hope
noun
- 1.a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.
It's just natural to hold out hope for the start of the school year. Parents want it to happen, kids want it to happen, and teachers want it to happen, for slightly varying but also overlapping reasons.
Everyone on both sides of the aisle, regardless of economic status, race creed, color, sexual orientation, we all want the same thing for schools to open and for us to get back to something approaching normal. We are hopeful.
At some point, however, hope becomes a dangerous thing; hope becomes something that will cost lives.
Florida closed the state down when we were experiencing a few hundred cases a day, now we are experiencing cases in the thousands.
July 9th- 8,935
July 8th- 9,989
July 7th- 7,347
July 6th- 6,636
July 5th- 10,059
July 4th- 11,458
July 3rd- 9,468
July 2nd- 10,109
July 1st- 6,536
It took Florida 111 days to reach 100k cases, and just 13 days to reach 200k. At this pace, it will take us even less time to reach 300k.
Florida experienced 120 fatalities on the 9th, that is the most it has since the pandemic began.
Are DeSantis and Corcoran hopeful, or are they playing politics with people's lives, what about the President and DeVos? I know what I think, but what do you?
Then what about your superintendents and board members? If they thought closing school was acceptable with a few dozen cases, what changed their mind so now that they think going back is acceptable now that we have thousands? Are they being hopeful or something else?
In my life, I have been hopeful about many things, but now it is time for us to be realistic, for us not to rely on hope but instead to rely on facts and evidence.
The sad reality is if we return to school, it is not a matter of if but when and how many people get sick and how many schools close.
I understand many have work concerns, but I wonder how parents will feel or what they will do when their child is sent me for two weeks, and they have to quarantine with them as well. I wonder how they will feel if one of their children's teachers get sick or worse because if we return to in-person learning while the pandemic is out of control that will happen. I know because it has already happened.
As thousands fall sick, we can no longer rely on the hope that we can return and things will get back to normal. Hope is going to cost teacher's their lives.
The reality is we have to survive this. Children are resilient, they will rebound, and learning losses will be made up. If they or a teacher passes, there is no coming back from that.
Hope got us here, let us let facts and evidence take us the rest of the way.
Hope in one hand. Poop in the other. See which one fills up faster. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans used to tell us that hope is not a strategy. Granted that was only 4 years ago but for some people it feels like a lifetime ago. Whatever happened to erring on the side of caution? Why not start slow and build up as conditions on the ground improve? I'm all for mental health but if you're dead that doesn't matter. The question we have to ask is: Are our kids worth the wait? I would suggest they are.
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