Posted on 07/22/2020 4:56:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Donald Trump announced at the White House his unequivocal commitment to getting America's schools back open.
"So what we want to do is we want to get our schools open," he said. "We want to get them open quickly, beautifully, in the fall."
When the COVID-19 crisis was just beginning to grip the nation in March, parents were already concerned about the impact of school closings on their child's education.
A Gallup poll showed 42% of parents expressing concern that the crisis would have a negative effect on their child's learning.
Of these parents, the most concern was among nonwhite parents, with 52% concerned, compared with white parents, 36% of whom were concerned.
Nearly twice as many nonwhite parents, 39%, compared with 21% of white parents, said the school year should be extended into the summer months if schools remain closed for the remainder of the regular school year.
A new report from the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation's second largest school district, sharpens the picture regarding why parents, particularly black and Latino parents, are concerned.
According to the report, 67% of Latino and 67% of black middle school students have been actively participating in online classes. Among high school students, 73% of Latino and 71% of black students have been actively participating.
This compared with 88% of white middle school students and 85% of white high school students.
Two prestigious organizations now urge that schools reopen and emphasize how critically important physical presence is in education.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued its "Guidance for School Re-entry" report. It provides extensive guidance for safe reopening and operation of schools. It begins saying: "[T]he AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. The importance of in-person learning is well-documented, and there is already evidence of the negative impacts on children because of school closures in the spring of 2020."
Now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has published its new report with a press release headline reading, "Schools Should Prioritize Reopening in Fall 2020, Especially for Grades K-5, While Weighing Risks and Benefits."
"Without in-person instruction, schools risk children falling behind academically and exacerbating educational inequities," according to the release.
Both the president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have suggested the possibility of withholding federal funding from schools that refuse to reopen.
Who has been on the front line pushing back against the president? Yes, of course, the teachers unions.
"No one should listen to Trump, DeVos on reopening schools," says the president of the National Education Association in a recent headline.
No surprise. The NEA's priority has never been educating children. Its priority is protecting its members -- teachers.
Teachers get paid whether schools are open or not. What do leaders of teachers unions care about the hard word needed to create a safe environment now so children can be physically present in school -- the only real viable option for learning? They don't care.
Most recently, both the major teachers unions, the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, filed briefs in the Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue case urging the court to rule in favor of the state to deny tax credit-financed scholarships to parents who want to send their children to religious schools.
Fortunately, in this landmark case, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs: the mothers who filed suit claiming that making scholarship funds available to everyone except parents who choose religious schools for their children violates constitutionally protected free exercise of religion.
Responsible, free people courageously balance risks and competing objectives to come up with creative solutions.
We know the measures we must take to battle COVID-19. We can make schools physically safe. We also know what measures to take to prevent ruining a child's future by depriving them of the education they must have. We must get them to school.
Open the schools. We do not need a nation of dummies.
You can’t run around issuing national emergency declarations, shutting down schools and businesses, and clamoring about a “war” against an “invisible enemy” ... and then expect people to just take your word for it when you tell them it’s OK to go back to work, school, etc.
Back in the early spring the American public was told that these shutdowns were necessary for TWO WEEKS -- to "flatten the curve."
We're still dealing with this sh!t -- FOUR F#%&ING MONTHS LATER.
These teachers have all the leverage they need to stay home from work indefinitely.
Good luck putting this genie back in the bottle, all you morons out there who bought into this hysteria back in March.
I’m afraid we may be too late for that!
My son’s GF is a middle school teacher. When the schools closed here (TX) they went to on-line teaching. She had one student who told her that she had not done her assignments because she had “better things to do.” Something neither I nor any of my classmates would have dreamed of saying “back in the day.” She wasn’t a great student who just stopped doing anything when the schools closed, she didn’t do anything much, anyway.
The son’s GF taught 5th and 6th grades last year. She’s going to be teaching 6th grade only this upcoming year. She was happy to hear that, because she won’t be having to teach cursive writing. At some point the school stopped teaching cursive, then decided to start back, and they have been playing catch-up. She taught cursive to 5th graders last year so all her 6th graders this year should already have that skill. She also told me she removed the clock from her classroom because too many of her students couldn’t tell time!
One of the “issues” with distance learning is that too many of the parents don’t make sure that their kids are doing the work and learning. Of course, those same parents don’t do that when the kids are in school, either.
So dumb!!!!! Why not do what parents are doing hiring teachers to teach their kids. They have pods for each kid. 7 families got to get her and hire a teacher for a grand a month. Less then a cable bill once divided up. Homeschooling SHOULD explode if idiots would shut up about opening schools. I’m stunned how dumb people get when they miss their liberal teaching schools.
I just wish we hadn’t turned a blind eye to this public school catastrophe for the past 3 decades. If we had been pushing a great alternative now would be a great time to roll it out and watch the teacher’s unions knock over little old ladies rushing back to the classrooms.
The GOP is a mess, really let us down.
An additional option: Fire every teacher unwilling to return to work. Hire anyone willing to give teaching a try who can pass a thorough backround check and a drug test.
This credential crap has got to go.
Yeah open the schools so we can back to indoctrination! I’m sure copies of “White Fragility” are being massed produced at this very moment to start the edgeimication off right.
One thing that President Trump needs to do is to get his messaging on this consistent. No point in saying, “We need to get the schools open...now!” on the one hand, while having Dr. Fauci be the sole resident expert on Covid terrifying the populace with his “We’re all gonna die if we don’t mask up, social distance, stay in lockdown until there is a cure” message at the same time, emanating from the same White House.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics has issued its “Guidance for School Re-entry” report. It provides extensive guidance for safe reopening and operation of schools. It begins saying: “[T]he AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. “
Sounds like business is slow for them, so they need to pick things up a bit.
‘Dr. Fauci be the sole resident expert on Covid terrifying the populace with his “We’re all gonna die if we don’t mask up, social distance, stay in lockdown until there is a cure”
Dr. Fauci is on record stating that they should know whether the Moderna vaccine is efficacious sometime in Nov or Dec this year...at which point they could begin distribution shortly afterwards...
convenient timing, I say; after the election, of course...
Yeah, Fauci, just like the AIDS vaccine you promised 30 years ago?
Trump is making a YUGE mistake by staking his future on a vaccine for this appearing.
If there is one thing that should be learned by our side from the rioting, BLM/Antifa mayhem going on right now it is the importance of waging the good fight in the classroom. Freepers are quick to dismiss the reality of public education as some mere exercise of the lazy or the foolish or the naive. The fact of the matter is that there have been and there will be those whose main/only avenue of education for their children is the public school classroom. Period. You don’t have to like it, but there it is. This field of battle has been completely abandoned by the Right and the results are the shock troops in our streets threatening to destroy our cities, statues, way of life.
You can open up private schools all day long. You can suggest homeschooling (the path my wife and I chose) all day long. But the vast majority of today’s children will be taught in public schools. Our side has pooh-poohed this, shrugged off the suggestions that those places are cesspools created by the foolish, for the foolish. Well, they have become everything we envisioned them to be—and more! They are the place where our nation, its values and our very way of life have been undermined. We don’t recognize the folks out in the streets. I don’t, do you?
Today, many here on FR are talking about the approaching CWII (some strongly believing it is already here - I tend to think we are, as well). As we crouch in our respective trenches or on our rooftops, maybe most won’t give this a single thought. But, for those that may wonder, “How did it come to this? How did that side get so screwed up about our country? About the freedoms we have here? About socialism, for goodness sake?” There will be one answer to those questions that will alone provide a satisfactory answer: Those folks shooting at me never learned those things and they never learned them because there was no one there to teach them.
Lock and load.
My 19 year old daughter works in a grocery store and comes home to lecture me (more and more these days) about how upset she is with folks who simply won’t wear a mask in her store. “How selfish!, If you’re a Christian, you’re supposed to obey government” yada-yada.
I try to tell her that many have concluded that, because these “experts” have been talking out of both sides of their masks about Covid, many just don’t trust their pronouncements any more. I also suggest that one theory has it that all this mandatory masking up is a prelude for some greater, more nefarious edict requiring compliance that many simply will not do. I tell her to research for herself about the many other experts out there whose take on Covid contradicts Faucian principles...We’ll see what kind of a student I’ve raised.
Look at the BS Harvard and the Rockefeller Foundation are pushing for the South/Trump Country/swing states!
https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/07/21/harvard-experts-on-reopening-schools
(Red has all schools locked down and you can scroll down to see their current countrywide map.)
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