Off the Top of My Head: Reopening schools

I am grateful the governor has pushed back in-school openings. And, I am grateful schools are examining alternative forms of learning. But, in the many plans and proposals I have read about how to return children to the classroom, I have yet to see any mention of increasing teacher or school staff pay, or adding more staff.

Are we going to be asking the teachers to take children’s temperatures everyday before class? What if a child has a high temperature, will the other kids have to quarantine? What if a teacher gets sick? Will we have enough substitute teachers to fill the positions? Who would want to voluntarily put themselves into an incubator of germs? Even without a pandemic, schools are notorious for spreading germs.
Many parents depend on school to serve as childcare. We have seen the difficult adjustments needed in keeping parents and children at home. If you are a parent still working or who will be required to return to work, what will happen with your children?  You want your child to be cared for, but at what risk? Maybe instead of opening schools we could first focus on safer out of home childcare. That way there could be a focus on safety first without the adult having to be concerned with teaching lessons.
By now, we who can think know that social distancing and wearing masks helps contain the virus. Yet, it is difficult to imagine school children social distancing. I have never seen a group of small children that didn’t have at least some of the kids pushing and pulling and grabbing at each other. It is just hard to imagine young kids social distancing. As for the older students, we’ve already seen that many of the young think they are invincible. They have no fear of the virus and they don’t seem to understand or care that they could spread that virus to others.
I think if we were willing to spend the money we could create learning environments that include a good combination of in-school social distancing and virtual learning. Maybe some school districts have but I get the impression that many school districts just kept hoping the virus would go away by the beginning of the school year. Well, it hasn’t.
I have seen across the country school boards having virtual meetings to discuss if students should return to the classroom. That is wrong. If the school board can’t meet in-person how can they possibly suggest that students should go back to the classroom?
And, if I read another word about how returning kids to school is good for the economy my head will explode. How does anyone with a conscience make a statement like that? Are we now making sacrifices of our children to the great god of capitalism?
If we as a country have the money to support wars all across the globe, then we have the money to keep everyone here safe and healthy.
If this pandemic chaos hasn’t proven how important universal healthcare is, nothing will. We have the money, we simply choose not to use it to help our own citizens.
We need change. We need to redirect our wealth to help our own people. We can find money to support armed forces to beat down protesters in Portland or keep children in cages at the border but we can’t find money to pay teachers more, ridiculous. How do we send children back to school when the majority of the population doesn’t feel safe shopping in a grocery store?
 
 
Gabriel A. Fraire has been a writer more than 45 years. He can be reached through his website at: www.gabrielfraire.com