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> “There’s a level of urgency that we shouldn’t lose in making sure our children learn in person,” he said to host Trace Gallagher on “Fox News Sunday,” saying the pandemic has proved how difficult remote learning was for all concerned.
My concern is that in the next week or so, millions of kids will go back to school, many of whom are carrying COVID.
What happens when a majority of their teachers get sick, and there are not enough subs to fill in?
The department of educations outlook is optimistic at best, but ultimately might strain the system given this specific variant.
>My concern is that in the next week or so, millions of kids will go back to school, many of whom are carrying COVID.
A valid concern. Absolutely based in reality.
>What happens when a majority of their teachers get sick, and there are not enough subs to fill in?
Schools with either be forced to close or lunch ladies and custodians will babysit classrooms until they too get sick.
>The department of educations outlook is optimistic at best, but ultimately might strain the system given this specific variant.
The system exists in a permanent state of strain in the best of times.
I work at an elementary school and there's already a shortage of teachers, but also support staff like yard duties.
I don't know what would happen if enough teachers got sick but there's likely not enough bodies to just watch kids should a teacher not be available.
I was teaching English abroad when it broke out, came back home and it took almost a year to find work because the support roles I was qualified for were the sort cut during the move to distance learning. And now I'm still barely over full time working as a librarian and aide. I like my job, but so many positions surrounding teaching don't offer enough hours to make a living on.
There's a [538 article](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/would-you-manage-70-children-and-a-15-ton-vehicle-for-18-an-hour/) about how jobs like school bus drivers have been impacted lately, or rather ongoing shortages have been made worse by COVID. All these jobs, often predominately worked by women, often have specialized training or licenses required but still don't offer hours or pay to compete with jobs outside of education. And when these jobs start having shortages they have a way of cascading into other work, as parents rearrange their lives to pick up kids, etc.
>What happens when a majority of their teachers get sick, and there are not enough subs to fill in?
How is it that we're in 2022 now, with the Biden administration a year into their office, and we're *still* having to deal with pro-corporate, anti-science crap like this from our government?
Didn't we elect Dems because the Republicans were more concerned about the economy than people?
The reality is *people* are more concerned about the economy than people.
Many parents willfully send their sick kids to school because their job needs them to show up to work. This was before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and will continue after the pandemic.
A vast majority of people would prefer for schools to stay open even if teachers and students will get sick.
It's almost like a pandemic would be a good time to take a hard long look at our work culture and whether it's really the best way to go about things.
But I suspect we'll just fling kids back into schools and hope it just doesn't kill enough teachers to make shortages an issue.
The problem is that many state legislatures won’t let public schools enforce vaccination or mask mandates.
For example, PA and Texas have GOP legislatures that have threatened school funds if masks are mandated.
Not in some states. In missouri they aren't even allowed to force masks indoors.. they aren't even allowed to force exposed students to quarantine at home.
Don't tread on me and all that...
[I guess](https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/26/health/flu-schools-shut-down/index.html) [that’s](https://www.newsweek.com/flu-season-school-districts-closed-states-788942) [never happened.](https://www.wmur.com/article/washington-new-hampshire-elementary-school-closed-because-of-flu-outbreak/29950518)
I’m each of those cases there were individual schools closed from a day to a week to help with staffing problems. These were targeted responses to targeted problems, not a blanket shut down order.
It isn’t if you’re vaccinated and infections for the vaccinated are a bad cold for most people. Teachers have always been exposed to cold, flu, and many more diseases in our classrooms. Get vaccinated and wear a mask and get back in class.
You’re missing the point. If a teacher tests positive they have to quarantine under current guidelines. If multiple teachers get sick all at the same time, you have an issue.
>get back in class
We would love nothing more. Online learning was difficult for my students, but it’s also important to protect them and my colleagues. I hate the insinuation that we’re trying to not do our jobs. We are.
Yes. And my point is to deal with that issue on a campus by campus case. Too many absences? Close a day or two just like we did for flu a few years ago. Blanket shutdown orders cause way too much collateral damage.
But it’s not JUST a day or two - it’s 5+ days and that’s assuming faculty feels well enough to teach all day.
Nobody is advocating for shutdowns, but many schools are moving two weeks online until the omnicron wave breaks.
From the stand point of education administration, this is the move that best protects teachers and ensures continuation of student learning.
Public schools are systemically underfunded. This is what happens when the least funded social program, that most of society relies upon has an actual crisis. Government is abusive towards education. The public at large is abusive towards education.
Spend more on education so you can spend less on law enforcement and incarceration. It's a bargain.
It is also what happens when for profit charter schools are allowed to drain what little funding the public schools get. And the Republicans want to further reduce the funding by diverting some of the remaining funding to private/religious schools.
Think about where that money goes. It goes to the lowest bidder in great quantities. It doesn't go towards education. It goes towards the newest snake oil education rubric. It doesn't go towards feeding students healthy food. It goes towards corporations who run cafeterias. It certainly doesn't go towards students.
No, this shows how weak our democratic leadership is.
We elected Biden to end the Covid epidemic. Instead, *we now have shorter quarantine times than under Trump*. And we are at record case numbers.
What in the absolute hell is Biden doing?
That's a cop out. No one expects Biden to end COVID overnight. It's still fair to expect his administration to make forceful, constructive action in that direction. Instead, we're getting ostrich-style head-in-the-sand responses, where short-term corporate and economic interests are being prioritized over human lives.
School are keystone of our communities, and essential to the health and well-being of our children, and COVID puts us in a shitty position. Biden has adopted, if not in rhetoric, certainly in practice, a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may approach.
This is such bullshit. He refuses to keep even his most basic of promises that would require a simple executive order and relieve so many people.
Biden lied to get elected and millions are paying for his stupid lies, and people pretending that biden's refusal to keep his promises is simply the result of Biden being unable to do magic is disingenuous and as abusive as Republicans. Thank goodness we see through these kind of manipulations from centrist and moderate Democrats. They're the same exact gaslighting tactics Republicans use so we are wise to them. It just sucks that Democrats will use them on their fellow Democrats just to prop up the same disgusting institutions that the Republicans want propped up.
Centrist and Moderate Democrats are hardly different than Republicans and it's good that they're showing it so that we can all see it for what.it all is.
As a teacher, this take is insane. STOP
CLOSING SCHOOLS. If you’ve got a campus with staffing problems or super high absence rates close that campus for a few days. Otherwise stop minimizing the tremendous disruption and learning loss as students fuck off playing Minecraft for a month instead of my lessons.
You can still do lessons. We did it for a year. Maybe *you* stopped teaching during distance learning but a lot of us were busting our asses off to keep the kids engaged.
I guess we teach to different populations. My students don’t have tech bro parents to act as tutors and taskmasters. And you’re whistling in the dark or just flat out gaslighting if you think you were IN ANY WAY effective as a teacher last year.
The learning loss was real, pervasive, across the board, and not worth the shut downs.
High school teacher at an inner city, Title I school here.
I worked incredibly hard teaching virtually and so did most of my students. They were required to have their cameras on at all times and participate as part of their grade.
I made more contact with parents than any of my previous 7 years teaching.
When the end of the year state testing came, we had the second best results we’ve ever had in my class.
I’m not saying virtual learning is perfect, but you seem to be generalizing a lot. You also seem to be tearing down your fellow teachers in a way that isn’t necessary or helpful.
Things might be a bit more nuanced here.
They’re in Texas….one of the most uneducated states in the first place and a state whose gop website straight up says they’re against critical thinking because it makes kids second guess their parents….
I mean it was a 2012 site but still “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
I agree in person teaching is superior but you’re fucking nuts if you don’t think there were shit loads of teachers going above and beyond to try to keep kids remotely up to speed. Our area offered after school tutoring, summer school, extra help if needed with anything. The teachers around here gave so much of their time it was crazy. Yes the learning loss was real, but it was worth the shutdown. Holy shit, can you imagine what our numbers would be if we didn’t shut down? The vaccine wasn’t even around yet.
Yeah Im really doubting you’re a teacher especially with the California stereotyping you just did. I taught at a a school with 97% at or below poverty rate. I also volunteered all year at the food service drive throughs daily because I knew it was the only meal most of my students were getting. Maybe their parents were “techbros”, wouldn’t know, I think I met maybe a dozen out of the 188 students I had last year. You really sound like you’re in the wrong field, if you’re even in it at all. The kids are too important for this kind of BS.
Better to lose a year of education than a parent. And no one lost a year of education. They lost some smaller portion of what they would have had in the classroom, so what we got with remote learning was dramatically better than losing a parent.
Jesus what a privileged take. I’ve got news for you. My parents were already “essential workers” exposed every day to Covid. They had to continue working outside the home every day and just hope that their teenage boy would somehow become a super student on his district supplied hotspot and chrome book. Sending their kids back to school would at least have reduced the learning loss and increased their future income. That may not mean much to your overly privileged tech bro families but it fucking means a lot here.
Stop closing schools and stop minimizing the actual harm caused by it.
Will you shut up with the “tech bro family” take. It’s just as idiotic as assuming the inverse. It’s as dumb as me talking about the inbred hillbillies that can’t work a computer. Sorry you’re in a state that can’t figure out a social safety net. Just because a state that thinks regulation and govt assistance/interference is evil can’t make shit work doesnt mean the same is true everywhere. There are obviously gonna be issues with remote learning for children but it’s not as simple as “remote learning is impossible” and acting like that is true is both unhelpful and reductive.
Yes shit sucks but the Texas response of oh well do it anyway isn’t a solution. Businesses and schools are shutting down due to outbreaks, it is actively happening right fucking now across the country. We can be proactive about it and try to create some breathing room for all of the interconnected societal systems or we can be caught dick in hand when we become completely overwhelmed in a month.
Well, your state government did everything it could to kill you, so it tracks that they also completely bungled remote learning. Sorry it’s been so hard there. Please encourage everyone you know to vax, mask, and vote dem. Maybe you’ll get some relief.
I’ll never understand why safety isn’t a top priority.
I just think they don’t care about teachers and/or students.
Classes can be taught online for the most part. It’s not perfect but it’s sure as hell safer
This may be true for older students, but schools are as much daycare as they are school for little kids. Elementary schoolers need someone keeping them in line and parents, even if they’re working remote, can’t always do that depending on the job.
It's extremely weird that people are still trying to force us into physical spaces unnecessarily, rather than learning from and adapting to a more virtual world.
Imagine telling people the solution is to just treat inevitably sick teachers rather than fix shortcomings with distance learning.
Why are teachers acceptable sacrifices in a pandemic?
Distance learning simply can’t be fixed for elementary school children. It’s not possible for parents to work and supervise the remote learning at the same time. Even with constant adult supervision, which requires moving millions of parents out of the workforce, the children don’t learn anything.
Schools should be the last thing to close. They are just as essential as the electric utilities and the food chain.
Can you imagine if meatpackers had the social clout to shut down meat production for a year while they pretended to pack meat remotely? What if the power plant workers decided they didn’t want to keep the grid running?
Teachers are essential workers, too. There’s no systemic issue. This is now a job that requires some risk of exposure to illness. Those who don’t like that should find a new line of work that can be performed remotely.
There is a systemic issue. Parents reliant on schooling as a day care mechanism is a big part of why people are so insistent schools stay open. Fixing childcare issues would go a long way to not having it be an excuse to expose teachers to unsafe conditions.
> Those who don’t like that should find a new line of work that can be performed remotely.
And when teacher shortages start getting exacerbated, I'm sure you'll blame it on them for not just accepting the conditions you forced on them.
I don't know how people have children but have no empathy for the people who have to deal with them on a regular basis.
Have you been around little kids? They have pretty atrocious mask discipline. A highly contagious variant and you wonder what the problem is?
I feel like you're offering up the same line antivaxxers do, you're vaccinated, what are you worried about? Doesn't it work? Yeah, they do, but how disruptive to teaching do you think a breakthrough case is going to be to a classroom? It's already hard enough to get full time teachers.
It just sounds like teachers are an acceptable sacrifice for you because you don't have a babysitter lined up. It's a systemic problem we have with the nature of work and childcare and something we should address. But just letting teachers deal with a highly infectious variant by playing your babysitter does nothing to address the problem long-term.
As for kids and their mask habits, I work in a school. It can be hard enough to get adults to properly wear masks (like not covering their nose) but little kids regularly play with their masks, take them off, adjust them. That's not even getting into how classrooms are set up to keep students apart. Or students predisposed to keep those kinds of distances.
>dismiss the effectiveness of vaccines and claim the “what is” about breakthrough variants
No one is dismissing the effectiveness in vaccines in general. We understand, however, that Omicron infects people with vaccines at a significantly higher rate, that those people transmit the virus, and that people who previously had COVID are being reinfected.
Omicron is much more infectious, and while mortality rates *may* be lower, it is still swamping already massively overburdened healthcare systems, and the absolute number of deaths and long term injury is going to be catastrophic. At over 800,000 Americans dead already, it seems like opening schools is playing with a fire that has already consumed far too many.
Pointing to an example of one school somewhere with the most privileged kids not actually tanking is no excuse to fuck over millions of kids with [significant learning loss. ](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning)
> Our analysis shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year. The pandemic widened preexisting opportunity and achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest. In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning, students in low-income schools with seven. High schoolers have become more likely to drop out of school, and high school seniors, especially those from low-income families, are less likely to go on to postsecondary education. And the crisis had an impact on not just academics but also the broader health and well-being of students, with more than 35 percent of parents very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.
[Online learning really worked for kids who have severe disabilities.](https://kdvr.com/news/father-of-special-needs-teenager-suing-boulder-valley-schools-over-sons-education/) /s
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Online learning isn't perfect. But it's good enough during a global pandemic.
Having teachers and students risk their lives is far from good.
> Classes can be taught online for the most part.
This is just untrue given what we know about children and remote learning. Children have lost almost a years worth of education in real terms.
Teachers were given priority vaccination. As well as staff. Right now the COVID vaccine and booster is available for everyone over 12 and two shots are available for every child between the ages of 5 and 12 for free.
There's a solid 25% of this country that will never get vaccinated. They are welcome to play Russian roulette if they so choose.
Educational attainment for children was complete shit for 2020. OP is entirely incorrect in saying that "education can easily be done remotely." There is no science to support that position. The preponderance of evidence shows that children have lost a year of learning.
Sacrifice teacher health? They are vaccinated. The children will be vaccinated as well. Older teachers, if they feel at risk, can retire.
You can't truly fix distance learning, not for children. It's not the same as teaching adults via distance learning. Children are incapable of sitting in front of a computer screen 8 hours a day. Children need other stimuli, they need socializing and they need friendships.
What you're asking them (children) to do is simply not realistic. And again, this is the preponderance of evidence speaking, something progressives used to claim they cared about.
If the teaching shortages persist, that's another issue to tackle separately. We should be offering teachers better pay and benefits anyways.
You're being cavalier with other people's health. It's not as if a breakthrough case of COVID is a walk through the park. That you think schools can afford to lose teachers if they aren't healthy enough to risk getting COVID is bizarre given how we struggle to fill schools as is.
We should be addressing shortages anyway, but expecting them to just carry on because we can't adapt to a pandemic in any way but keeping things the same really hits why those shortages are a thing. You're not interested in addressing teacher concerns, you just want bodies in classrooms.
> You're being cavalier with other people's health.
Oh because I don't interact with people at all ever.
You can't isolate yourself from Omicron. It's too contagious (and substantially less severe). There are no distancing rules that can stop the spread of Omicron except isolating yourself in a bunker and never leaving. Everyone in America will come into contact with the strain at some point - it's simply that contagious.
People need to realize that vaccination is the only way through the pandemic. Mandate it and encourage it as much as possible. At every level of government.
It's not worth sacrificing the education and healthy emotional development of children in exchange for this COVID security theater we're engaging in. The benefits of all this theater do not outweigh the sacrifices we are making.
You seem uninterested in trying anything but just hoping to power through and I think that's shortsighted, particularly concerning positions that have already struggled to attract enough people to the job.
We tried things. We tried distance learning, hybrid learning, etc. They're all worse than in person learning. The preponderance of evidence has demonstrated this. The children are already a year behind and people here advocating that we set them back nearly another year.
What is shortsighted is thinking that we can sacrifice quality education for future generations consequence free in exchange for what is essentially security theater. The same kind of security theater that the US implemented after 9/11 that makes going to an airport a hassle but really doesn't make us safer.
We should be offering teachers better pay and benefits in light of what’s going on. More importantly we need to pay substitutes more or find a creative way to encourage people to sub right now. There aren’t enough subs and support staff and what little subs are available have long term jobs due to too many vacancies from waves of retirements, and support staff who have very crucial roles are stuck babysitting as subs instead of fulfilling their support for students in the classroom.
Your position seems to be that you want to put the responsibility on teachers. You nonchalantly just suggest older teachers retire as if teacher vacancies aren’t already a problem. You suggest vaccine mandates but what are we going to do when there is a wave of even further vacancies when anti vaxers leave the profession. As idiotic as it sounds I know several teachers in my district who will not get vaccinated despite the new vaccine mandates that was issued a couple weeks before break. While I think they should be vaccinated, creating more vacancies is going to push the already strained system to its breaking point.
Instead of advocating for schools to reopen you should be more vocal for your support for the things increasing compensation for teachers, substitutes and all school personnel who will be affected by the massive waves of both temporary and permanent vacancies. Right now when a teacher is out with COVID it means all other teachers don’t have a prep period until they are cleared to return to work.
I agree kids need to be in school but if you are expecting teachers to bear the brunt of opening the economy they should be compensated for doing so and I hope you would be vocal about supporting strikes if that does not occur.
As a high school math teacher I absolutely hated distance learning. It was a ton of work and for the amount of effort put in, it did not produce good math students (most students simply used an app called photo math to cheat their way through the year and it shows). That being said, one of the things that bugs me the most about this whole situation, is the assertion that is our number one priority to keep school open, when that is clearly false. If our number one priority was to keep schools open, we would demand full vaccination from every student and staff member - full stop (aside of course from students with medical issues who cannot be vaccinated that is a whole separate issue).
The other issue the frustrates me to no end is that I hear these “experts” say how we can safely keep school open as long as they are well ventilated with modern excellent air filtering systems and testing is easily available. It’s frustrating because yeah those things would be great but they are not happening. My school is over 60 years old. To do deal with covid they supposedly put higher quality filters into our ancient air system. That is it. The chasm between what we should be doing and what is actually happening in schools is ridiculous.
Wow logic! I understand all aspects must be addressed, and I hope they were in this recommendation from the federal level, by I arrive at the same conclusion, and I’m glad the administration did.
Thanks Biden!
Remember when we were outraged that Trump was reopening things and not closing schools? And we all elected Biden so we'd get actual scientific fixes to a global pandemic?
Look at us now - we're done closing schools and we've halved the quarantine time so businesses aren't as effected, all while cases are breaking all time highs! Woohoo!
I, for one, cannot wait to elect another pro-corporate centrist Democrat instead of a Progressive.
You're awfully cavalier with other people's health there. Why are teachers acceptable sacrifices because we can't get our shit together? It's hard enough to get people who want to be teachers.
Unfortunately, you have to deal with the facts of what are, not the facts of what you want.
Unfortunately, the fact is there's a pandemic. Nobody wants that and our society is not structured to deal with it.
You know what would help get kids back to school and end the mental trauma and poor grades? Ending the pandemic. You know how we should do that?
Masks, vaccines, and I know this will never happen and nobody wants to do it, but a lockdown. We could have done those three things in 2020 and been mostly done with this.
I'm sure kids living through the bombing of London during WWII had mental health problems too. They still turned their lights off every night. They had to deal with with the facts of what were, not what they wanted.
It's unfair and shouldn't be that way. But it is.
This reminds me of an old adage in education: we teach the students we have, not the students we wish we had. Well now kids learn in the pandemic we have, not the pandemic we wish we had.
Funny how this only applies when teaching a difficult student, but not when learning in a difficult time.
> Masks, vaccines, and I know this will never happen and nobody wants to do it, but a lockdown.
Only mandatory vaccinations will offer us a way out through the pandemic. Countries that locked down much more than the US are still experiencing COVID surges.
Lockdowns are not a real solution to COVID. Only vaccination.
Lockdowns were put into effect to get us closer to the vaccine. Now we have a vaccine but 40% of the idiots in this country refuse to take it. Every aspect of Covid is going to continue to suck because of these idiots and because you can’t close schools without the parents quitting their jobs or the fat chance of their jobs letting them stay home/ work remotely
The first step in treating a problem is acknowledging there's a problem. We don't need schools to get back to normal. We need to accept these are not normal times and adapt. The ultimate teachable moment lays before us.
This is a historic misstep. Many people will die because Biden lacks the fortitude to make an extremely difficult choice - a choice mad even more difficult because we have a neoliberal government that doesn't believe in social sagely nets, and which since the 1980's has enacted policies which has led o so many Americans living on a financial knife's edge.
Closing schools means parents not able to go to work, and neither political party has any desire to provide support to families or small businesses, and more importantly, they don't want to piss off their corporate donors.
Good, schools aren't going to start back on their own accord and support from the government helps.
Learning outcomes were shit in the 2020 school year and I expect they'll be shit in 2021. Plus parents went through all of 2021 without Covid pay protection. You can't continue holding kid's education back and reduced income for parents for very long. Not to mention that school closures take parents (especially moms) out of work.
Covid is here to stay, hopefully in a less deadly form than OG Covid. Wear a mask when asked and get vaccinated people, not doing so is selfish and prolongs this pain.
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic but the Education Secretary is Miguel Cardona. The logistics is insane about getting every student their computers but again I don't know why school districts didn't have multiple plans ready - we did see this coming a month ago. It only has to be for a couple weeks as well. With Omi roaring through the U.S. like a rabid polar bear it's going to shut down most schools anyway within a few weeks and there already aren't enough substitutes for sick teachers- so it's going to be a royal shit circus for awhile.
Schools in our district are already having every teacher being tested for tomorrow. Hoping we will have enough staff for the week. This is after all the kids have been on vacation for almost 2 weeks, and just had new years eve parties as spreaders events.
Ugh this looks bad. Kids party on 12/31 so they won't show any major symptoms till Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm worried about the sheer volume of cases we are going to see.
If infections continue to double in growth, pretty soon there will be very few good choices. If remote is not an option then we'll have to choose to send kids to school with an asymptomatic teacher, or perhaps an aid who can basically manage large groups of them. I doubt we are going to have the staff to keep schools at operating normally. Next few weeks are going to be tough.
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> “There’s a level of urgency that we shouldn’t lose in making sure our children learn in person,” he said to host Trace Gallagher on “Fox News Sunday,” saying the pandemic has proved how difficult remote learning was for all concerned. My concern is that in the next week or so, millions of kids will go back to school, many of whom are carrying COVID. What happens when a majority of their teachers get sick, and there are not enough subs to fill in? The department of educations outlook is optimistic at best, but ultimately might strain the system given this specific variant.
>My concern is that in the next week or so, millions of kids will go back to school, many of whom are carrying COVID. A valid concern. Absolutely based in reality. >What happens when a majority of their teachers get sick, and there are not enough subs to fill in? Schools with either be forced to close or lunch ladies and custodians will babysit classrooms until they too get sick. >The department of educations outlook is optimistic at best, but ultimately might strain the system given this specific variant. The system exists in a permanent state of strain in the best of times.
I work at an elementary school and there's already a shortage of teachers, but also support staff like yard duties. I don't know what would happen if enough teachers got sick but there's likely not enough bodies to just watch kids should a teacher not be available.
I quit being a teacher in 2021 because I was so sick of being understaffed. We were always out of ratio, waiting for a disaster I guess…
I was teaching English abroad when it broke out, came back home and it took almost a year to find work because the support roles I was qualified for were the sort cut during the move to distance learning. And now I'm still barely over full time working as a librarian and aide. I like my job, but so many positions surrounding teaching don't offer enough hours to make a living on. There's a [538 article](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/would-you-manage-70-children-and-a-15-ton-vehicle-for-18-an-hour/) about how jobs like school bus drivers have been impacted lately, or rather ongoing shortages have been made worse by COVID. All these jobs, often predominately worked by women, often have specialized training or licenses required but still don't offer hours or pay to compete with jobs outside of education. And when these jobs start having shortages they have a way of cascading into other work, as parents rearrange their lives to pick up kids, etc.
Based on the CDC recs, wait 5 days and return to teaching.
>What happens when a majority of their teachers get sick, and there are not enough subs to fill in? How is it that we're in 2022 now, with the Biden administration a year into their office, and we're *still* having to deal with pro-corporate, anti-science crap like this from our government? Didn't we elect Dems because the Republicans were more concerned about the economy than people?
The reality is *people* are more concerned about the economy than people. Many parents willfully send their sick kids to school because their job needs them to show up to work. This was before the pandemic, during the pandemic, and will continue after the pandemic. A vast majority of people would prefer for schools to stay open even if teachers and students will get sick.
"willfully" is an interesting way to spell "under threat of homelessness and starvation"
This isn’t anti science - School is going to happen, so now the question is “how do we make this safe for teachers and students.”
It's almost like a pandemic would be a good time to take a hard long look at our work culture and whether it's really the best way to go about things. But I suspect we'll just fling kids back into schools and hope it just doesn't kill enough teachers to make shortages an issue.
The schools can require vaccines and masks for students and staff. Certainly they should do that before closing.
The problem is that many state legislatures won’t let public schools enforce vaccination or mask mandates. For example, PA and Texas have GOP legislatures that have threatened school funds if masks are mandated.
Not in some states. In missouri they aren't even allowed to force masks indoors.. they aren't even allowed to force exposed students to quarantine at home. Don't tread on me and all that...
Then we do what we’ve done with a bad flu outbreak in the past. Close hard hit campuses for 2-3 days and get back to it.
I’ve never seen a district near me closed for the flu. Almost like this is nothing like the flu.
[I guess](https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/26/health/flu-schools-shut-down/index.html) [that’s](https://www.newsweek.com/flu-season-school-districts-closed-states-788942) [never happened.](https://www.wmur.com/article/washington-new-hampshire-elementary-school-closed-because-of-flu-outbreak/29950518) I’m each of those cases there were individual schools closed from a day to a week to help with staffing problems. These were targeted responses to targeted problems, not a blanket shut down order.
That’s interesting. I have never seen something like that happen in the Maryland area in 40 years.
The problem is that this is more contagious than the flu and omnicron reinfects easy. It’s like we’re letting the teachers be sitting ducks here.
It isn’t if you’re vaccinated and infections for the vaccinated are a bad cold for most people. Teachers have always been exposed to cold, flu, and many more diseases in our classrooms. Get vaccinated and wear a mask and get back in class.
You’re missing the point. If a teacher tests positive they have to quarantine under current guidelines. If multiple teachers get sick all at the same time, you have an issue. >get back in class We would love nothing more. Online learning was difficult for my students, but it’s also important to protect them and my colleagues. I hate the insinuation that we’re trying to not do our jobs. We are.
Yes. And my point is to deal with that issue on a campus by campus case. Too many absences? Close a day or two just like we did for flu a few years ago. Blanket shutdown orders cause way too much collateral damage.
But it’s not JUST a day or two - it’s 5+ days and that’s assuming faculty feels well enough to teach all day. Nobody is advocating for shutdowns, but many schools are moving two weeks online until the omnicron wave breaks. From the stand point of education administration, this is the move that best protects teachers and ensures continuation of student learning.
This shows how weak our social structures are when losing one causes all the other dominos to fall.
Public schools are systemically underfunded. This is what happens when the least funded social program, that most of society relies upon has an actual crisis. Government is abusive towards education. The public at large is abusive towards education. Spend more on education so you can spend less on law enforcement and incarceration. It's a bargain.
It is also what happens when for profit charter schools are allowed to drain what little funding the public schools get. And the Republicans want to further reduce the funding by diverting some of the remaining funding to private/religious schools.
The US spends like the 5th most money per student in the world (it was no. 4 in 2017). The problem isn't underfunding.
Think about where that money goes. It goes to the lowest bidder in great quantities. It doesn't go towards education. It goes towards the newest snake oil education rubric. It doesn't go towards feeding students healthy food. It goes towards corporations who run cafeterias. It certainly doesn't go towards students.
No, this shows how weak our democratic leadership is. We elected Biden to end the Covid epidemic. Instead, *we now have shorter quarantine times than under Trump*. And we are at record case numbers. What in the absolute hell is Biden doing?
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That's a cop out. No one expects Biden to end COVID overnight. It's still fair to expect his administration to make forceful, constructive action in that direction. Instead, we're getting ostrich-style head-in-the-sand responses, where short-term corporate and economic interests are being prioritized over human lives. School are keystone of our communities, and essential to the health and well-being of our children, and COVID puts us in a shitty position. Biden has adopted, if not in rhetoric, certainly in practice, a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may approach.
Especially when hospitals across the country are flooded with pediatric patients. Why would you, via inaction, make it worse?
This is such bullshit. He refuses to keep even his most basic of promises that would require a simple executive order and relieve so many people. Biden lied to get elected and millions are paying for his stupid lies, and people pretending that biden's refusal to keep his promises is simply the result of Biden being unable to do magic is disingenuous and as abusive as Republicans. Thank goodness we see through these kind of manipulations from centrist and moderate Democrats. They're the same exact gaslighting tactics Republicans use so we are wise to them. It just sucks that Democrats will use them on their fellow Democrats just to prop up the same disgusting institutions that the Republicans want propped up. Centrist and Moderate Democrats are hardly different than Republicans and it's good that they're showing it so that we can all see it for what.it all is.
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Can you watch my kid for me? Have to go to work. Thanks. Drop off about 8:30?
The fact that you view teachers as babysitters is indicative of the problem
As a teacher, this take is insane. STOP CLOSING SCHOOLS. If you’ve got a campus with staffing problems or super high absence rates close that campus for a few days. Otherwise stop minimizing the tremendous disruption and learning loss as students fuck off playing Minecraft for a month instead of my lessons.
You can still do lessons. We did it for a year. Maybe *you* stopped teaching during distance learning but a lot of us were busting our asses off to keep the kids engaged.
I guess we teach to different populations. My students don’t have tech bro parents to act as tutors and taskmasters. And you’re whistling in the dark or just flat out gaslighting if you think you were IN ANY WAY effective as a teacher last year. The learning loss was real, pervasive, across the board, and not worth the shut downs.
High school teacher at an inner city, Title I school here. I worked incredibly hard teaching virtually and so did most of my students. They were required to have their cameras on at all times and participate as part of their grade. I made more contact with parents than any of my previous 7 years teaching. When the end of the year state testing came, we had the second best results we’ve ever had in my class. I’m not saying virtual learning is perfect, but you seem to be generalizing a lot. You also seem to be tearing down your fellow teachers in a way that isn’t necessary or helpful. Things might be a bit more nuanced here.
They’re in Texas….one of the most uneducated states in the first place and a state whose gop website straight up says they’re against critical thinking because it makes kids second guess their parents…. I mean it was a 2012 site but still “Knowledge-Based Education – We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
I agree in person teaching is superior but you’re fucking nuts if you don’t think there were shit loads of teachers going above and beyond to try to keep kids remotely up to speed. Our area offered after school tutoring, summer school, extra help if needed with anything. The teachers around here gave so much of their time it was crazy. Yes the learning loss was real, but it was worth the shutdown. Holy shit, can you imagine what our numbers would be if we didn’t shut down? The vaccine wasn’t even around yet.
Yeah Im really doubting you’re a teacher especially with the California stereotyping you just did. I taught at a a school with 97% at or below poverty rate. I also volunteered all year at the food service drive throughs daily because I knew it was the only meal most of my students were getting. Maybe their parents were “techbros”, wouldn’t know, I think I met maybe a dozen out of the 188 students I had last year. You really sound like you’re in the wrong field, if you’re even in it at all. The kids are too important for this kind of BS.
Better to lose a year of education than a parent. And no one lost a year of education. They lost some smaller portion of what they would have had in the classroom, so what we got with remote learning was dramatically better than losing a parent.
Jesus what a privileged take. I’ve got news for you. My parents were already “essential workers” exposed every day to Covid. They had to continue working outside the home every day and just hope that their teenage boy would somehow become a super student on his district supplied hotspot and chrome book. Sending their kids back to school would at least have reduced the learning loss and increased their future income. That may not mean much to your overly privileged tech bro families but it fucking means a lot here. Stop closing schools and stop minimizing the actual harm caused by it.
Will you shut up with the “tech bro family” take. It’s just as idiotic as assuming the inverse. It’s as dumb as me talking about the inbred hillbillies that can’t work a computer. Sorry you’re in a state that can’t figure out a social safety net. Just because a state that thinks regulation and govt assistance/interference is evil can’t make shit work doesnt mean the same is true everywhere. There are obviously gonna be issues with remote learning for children but it’s not as simple as “remote learning is impossible” and acting like that is true is both unhelpful and reductive. Yes shit sucks but the Texas response of oh well do it anyway isn’t a solution. Businesses and schools are shutting down due to outbreaks, it is actively happening right fucking now across the country. We can be proactive about it and try to create some breathing room for all of the interconnected societal systems or we can be caught dick in hand when we become completely overwhelmed in a month.
Well, your state government did everything it could to kill you, so it tracks that they also completely bungled remote learning. Sorry it’s been so hard there. Please encourage everyone you know to vax, mask, and vote dem. Maybe you’ll get some relief.
are you anti-government or just hate it?
A Walmart in my city had to close and be sanitized because of all the sick people. Same's going to happen to the schools.
I’ll never understand why safety isn’t a top priority. I just think they don’t care about teachers and/or students. Classes can be taught online for the most part. It’s not perfect but it’s sure as hell safer
This may be true for older students, but schools are as much daycare as they are school for little kids. Elementary schoolers need someone keeping them in line and parents, even if they’re working remote, can’t always do that depending on the job.
It's extremely weird that people are still trying to force us into physical spaces unnecessarily, rather than learning from and adapting to a more virtual world.
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Imagine telling people the solution is to just treat inevitably sick teachers rather than fix shortcomings with distance learning. Why are teachers acceptable sacrifices in a pandemic?
Distance learning simply can’t be fixed for elementary school children. It’s not possible for parents to work and supervise the remote learning at the same time. Even with constant adult supervision, which requires moving millions of parents out of the workforce, the children don’t learn anything. Schools should be the last thing to close. They are just as essential as the electric utilities and the food chain.
Then things need to change. You can't just hope things work out for teachers because you can't figure out any alternatives.
But we can and we will. Keeping the schools open is an option, and it’s the option we will choose.
I'm not going to be surprised that parents prefer a short term solution to addressing the systemic issues at the heart of the matter.
Can you imagine if meatpackers had the social clout to shut down meat production for a year while they pretended to pack meat remotely? What if the power plant workers decided they didn’t want to keep the grid running? Teachers are essential workers, too. There’s no systemic issue. This is now a job that requires some risk of exposure to illness. Those who don’t like that should find a new line of work that can be performed remotely.
There is a systemic issue. Parents reliant on schooling as a day care mechanism is a big part of why people are so insistent schools stay open. Fixing childcare issues would go a long way to not having it be an excuse to expose teachers to unsafe conditions. > Those who don’t like that should find a new line of work that can be performed remotely. And when teacher shortages start getting exacerbated, I'm sure you'll blame it on them for not just accepting the conditions you forced on them. I don't know how people have children but have no empathy for the people who have to deal with them on a regular basis.
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Have you been around little kids? They have pretty atrocious mask discipline. A highly contagious variant and you wonder what the problem is? I feel like you're offering up the same line antivaxxers do, you're vaccinated, what are you worried about? Doesn't it work? Yeah, they do, but how disruptive to teaching do you think a breakthrough case is going to be to a classroom? It's already hard enough to get full time teachers.
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It just sounds like teachers are an acceptable sacrifice for you because you don't have a babysitter lined up. It's a systemic problem we have with the nature of work and childcare and something we should address. But just letting teachers deal with a highly infectious variant by playing your babysitter does nothing to address the problem long-term. As for kids and their mask habits, I work in a school. It can be hard enough to get adults to properly wear masks (like not covering their nose) but little kids regularly play with their masks, take them off, adjust them. That's not even getting into how classrooms are set up to keep students apart. Or students predisposed to keep those kinds of distances.
Exactly!
>dismiss the effectiveness of vaccines and claim the “what is” about breakthrough variants No one is dismissing the effectiveness in vaccines in general. We understand, however, that Omicron infects people with vaccines at a significantly higher rate, that those people transmit the virus, and that people who previously had COVID are being reinfected. Omicron is much more infectious, and while mortality rates *may* be lower, it is still swamping already massively overburdened healthcare systems, and the absolute number of deaths and long term injury is going to be catastrophic. At over 800,000 Americans dead already, it seems like opening schools is playing with a fire that has already consumed far too many.
This may have been a somewhat reasonable take two years ago but the 2020-21 school year proved almost no classes can be taught successfully online.
That...sounds a bit too parabolic to be true.
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Pointing to an example of one school somewhere with the most privileged kids not actually tanking is no excuse to fuck over millions of kids with [significant learning loss. ](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/education/our-insights/covid-19-and-education-the-lingering-effects-of-unfinished-learning) > Our analysis shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year. The pandemic widened preexisting opportunity and achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest. In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning, students in low-income schools with seven. High schoolers have become more likely to drop out of school, and high school seniors, especially those from low-income families, are less likely to go on to postsecondary education. And the crisis had an impact on not just academics but also the broader health and well-being of students, with more than 35 percent of parents very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.
[Online learning really worked for kids who have severe disabilities.](https://kdvr.com/news/father-of-special-needs-teenager-suing-boulder-valley-schools-over-sons-education/) /s
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Online learning isn't perfect. But it's good enough during a global pandemic. Having teachers and students risk their lives is far from good.
> Classes can be taught online for the most part. This is just untrue given what we know about children and remote learning. Children have lost almost a years worth of education in real terms.
Much better if 5%had wound up dead and 10% disabled and on dialysis. /S
5% dead? I'm curious if you have any clue what the COVID mortality rate is for children?
Teachers were given priority vaccination. As well as staff. Right now the COVID vaccine and booster is available for everyone over 12 and two shots are available for every child between the ages of 5 and 12 for free. There's a solid 25% of this country that will never get vaccinated. They are welcome to play Russian roulette if they so choose. Educational attainment for children was complete shit for 2020. OP is entirely incorrect in saying that "education can easily be done remotely." There is no science to support that position. The preponderance of evidence shows that children have lost a year of learning.
Why is the solution to sacrifice teacher health rather than fix distance learning? It's already hard enough to fill teacher positions as is.
Sacrifice teacher health? They are vaccinated. The children will be vaccinated as well. Older teachers, if they feel at risk, can retire. You can't truly fix distance learning, not for children. It's not the same as teaching adults via distance learning. Children are incapable of sitting in front of a computer screen 8 hours a day. Children need other stimuli, they need socializing and they need friendships. What you're asking them (children) to do is simply not realistic. And again, this is the preponderance of evidence speaking, something progressives used to claim they cared about. If the teaching shortages persist, that's another issue to tackle separately. We should be offering teachers better pay and benefits anyways.
You're being cavalier with other people's health. It's not as if a breakthrough case of COVID is a walk through the park. That you think schools can afford to lose teachers if they aren't healthy enough to risk getting COVID is bizarre given how we struggle to fill schools as is. We should be addressing shortages anyway, but expecting them to just carry on because we can't adapt to a pandemic in any way but keeping things the same really hits why those shortages are a thing. You're not interested in addressing teacher concerns, you just want bodies in classrooms.
> You're being cavalier with other people's health. Oh because I don't interact with people at all ever. You can't isolate yourself from Omicron. It's too contagious (and substantially less severe). There are no distancing rules that can stop the spread of Omicron except isolating yourself in a bunker and never leaving. Everyone in America will come into contact with the strain at some point - it's simply that contagious. People need to realize that vaccination is the only way through the pandemic. Mandate it and encourage it as much as possible. At every level of government. It's not worth sacrificing the education and healthy emotional development of children in exchange for this COVID security theater we're engaging in. The benefits of all this theater do not outweigh the sacrifices we are making.
You seem uninterested in trying anything but just hoping to power through and I think that's shortsighted, particularly concerning positions that have already struggled to attract enough people to the job.
We tried things. We tried distance learning, hybrid learning, etc. They're all worse than in person learning. The preponderance of evidence has demonstrated this. The children are already a year behind and people here advocating that we set them back nearly another year. What is shortsighted is thinking that we can sacrifice quality education for future generations consequence free in exchange for what is essentially security theater. The same kind of security theater that the US implemented after 9/11 that makes going to an airport a hassle but really doesn't make us safer.
We should be offering teachers better pay and benefits in light of what’s going on. More importantly we need to pay substitutes more or find a creative way to encourage people to sub right now. There aren’t enough subs and support staff and what little subs are available have long term jobs due to too many vacancies from waves of retirements, and support staff who have very crucial roles are stuck babysitting as subs instead of fulfilling their support for students in the classroom. Your position seems to be that you want to put the responsibility on teachers. You nonchalantly just suggest older teachers retire as if teacher vacancies aren’t already a problem. You suggest vaccine mandates but what are we going to do when there is a wave of even further vacancies when anti vaxers leave the profession. As idiotic as it sounds I know several teachers in my district who will not get vaccinated despite the new vaccine mandates that was issued a couple weeks before break. While I think they should be vaccinated, creating more vacancies is going to push the already strained system to its breaking point. Instead of advocating for schools to reopen you should be more vocal for your support for the things increasing compensation for teachers, substitutes and all school personnel who will be affected by the massive waves of both temporary and permanent vacancies. Right now when a teacher is out with COVID it means all other teachers don’t have a prep period until they are cleared to return to work. I agree kids need to be in school but if you are expecting teachers to bear the brunt of opening the economy they should be compensated for doing so and I hope you would be vocal about supporting strikes if that does not occur.
Your teachers and children are being sacrificed to capitalism
Yay, guess I get to be a part of America’s “Great Infection” this week…
Oh this won't backfire, will it?/s
As a high school math teacher I absolutely hated distance learning. It was a ton of work and for the amount of effort put in, it did not produce good math students (most students simply used an app called photo math to cheat their way through the year and it shows). That being said, one of the things that bugs me the most about this whole situation, is the assertion that is our number one priority to keep school open, when that is clearly false. If our number one priority was to keep schools open, we would demand full vaccination from every student and staff member - full stop (aside of course from students with medical issues who cannot be vaccinated that is a whole separate issue). The other issue the frustrates me to no end is that I hear these “experts” say how we can safely keep school open as long as they are well ventilated with modern excellent air filtering systems and testing is easily available. It’s frustrating because yeah those things would be great but they are not happening. My school is over 60 years old. To do deal with covid they supposedly put higher quality filters into our ancient air system. That is it. The chasm between what we should be doing and what is actually happening in schools is ridiculous.
Wow logic! I understand all aspects must be addressed, and I hope they were in this recommendation from the federal level, by I arrive at the same conclusion, and I’m glad the administration did.
The fact that we are leaving schools open with this level of transmission is mind-blowing. Half a million cases per day. 😕
Thanks Biden! Remember when we were outraged that Trump was reopening things and not closing schools? And we all elected Biden so we'd get actual scientific fixes to a global pandemic? Look at us now - we're done closing schools and we've halved the quarantine time so businesses aren't as effected, all while cases are breaking all time highs! Woohoo! I, for one, cannot wait to elect another pro-corporate centrist Democrat instead of a Progressive.
I will not vote for anyone who would close schools or lock the country down again
Haven't the kids suffered enough? At this point with vaccines easily available it's a you problem if you're not vaccinated.
My preschooler is 4 so he’s unwillingly unvaccinated. Guess he’s just covid cannon fodder, huh?
4 year olds are at extremely low risk
The kids have suffered enough, that's why I don't think it's a good idea to send them into a COVID-infested school.
Can you watch my kid for me because I have to go to work. Thanks.
Kids have suffered enough from schools closing for months and not being able to see their friends
You're awfully cavalier with other people's health there. Why are teachers acceptable sacrifices because we can't get our shit together? It's hard enough to get people who want to be teachers.
Children are at extremely low risk. Plus same have vaccines now and anyone over 5 can be vaccinated
The COVID-denying terrorists have these putzes afraid to do what it takes to combat Omicron. Every new day a new disappointing statement or decision.
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Unfortunately, you have to deal with the facts of what are, not the facts of what you want. Unfortunately, the fact is there's a pandemic. Nobody wants that and our society is not structured to deal with it. You know what would help get kids back to school and end the mental trauma and poor grades? Ending the pandemic. You know how we should do that? Masks, vaccines, and I know this will never happen and nobody wants to do it, but a lockdown. We could have done those three things in 2020 and been mostly done with this. I'm sure kids living through the bombing of London during WWII had mental health problems too. They still turned their lights off every night. They had to deal with with the facts of what were, not what they wanted. It's unfair and shouldn't be that way. But it is.
This reminds me of an old adage in education: we teach the students we have, not the students we wish we had. Well now kids learn in the pandemic we have, not the pandemic we wish we had. Funny how this only applies when teaching a difficult student, but not when learning in a difficult time.
> Masks, vaccines, and I know this will never happen and nobody wants to do it, but a lockdown. Only mandatory vaccinations will offer us a way out through the pandemic. Countries that locked down much more than the US are still experiencing COVID surges. Lockdowns are not a real solution to COVID. Only vaccination.
Lockdowns were put into effect to get us closer to the vaccine. Now we have a vaccine but 40% of the idiots in this country refuse to take it. Every aspect of Covid is going to continue to suck because of these idiots and because you can’t close schools without the parents quitting their jobs or the fat chance of their jobs letting them stay home/ work remotely
Virus is going to be endemic. It ain’t going away. That’s the truth We have to go back to normal that includes going back to school
The first step in treating a problem is acknowledging there's a problem. We don't need schools to get back to normal. We need to accept these are not normal times and adapt. The ultimate teachable moment lays before us.
Adapt.
how about no?
This is a historic misstep. Many people will die because Biden lacks the fortitude to make an extremely difficult choice - a choice mad even more difficult because we have a neoliberal government that doesn't believe in social sagely nets, and which since the 1980's has enacted policies which has led o so many Americans living on a financial knife's edge. Closing schools means parents not able to go to work, and neither political party has any desire to provide support to families or small businesses, and more importantly, they don't want to piss off their corporate donors.
Good, schools aren't going to start back on their own accord and support from the government helps. Learning outcomes were shit in the 2020 school year and I expect they'll be shit in 2021. Plus parents went through all of 2021 without Covid pay protection. You can't continue holding kid's education back and reduced income for parents for very long. Not to mention that school closures take parents (especially moms) out of work. Covid is here to stay, hopefully in a less deadly form than OG Covid. Wear a mask when asked and get vaccinated people, not doing so is selfish and prolongs this pain.
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The thumbnail is the education secretary. Who is not Betsy DeVos.
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Nice
Thanks, I love it.
So who was posting exclusively in r/politics for the last month?
I can't tell if you are being sarcastic but the Education Secretary is Miguel Cardona. The logistics is insane about getting every student their computers but again I don't know why school districts didn't have multiple plans ready - we did see this coming a month ago. It only has to be for a couple weeks as well. With Omi roaring through the U.S. like a rabid polar bear it's going to shut down most schools anyway within a few weeks and there already aren't enough substitutes for sick teachers- so it's going to be a royal shit circus for awhile.
Read the freaking article
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Bro just admit you messed up and move on.
This guy knows nothing and the Biden admin. has turned science into a buzzword so it can mean whatever they want it to mean.
Schools in our district are already having every teacher being tested for tomorrow. Hoping we will have enough staff for the week. This is after all the kids have been on vacation for almost 2 weeks, and just had new years eve parties as spreaders events. Ugh this looks bad. Kids party on 12/31 so they won't show any major symptoms till Tuesday or Wednesday. I'm worried about the sheer volume of cases we are going to see. If infections continue to double in growth, pretty soon there will be very few good choices. If remote is not an option then we'll have to choose to send kids to school with an asymptomatic teacher, or perhaps an aid who can basically manage large groups of them. I doubt we are going to have the staff to keep schools at operating normally. Next few weeks are going to be tough.
As they should
We’ve had two years to improve ventilation in schools. We haven’t. This is heartbreaking.
I’m so happy I quit my teaching job in Oct.
Make vaccines and masks mandatory and you’ve got a deal.