Better than this

Look I’ve heard a lot of things in my time watching public meetings. It really runs the gamut but I was really surprised by one comment during the school board meeting on Tuesday night:

He says heart disease is more of a concern and zoom school makes kids more likely to get heart disease and I’m honestly confused and a little scared of this line of reasoning. #alamtg

— Lauren Do | @laurendo@sfba.social (@laurendo) March 24, 2021

It even had other commenters taking time out of their comment period to essentially say, “dude WTF?” He had a graph print out that he showed to the Zoom audience as well.

But just so you all know before the school district released their data about why elementary school families were not returning to in person instruction, everyone following this debate was confidently told that the reason why was because the schedule was impossible for parents and is there was an extended schedule more people would return. Turns out that gut feeling was probably just indigestion or lactose intolerance because according to the school district survey, it was more complicated than that.

For example 68% of Ruby Bridges families who opted to not return that first time still don’t want to send their kids back. Overall 66% of the folks not opting to return say that it’s because it doesn’t feel safe yet. For Title 1 families that jumps to 68%. Only 21 – 28% (overall – Title 1) said that they weren’t returning because the schedule was insufficient.

The interesting thing is that in light of the district staff pointing out how complex the pieces (aka kids) would need to be shuffled to make extra time work, there are some folks out there who still think they’re being deceived by the district and the solution is simple enough.

Your kid will essentially have a new teacher for 8 weeks to make this adjustment #alamtg pic.twitter.com/OSA9XjQQis

— Lauren Do | @laurendo@sfba.social (@laurendo) March 24, 2021

The solutions being proposed? Add more kids to classrooms via 3 feet separation rather than 6 feet separation, which, look, I’m fine with. If people want to risk their kids becoming vectors have at it. Maybe they’re all vaccinated so they don’t care. I’m not so I kinda care about my kids not bringing COVID home to me.

Other solutions being proposed? Oh just live stream the classroom to all the kids sitting at home. They don’t need interaction with the teacher or other students anyway.

I’ve also seen people suggest that families who opt to stay at home should be pushed into homeschooling or forced into the remote program.

Then there’s the suggestion that a super sized online classroom can be created for those at home too which would have those kids have to (1) change teachers and (2) be in a GIANTIC classroom with no teacher attention.

The reality is we have eight weeks left of school. That’s it. Eight weeks. We’ve done all this *gestures broadly* for more than a year. Surely we can do this for eight weeks without breaking the backs of our teachers, giving our kids unnecessary stress, and creating animosity island wide.

There’s one comment that I found really great from Tuesday night’s meeting, it was a parent who asked us all to really look on the bright side of all of this to figure out what has gone well in all that has gone poorly so that we can learn from it and rather than get back to normal to instead get back to better.

That’s what Alamedans who ask that we center equity in these discussion are asking. How can we learn from all of this, take out the good (like later start time for teenagers) and get back to something better than what we had which has been failing kids least able to afford it.