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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And to give a different perspective, I think people who can't understand why in-person school FOR CHILDREN should be prioritized OVER BARS BEING OPEN have no sense of the importance of caring for children in our society (which we generally do a crap job of).

Had there been an option to vote for bars closed, retail and restaurants limited to curbside pickup only, financial support to people whose jobs dried up, and some form of in-person schooling, especially for groups that needed it most, I'd have been right there.

No one here is arguing that society/government prioritized the right things, just that certain actions weren't ours to approve or deny, APS made some defensible decisions.

This is Virginia, and this is the U.S. under a delusional, Trump-based government. This is the result.

I'd rather be in New Zealand/Aotearoa

Yeah, I didn’t see many parents loudly yelling to keep closing schools *also* saying the bars and restaurants needed to close. They could have advocated or even understood what the trade-off was. Nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And to give a different perspective, I think people who can't understand why in-person school FOR CHILDREN should be prioritized OVER BARS BEING OPEN have no sense of the importance of caring for children in our society (which we generally do a crap job of).

Had there been an option to vote for bars closed, retail and restaurants limited to curbside pickup only, financial support to people whose jobs dried up, and some form of in-person schooling, especially for groups that needed it most, I'd have been right there.

No one here is arguing that society/government prioritized the right things, just that certain actions weren't ours to approve or deny, APS made some defensible decisions.

This is Virginia, and this is the U.S. under a delusional, Trump-based government. This is the result.

I'd rather be in New Zealand/Aotearoa

Yeah, I didn’t see many parents loudly yelling to keep closing schools *also* saying the bars and restaurants needed to close. They could have advocated or even understood what the trade-off was. Nope.

Or perhaps they were and you just weren't privy to that advocacy, which would have had to occur at the state level. Just because *you* didn't know about it doesn't mean it wasn't happening.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'll be so glad come fall when all these whiny teachers (and also all my whiny co-workers) get forced back into the office full time. Free ride is over folks!

F*** off with this noise. Nobody had a “free ride” this year. Especially not parents OR teachers.

Also, a lot of employers are not requiring their staff to return to the office, ever. We’re probably moving away to a LCOL area due to this new freedom. Sucks to be you, I guess, chained to life so miserable that you want everyone else to be just as miserable.

Come on. Plenty of white collar workers did have basically a free ride this year. People have been admitting it all over other forums.

Raises her hand. Work has been a joke this year. My company has been great in letting people work from home but no one is actually doing their real job. What we are doing from home is a joke. I am not complaining, I appreciate having a job and being able to pay my bills, but this year has not been a hard one for us. I think most parents in this position have not said much here because there are so many other parents who are not in that position and it would be tone deaf to say this in threads. I love it when I am allowed to go into the building and get real work done, I have been asking to do that as much as possible, because I prefer to feel like I am working for my money then chilling at home.

There are plenty of parents not in that boat. There are plenty of parents who have had to make working from home work. And many of the parents I know in that position bemoan that their bosses think that they should be available for a far larger amount of time because they are a thome and should be reachable. The idea of set hours is pretty much gone.

And some jobs have been understanding about parents needing to flex hours because of kids needing help for virtual learning and other jobs have not been flexible. Meetings are held at the same time and people have to be there.

It has been a mixed bag for parents. I think the number of white collar workers coasting is actually pretty small but we are out there. I don't see the need to raise my hand in a topic where parents are actively trying to make a more demanding job and virtual learning work, it seems tone deaf.

For every person who's work was slow this year, there are those of us who ended up working many many more hours than ever to assist with the response to the pandemic and short staffing. My work went from 45 hours a week to 70+ hours. It hasn't slowed down since last March and I'm beyond burned out. My 4 yo's school closed and still hasn't reopened. My 7yo has really struggled with distance learning. My husband works out of the house so virtual learning falls entirely on my shoulders, plus home schooling the 4 yo so she learns at least something before kindergarten.

We did end up hiring a college student to help because I can't work and watch the 4 yo, but her level of maturity is low and she needs me to constantly answer questions and remind her what needs to be done. I also have to leave work calls regularly when my 7 yo melts down from DL. Care options are very limited.

This year has been awful and I have a lot of resentment for my 7 yo's teachers. I've asked for reasonable help when my kid is struggling and melting down and frustrated and not learning and have gotten zero support. None at all. They seem to resent this year so much that they are refusing to do anything but the bare minimum (or less if they can get away with it).

Or maybe your teachers are dealing with the same things in their households and doing the best they can.

Notice I said reasonable requests. These weren't big asks, but the answer was always "you're on your own."

For example:

My kid is struggling to pick books that are the right reading level. Can you make some suggestions? Answer: no. Answer: YES. Use the Scholastic Lexile Bookfinder tool. This isn't that hard.

My kid is melting down from trying to type fractions into Seesaw. Can she do this assignment on paper? Answer: no. Answer: YES. Write the question on the sheet of paper and then write the answer on the sheet of paper. Scan the sheet of paper and send it to the teacher.

My kid is melting down from trying to arrange tiny boxes for math assignments in Seesaw, as they keep resizing and reformatting. Even I find it hard to manipulate. These assignments keep coming up and she's really frustrated. Do you have any suggestions? Answer: no. Answer: YES. Move from the iPad to a desktop AND/OR call HelpDesk.

My kid can't get the testing app to work. It's showing really small print that she can't read. What should we do? Answer: Just read silently whenever we use the app. She just won't get test scores this year. Answer: YES. Call HelpDesk.

None of these are above and beyond. They're all part of delivering distance education to a 7 yo.

I've put my responses in BOLD. Your give up attitude is the biggest part of your kid's problem imo.
-Signed, another Parent

[Anonymous]

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In short, I really think you guys are kind of the worst: a mix of sanctimony and hypocrisy that can't seem to make the obvious connections between the effects that what you are asking for would have on other people in our area. Nobody in my family died, you say, as a reason why increasing Arlington's mortality rate would be okay by you. You are saying that your kid's education is more important than a less fortunate kid's parents. Oh, north arlington, my home, what a huge collection of douchebags we all are, I hope we can all agree on that.

Hard agree on all of this, including the important douchebag issue.

You are my people, and I am yours. Not sure what we do about our neighbors, who I think often have jobs that require analytical skills but who displayed roughly none of them when it came to figuring out how to get people *enough* of what they needed during a pandemic, rather than everything they wanted, including having school be the way it was a couple of years earlier, when they were complaining about different stuff.

And to give a different perspective, I think people who can't understand why in-person school FOR CHILDREN should be prioritized OVER BARS BEING OPEN have no sense of the importance of caring for children in our society (which we generally do a crap job of). My kids are fine, you say, as a justification for why no child should have even the *option* for in-person school. Remember, no one was *forcing* *all* children back into the classroom. We were asking for the *option*.

But hey, I'm just someone who has expertise in child development, exposure to trauma/stress in early life and associated long-term consequences, and mental health. I'm not capable of braying "kids are resilient" and going about my day.

In case you haven't noticed, the ARLINGTON SCHOOL BOARD is not the entity that is making decisions about bars and restaurants. If Duran were, I'm sure he'd be closing those in favor of having schools open. But this is not the way local government's work. I understand that's not going to stop you from making up, in your own head, a scenario where everything going on in Arlington is Duran's fault.

I don't need you to hammer your perspective at again. You have explained your perspective to me over and over, and I have explained mine to you. Here we go:

One side: APS is useless, this lack of school has taken a higher toll on kids than anyone even knows yet, my kids are suffering mentally and academically, other areas seemed to handle this much better than Arlington did, why aren't you more upset?

The other side: Pandemics aren't normal, better alive and behind or sick than have lots more dead people which full time school would have caused, the pandemic is having a larger effect on the poor, non-white areas of Arlington that you care less about.

Your side doesn't think that it was reasonable to believe that keeping schools open would have led to a greater loss of life, and doesn't think that tradeoff was worth it in the face of the educational consequences you see now. And even if you might have seen some benefit to that early on, you think the school board should have acted, when it seemed like covid was getting more under control, to allow younger kids to go back to full time school this year, even if some kids still stayed home.

I have heard you and I while yes, in the best of all possible worlds, it would have been better if younger kids could have gone to school for more days, I understand how we got what we got -- surely it's better that we protected LIFE over education. For the record, my order is: LIFE > EDUCATION > BARS

Not sure whether you have seen the Arlington County Dashboard maps on covid stats both by zip code and by race/ethnicity, but eyeballing them it's clear that twice as many people died from Covid in parts of south arlington vs. north, and also that covid hit Arlington hispanics about twice as hard as white people. So I'm sorry you and your child have had a hard time with remote learning, but other families actually have had it worse. "Just let them stay home then" you will certainly say. And that is where I turn back to my douchebag argument.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not sure whether you have seen the Arlington County Dashboard maps on covid stats both by zip code and by race/ethnicity, but eyeballing them it's clear that twice as many people died from Covid in parts of south arlington vs. north, and also that covid hit Arlington hispanics about twice as hard as white people. So I'm sorry you and your child have had a hard time with remote learning, but other families actually have had it worse. "Just let them stay home then" you will certainly say. And that is where I turn back to my douchebag argument.

Fairfax and Loudoun have similar Hispanic populations percentage wise (and greater numbers wise) and have done a much better job with RTS. Good leadership can balance multiple things at the same time. It's not all or nothing.

[Anonymous]

No, it was the right call.