up with a plan after plan to return to school just as the nation is inarguably in much worse shape than when the country shut down. If you live in any other region besides the North East, you have seen an uptick in cases and deaths.
Let's take Florida for example, the state closed the schools when there were less than a thousand cases. Governor DeSantis, in a rambling interview, said children were fine with returning, while not mentioning teachers once. He did this while Florida was averaging over ten thousand cases a day, including a record-shattering 15,300 in one day.
To give you some scale, it took Florida 111 days to reach 100 thousand cases of the disease, and just 13 days to reach 200 thousand, we will be at 300 thousand in less ten days after that. At the height of the pandemic in New York, they had a little over 11,000 cases, and all of South Korea, a country with 59 million densely packed together citizens, haven't had 15 thousand cases total.
Given these facts, how does rushing to open our schools make sense? The answer is it doesn't, but that doesn't stop our leaders from making plans to open schools, and the main reason they give is distance learning just did not work for some, and you know what? I agree.
I think we have to admit that distance learning did not work for many of our easily distracted, English as a second language, and special needs children. Many children did fall through the cracks. That being said, distance learning did not fail. In fact, when you consider how educators flipped the switch from in campus learning to distance learning with limited resources in what was basically a weekend, it was wildly successful. Sadly, however, instead of building on that success and making it better, so fewer children fall through the cracks, our leaders seem insistent on forcing teachers to go back to brick and mortar schools will people will inevitably get sick or worse.
Also, where I think starting in school education should be a non-starter, I think schools could be used as centers to make sure fewer children would fall through the cracks. That handful of students that every school has could be recruited to come in where they could get the assistance, supervision, and aid that they needed.
Let's face it we won't be able to social distance, in schools where there are hundreds and thousands of children and adults but we could if there were fifty. Even with masks and plexiglass shields, we won't be able to keep hundreds or even thousands of children and adults safe, but we could probably keep fifty safe. Also, let me make clear this would not be traditional school for these children. This would be using schools to make sure they got the resources they need.
To me, this where the vast amount of teachers and students teach and learn remotely sounds much better than all the hybrid models' superintendents are throwing around. Invariably younger children are in school for more days, and the older students are in school part-time and learning online part-time.
It is unconscionable to me that the teachers in our lower grades are being offered up as sacrificial lambs and that the powers-that-be don't understand that even if it is just two or three days a week, putting hundreds perhaps thousands of people together is a recipe for disaster.
The bottom line is it is not a matter of if but when the coronavirus makes its way into schools that open up in hot zones. That means people will get sick or worse, and schools will close. Which means we will have risked lives for what? The people in the classrooms, students and teachers and cafeteria workers and custodians and secretaries and everyone else at the schools will have risked lives for what?
Any leader, whether it is the President of the United States or a superintendent of schools that needlessly risk lives, especially when there are other options, has failed us.
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ReplyDeleteTwo (out of the 5) public libraries that are currently open to the public have had to shut down in recent days for deep cleaning due to staff members testing positive for covid. Mind you that's with limited staffing & hours, social distancing, and masks. This is insanity.
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