If you were firmly in the schools should stay closed camp ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mystified by these parents who in one breath are appalled by APS not providing all needed education and services this year and in the next breath are wishing APS had played chicken with the health and safety of Arlingtonians. Sure, that seems like a good calculus.

I can't decide whether these people are real or are just trolling for anti-APE sentiment. Do people really think like this?

I also can't help but notice the large number of complainer posts that are coming during school hours. Seems like you could be doing more for your kids than posting here at this time, but maybe that's a little too hands on for this team. Never change!

+ 1

Of course it would have been better if bars/restaurants closed and schools stayed open.

But that isn't something schools can control so they had to react in the face of very high community spread.

Hilarious that the PP thinks APS could force the hand of the county and force it to close bars. What I don't get is why the ire is focused on APS? Why not focus it on the Trump admin, the state or the county? APS had very little control here and just had to react to bad decisions made higher up.

People are just angry, don't know how governments works and want to blame, blame, blame and complain, complain, complain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No I think APS did a good job trying to balance every different faction's concerns given the information that was available at the time.

I'm glad more people didn't die. I feel bad for the kids who are going through a rough time academically right now, but also feel for the kids who have lost loved ones due to Covid. These academic losses may be felt over the next year or two while parents (hopefully) help kids who are behind catch back up, but the the people who have died from Covid won't be coming back.

Couldn't respond for a while here because I was helping my kid in remote learning. Feel like some of the complaining parents could do more helping and less complaining but ymmv (and it obviously does).

The bolded is such a wildly privileged and out of touch statement. My God. No, those learning losses aren't going to go away. Many kids have permanently left the education system. What a horrific blindness you have.

[Anonymous]

Nah, privileged is saying it's better that more people should have died than I should be inconvenienced to help my kid with virtual school this year, but you do you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nah, privileged is saying it's better that more people should have died than I should be inconvenienced to help my kid with virtual school this year, but you do you.

False choice. The schools that were open this year have proven that they were not major spreaders and did not increase deaths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mystified by these parents who in one breath are appalled by APS not providing all needed education and services this year and in the next breath are wishing APS had played chicken with the health and safety of Arlingtonians. Sure, that seems like a good calculus.

I can't decide whether these people are real or are just trolling for anti-APE sentiment. Do people really think like this?

I also can't help but notice the large number of complainer posts that are coming during school hours. Seems like you could be doing more for your kids than posting here at this time, but maybe that's a little too hands on for this team. Never change!

+ 1

Of course it would have been better if bars/restaurants closed and schools stayed open.

But that isn't something schools can control so they had to react in the face of very high community spread.

Hilarious that the PP thinks APS could force the hand of the county and force it to close bars. What I don't get is why the ire is focused on APS? Why not focus it on the Trump admin, the state or the county? APS had very little control here and just had to react to bad decisions made higher up.

People are just angry, don't know how governments works and want to blame, blame, blame and complain, complain, complain.

You guys know that a lot of us on here are not in APS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nah, privileged is saying it's better that more people should have died than I should be inconvenienced to help my kid with virtual school this year, but you do you.

False choice. The schools that were open this year have proven that they were not major spreaders and did not increase deaths.

Actually, no. A recent nonpartisan study noted that Texas opening schools early wound up increasing the area's cases by 12%, with 40,000 more covid cases happening as a result and 800 more deaths. So your statement above is simply false.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/10/texas-schools-coronavirus-increase-study/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mystified by these parents who in one breath are appalled by APS not providing all needed education and services this year and in the next breath are wishing APS had played chicken with the health and safety of Arlingtonians. Sure, that seems like a good calculus.

I can't decide whether these people are real or are just trolling for anti-APE sentiment. Do people really think like this?

I also can't help but notice the large number of complainer posts that are coming during school hours. Seems like you could be doing more for your kids than posting here at this time, but maybe that's a little too hands on for this team. Never change!

+ 1

Of course it would have been better if bars/restaurants closed and schools stayed open.

But that isn't something schools can control so they had to react in the face of very high community spread.

Hilarious that the PP thinks APS could force the hand of the county and force it to close bars. What I don't get is why the ire is focused on APS? Why not focus it on the Trump admin, the state or the county? APS had very little control here and just had to react to bad decisions made higher up.

People are just angry, don't know how governments works and want to blame, blame, blame and complain, complain, complain.

I don't know if you noticed, but, the administration changed in late January....so, there's been ample time to react and plan without you know who in power.

Separately, schools everywhere opened under the exact same circumstances that Arlington was in--some worse, some better. We have no excuse.

[Anonymous]

Sort of, but if all of those people stopped doing those things we could’ve been done in 6 weeks. Instead it took 16 months. I’m more angry at the selfishness of the average American who let this happen and then walked away saying it was fine because they didn’t die. Well a lot of people did die.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am going to look back on this extra time that I spent with my middle schooler with some fondness later on. I'm glad I had it. This was my kid's first year of middle school. MIDDLE SCHOOL! Do you remember that? It was awful being on the bottom at middle school. Instead of THAT, my kid spent the school year at home with us and went in for the rest a few days a week. We made lunch together, played outside together, I listened in on classes and heard what other kids in his class said about slavery and writing assignments and art class and planets.

I know it was a lot harder on other people and it wasn't all bubblegum and rainbows over here but I will never get this chance again and I'm glad I had this peek into my kid's life. It was hard to fit everything in but I'm so grateful to have had this look into his life. He is a pretty neat guy tbh, I didn't really understand how cool until now.

+1000 I love the extra time with my middle schooler.

My MS did not receive the home-based services specified in his IEP and therefore missed over a year of schooling. Meanwhile I worked full time outside the home. This may have been the year my son went from standard diploma track to certificate track. He's also a pretty neat guy and it's hard seeing him written off at such a young age.

I feel you. My DS deteriorated to the extent that I'm even having to contemplate a self-contained classroom in his future. I'm hopeful we'll pull out of the behavioral tailspin, but it's nowhere near where we were right before schools closed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like APS forgot it's core mission: education. Instead it focused on feeding families and preventing community spread. When truthfully that slack would likely have been picked up by state government, local government and community groups if the schools had just done what they needed to do to educate students.

Listen to how privileged you sound. I am so over the whining of the upper class Open Up Now - APE crowd. So over it. If your complaint is virtual learning, you are very, very privileged. Others died or lost family members.

It's a pandemic. No one had normal. Get over it. Things are getting back to normal and we will get there. Have some patience, grace and empathy.

And for god's sake, stop blaming.

You do realize how privileged you sound, right? Having the means to educate and provide childcare for your children without relying on public schools is absolutely a privilege.

It's a false choice to say that closing schools is better than people dying. What about closing high risk activities like bars, restaurants and gyms and proving support for those displaced workers? That surely would have saved many more lives than closing schools. APS could have forced the community's hand by saying "education is a priority so we're going to open" and then forcing local government to react to lower community spread. Please stop being a lemming and consider what actual leadership would have looked like.

Completely agree. For whatever reason, county/school leadership just implicitly agreed that schools were the one institution that needed to stay closed. And if you disagreed, you were just a Trumper, part of some vile group, anti-science, whatever. And more, if you weren't able to re-arrange your life to accommodate this idiotic decisioning, you were a failure of a parent and you should be questioning your initial decision to have kids in the first place. It's just a batsh@t insane narrative being pushed here.

The reason is that they truly don't care about kids and education. The direction of education (going all the way to college) in this country is to push it more and more onto personal family responsiblity/choice/expense, and disdaining public support for education as a public good. I admit I never would have anticipated that society could just close schools for over a year seemingly without hesitation ... but there you go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nah, privileged is saying it's better that more people should have died than I should be inconvenienced to help my kid with virtual school this year, but you do you.

False choice. The schools that were open this year have proven that they were not major spreaders and did not increase deaths.

Actually, no. A recent nonpartisan study noted that Texas opening schools early wound up increasing the area's cases by 12%, with 40,000 more covid cases happening as a result and 800 more deaths. So your statement above is simply false.

https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/10/texas-schools-coronavirus-increase-study/

Still not relevant here. We have a totally different type of population here, with different ideas on masking and other Covid mitigations. We had different rules for shopping, gyms and sports and dining.

The CDC did a study in Wisconsin from the fall and found it was very very safe.
https://www.wpr.org/cdc-finds-little-evidence-schools-increasing-community-covid-19-transmission

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No I think APS did a good job trying to balance every different faction's concerns given the information that was available at the time.

I'm glad more people didn't die. I feel bad for the kids who are going through a rough time academically right now, but also feel for the kids who have lost loved ones due to Covid. These academic losses may be felt over the next year or two while parents (hopefully) help kids who are behind catch back up, but the the people who have died from Covid won't be coming back.

Couldn't respond for a while here because I was helping my kid in remote learning. Feel like some of the complaining parents could do more helping and less complaining but ymmv (and it obviously does).

The bolded is such a wildly privileged and out of touch statement. My God. No, those learning losses aren't going to go away. Many kids have permanently left the education system. What a horrific blindness you have.

Who left the education system?? Second graders didn’t drop out forever wtf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Mystified by these parents who in one breath are appalled by APS not providing all needed education and services this year and in the next breath are wishing APS had played chicken with the health and safety of Arlingtonians. Sure, that seems like a good calculus.

I can't decide whether these people are real or are just trolling for anti-APE sentiment. Do people really think like this?

I also can't help but notice the large number of complainer posts that are coming during school hours. Seems like you could be doing more for your kids than posting here at this time, but maybe that's a little too hands on for this team. Never change!

x1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mystified by these parents who in one breath are appalled by APS not providing all needed education and services this year and in the next breath are wishing APS had played chicken with the health and safety of Arlingtonians. Sure, that seems like a good calculus.

I can't decide whether these people are real or are just trolling for anti-APE sentiment. Do people really think like this?

I also can't help but notice the large number of complainer posts that are coming during school hours. Seems like you could be doing more for your kids than posting here at this time, but maybe that's a little too hands on for this team. Never change!

x1000

Lots of us moved them to private school. All the time in the world to complain.

[Anonymous]

My second grader joined a gang.