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Open the Schools… But Do You Want to Send Them Back?
I have a number of friends with kids in public schools who are starting to say the quiet part out loud: Why aren’t our kids in school and at what point will they be transitioning to in-person learning? If you dare say that around teachers or administrators and you’ll be asked why you want to kill them, but more and more parents in my social circles are asking it anyway.
I’ve been long in favor of reopening schools; the science is quite clear on the fact that kids aren’t super spreaders. There was yet another study today about New York City that showed that the in-person opening didn’t lead to anything resembling a spike; the New York Times reports,
But nearly three weeks into the in-person school year, early data from the city’s first effort at targeted testing has shown the opposite: a surprisingly small number of positive cases.
Out of 15,111 staff members and students tested randomly by the school system in the first week of its testing regimen, the city has gotten back results for 10,676. There were only 18 positives: 13 staff members and five students.
But a tiny part of me wants to ask them: In the event that school does reopen, do you really want to send them back? At this point, given all of the data available, there are only a few possibilities regarding the many teachers still refusing to go back to work across the country:
- They don’t actually want to go back to work, but still want to get paid.
- They are unable to assess the risk, especially if they are under age 60-70 and have no underlying health restrictions.
- They are unable to assess the data regarding prior school openings and the spread of the virus.
Are these honestly the kinds of people you want teaching your kids?
Published in General
Give the money to the parents. I’ll bet that small charter schools that provide at least as much education will appear. The amount of money spent on public schools is huge and will attract entrepreneurs who are willing to organize schools. A year or so ago, the Tucson school district was trying to sell a vacant primary school to a developer to keep it out of the hands of a charter school.
We moved to TN in part so our son could go school in-person at least part time. He has now been in-person five days a week for almost a month.
Our son simply could not learn remotely, he was suffering even under the hybrid system where he was watching the teacher lecture from home. We simply could not sacrifice a year and half out of four years of high school for our son.
The bigger problem was the “all SJW all the time” from our old public school, where even math was used to teach kids that all history is the history of white oppression because all white people are evil but white men are evilest of the evil. So, the move enabled us to send him to a private high school on the property tax savings alone.
Don’t forget number four: They’re woke.
The answer is “no,” which is why I, a public-school graduate from vanilla Midwestern suburbia, have every intention of homeschooling my own children or sending them to a trustworthy private or classical school . . . assuming I have any.
Even if the teachers are on board with reopening, you might not want your kids going. Charter schools are on the chopping block in the next Democrat administration; even if Trump wins don’t count on charter schools as a long term solution
Then there’s this, coming soon to a public school near you. If it’s not there already. For the over 100,000 public school students in San Diego
Things like turning papers in on time will no longer be a factor in the academic grade, just in the citizenship grade. As Stuart Schneiderman comments,
To compete in a world economy—or against a high tech military enemy. I bet it’s a lot cheaper for the CCP to buy an educrat than it is a Vice President. Unless her name is Dr. Jill Biden; that might be expensive.
Competition! Gasp! Can’t have that.
This was a real struggle for my son in his new school. At his old school, he could retake the quizzes and tests as many times as he needed to. So, he would take the test to find out what was on it, and then study the material that was on the test, and retake it with no penalty. It doesn’t quite work that way at his new school, and it has taken him some time to figure that out.
They’ve been doing that for years. Ever notice how many Chinese cultural and language programs suddenly started appearing in American schools, oh, say, about 20-25 years ago? You know why? The materials are free! Directly from the Commies themselves!
As our dear friend Mr. Reynolds is fond of saying: Harsh, but fair.
No!. I refused to send my child to the NY Public school system. I decided against it when they started pushing condoms and gender crap on kids. Send your kids to Catholic schools. You don’t have to be Catholic to be admitted. They’ll make accommodations for you if you are not.
A few comments:
I predict that the majority of these were false positives if they get retested and release the results.
The CDC data for US kids 5-14 last I looked, were less than 40 covid related deaths in a cohort of around 41 million. Yes that is less than 1 in a million. So what are we talking about?
Anyway here in TX my high school age kids are going back in person. Most of their teachers did show up to teach even though the majority of the kids are still being taught online. So weird.
Other school districts around us (other than Houston) just started back like normal. So far only 1 kid has tested positive and no spread thus far.