NYT and school closures
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Anonymous
What do you want them to do? Since they did the best they could do you think there's no discussion to be had and no changes necessary? Because if we're not on the same page, no point in further discussing. |
Anonymous
And then what? Who will backfill those positions? What do you want their replacements to do? |
Anonymous
How they address a pandemic is different than how we get kids back on track. Two different problems that require different solutions. Schools/kids currently need help. That’s the priority at the moment. Wouldn’t you agree? |
Anonymous
I can only speak to my personal experience, but I think that a fundamental sense of community and "we're in this together" was broken during Covid and has not been repaired. I don't think we can really do anything until we fix that. Families, at worst, feel that they were abandoned by a public school system they'd previously believed was one the rare public supports for families (as a form of education, childcare, and community and connection) that would be a constant. Teachers, at worst, feel that families were trying to sacrifice their well being for the sake of babysitting. Until you can have a frank conversation with your school community about why decisions were made regarding reopening that will address this loss of trust, I think things will stay broken. When families don't feel that the school cares about their kids well being, or the overall well being of the family, they are unlikely to care about things like meeting attendance targets, improving test scores, raising money for extras to support teachers, etc. And when teachers think families don't care about their health or well being, they are unlikely to invest in the kind of community building that makes schools the kind of place families are excited to send their kids. It will always be a battle. Both sides have points, by the way. I actually think it's a problem that there was never a true airing of grievances and a chance to come together. We just wallpapered over those wounds and "moved on." But as threads like this show, that didn't work so well. You can ask people to pretend everything is fine but you can't make them actually feel fine. |
Anonymous
And then what? Who will backfill those positions? PLENTY OF BETTER QUALIFIED PEOPLE OUT THERE -- YOU HIRE THEM. And then what? THEY FOCUS ON THEIR JOB: EDUCATING CHILDREN. |
Anonymous
NP. Those people are elected school board officials. Voters are free to fire them if they want. If the voters choose not to, we need to move on to the next problem. |
Anonymous
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest |
Anonymous
Ferebee et al were everything except elected. |
Anonymous
Huh? That’s been discussed extensively in most school communities. There can be no consensus when some people are irrational and beating a dead horse will never become productive. Nobody thinks “everything is fine”. Most people just want to address the real issues in the schools today. |
Anonymous
Ferebee answes to the Mayor who is elected and was relected by a public that had plenty of time to consider her handling of COVID closures. I'm not someone who thought schools should close, but I also understand that if the people keep reelecting the people who made that decision my position is probably in the minority locally and I should move on. |
Anonymous
I'm a DP, and don't think firing everyone is the solution. People complaining about public health decisions need to reframe this discussion. Educators aren't and never were public health experts; those public health decisions are past history. We can't change them. However, I would like to hear the following statements addressed so that we can figure out why those providing their "expert" opinions about education (not health issues, but education) were so wrong: 1) Virtual learning is almost as good as in-person; 2) There is no such thing as learning loss (if that's true, are we realigning curriculum to account for missed learning?); 3) If there are any setbacks from closures (and the pandemic itself), we know what to do to address them quickly (apparently not, or at least the resources aren't there to address them, so perhaps the assurances should have come with caveats and specifics); 4) Kids are resilient; they will bounce back from this quickly. All of these expert statements turned out to be wrong. Why? We should ask questions about the claims made during those discussions based on educator expertise and try to understand what they got wrong and whether there are people who are more knowledgeable about education and child development who can offer some solutions that are more than "give us more money because we are experts and know what to do." To be clear, I'm not finding fault with individual teachers, but if professed experts don't understand why their assurances decision makers did not pan out and aren't willing to evaluate why their assumptions were faulty, all the money in the world won't help. |
Anonymous
Where are all of these qualified people? We have teacher shortages all over the country right now. And the current teachers are focused on educating students. |
Anonymous
You do not understand the hiring market for teachers. |
Anonymous
Feel free to move on; others won't until we see accountability and therefore some hope that things will get better. |
Anonymous
Lets take the largest districts near us, how are FCPS, DCPS, MCPS and PGPS addressing the real issues today? Most seem to be going full speed ahead at status quo and pretending school closures never happened |