Tired of people with older kids dominating the conversation around schools and COVID

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you, OP. It’s amazing to me that the same crowd can talk about the vital importance of early intervention and totally abandon children that very age for distance learning. The premise of Head Start rests on the very real science showing young children who fall behind academically are permanently handicapped by their early lack of education. At the very least, we ought to stop pretending distance learning in any way isn’t a major sacrifice made by our youngest students. And the children most affected by it will also be of the most economically vulnerable demographic. But hey! 5 year olds don’t matter! They can watch their 5 Minute Scholastic video and maybe the school will pity them enough to print a few worksheets.

They're not falling behind if everyone is doing it.

No, everyone is not doing it. I live in a UMC neighborhood and most of these children did not miss a beat. Between tutors and private school, some children are advancing even beyond grade-level and will be well-prepared to return to school even a year from now. My child never missed a day of school and continued with an academic summer program. The parents who work full-time and cannot afford a nanny-tutor or a SAHP are really in tough shape and I think it is deeply disturbing to witness the utter lack of consideration for them or their children.

No one has a lack of consideration. It sucks for those parents and those kids. What else is there to say? This is the situation we find ourselves in. Not everyone is in the best position in life.

I say this as someone who went from working at a decent job with enough money for a good life and childcare, to working from home with small children and an infant when the economy tanked in 2008. My younger DC didn't get the perks the older ones did, including good childcare, after school enrichment activities, sports, lessons, organic food, etc. Such is life.

Education is not a perk! We aren’t talking about haircuts or gyms or nail salons, we are talking about real American children who are being denied a right that will affect them for life. The data for young elementary students who start off academically behind is staggering and it is not something people are taking seriously enough.

PK is most certainly not a right.

What are Kindergarten, First and Second Grade?

OP’s kid is 4 years old. She tried to lump that in to K-2, but she isn’t looking for education only free childcare.

It is free child care and that is what she wants. Very easy to teach reading, basic writing and basic math at home. OP doesn't want to.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I probably shouldn't bother but:

There is little evidence that ECE helps kids that much academically. It can have a positive impact on outcomes for kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, but it's not clear if that impact is due to academic gains in PK and Kindergarten, or the fact that public ECE programs enable kids parents to work more, boosting family incomes. Family income is the best indicator of positive academic outcomes (HS graduation rates, college attendance, school attendance, etc.) of known factors.

So yes, DC's PK program was designed to give kids from economically disadvantages a leg up. And certainly every parent who enrolls their kid in PK wants them to advance academically -- it's very normal to want your kid to achieve academically, and PK hopefully does that for many kids. But the program itself was designed to help kids by helping families. See: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/09/26/458208/effects-universal-preschool-washington-d-c/

The availability of childcare in DC is dire. There are not enough daycare slots to go around, and it gets worse every year. The cost of daycare is hugely burdensome on many middle class families and is completely out of reach from poor families. This article is about infant care, which is more expensive than PK care, but is still indicative of childcare costs in DC: https://wtop.com/local/2019/07/dc-ranks-no-1-in-us-for-most-expensive-infant-child-care/

When we priced out daycares back in May, we only found two in our area with open slots (I would be surprised if they are still open). Either would have eaten up my entire take-home pay. Plus, if we enrolled our child and the daycare was forced to shutdown due to Covid, we would need to continue to pay tuition in order to hold our slot and in order to ensure the school could continue to pay its teachers until they reopened. So we would be out my entire paycheck while also providing all childcare ourselves. This is not economically feasible for our family. We also cannot get assistance from our extended family, many of whom are in increasingly precarious financial situations due to loss of work due to the pandemic. We're on our own.

Nannies are more expensive than daycare, so we didn't even look into it. But we also live in an apartment with little room to host another adult during the day. We are open to a nanny share and are actively looking for one, but know from our prior experience when our child was younger that it can be hard to get into one where we can't host the share (having a nanny in our home with our kid would be tight, having multiple kids in our home with a nanny while we both work from home is not feasible).

I am aware if schools opened under a hybrid model, it would only be a couple days a week. That sounds amazing to me right now. I'm not looking for full-time childcare. I'm looking for an ounce of relief. I would take two mornings a week of my kid attending PK in an outdoor classroom that would shutdown if the weather was bad. In fact, I'd happily pay out of pocket for that option if it was available to me. I'm not looking for anyone to solve all my problems -- everyone has problems right now. I am looking for policymakers to consider the dire situation that the parents of young children are in, the financial and mental stress we are under, and the built-in problems in our society that make childcare difficult even during the best of times.

But yes, apparently I'm an entitled, self-involved, hands-off parent who just wants other people (I obviously don't pay taxes) to provide me with free, full-time childcare. Also, I don't care about academics and I'm super lazy and don't want to parent my own kid. Ok.

[Anonymous]

As usual, the virus does not care about any of your arguments - it never went to school and can’t read. Most public schools in the US do not have the resources or configurations to allow for bringing large groups of people into the same room for hours at a time especially when the authorities and communities outside the school are also not taking the steps needed to stamp out a pandemic.

So your intellectual and economic arguments are valid, but irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

OP,


WE HAVE NO CHOICE.

You think the virus cares about educational imperatives?
About people who have lost their jobs?
About starvation or domestic abuse?

The virus needs groups of people to replicate.

We need to not gather until we have a vaccine.

It is devastatingly simple. This is a matter of life and death. Saving lives is more important than education. It is more important than saving jobs. It is more important than food security. Those are terrible sentences I'm typing out! The worst is that they're true.

No amount of your arguing and debating will change these facts. If you have a hard time accepting reality, you should look into therapy to help you deal. I'm sorry for what you're going through. At least you're alive and your loved ones are alive.

[Anonymous]

It's weird how parents who desperately need childcare are being told to suck it up and deal but private companies who employ those parents are not being told the same when their employees' productivity declines. Interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I probably shouldn't bother but:

There is little evidence that ECE helps kids that much academically. It can have a positive impact on outcomes for kids from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, but it's not clear if that impact is due to academic gains in PK and Kindergarten, or the fact that public ECE programs enable kids parents to work more, boosting family incomes. Family income is the best indicator of positive academic outcomes (HS graduation rates, college attendance, school attendance, etc.) of known factors.

So yes, DC's PK program was designed to give kids from economically disadvantages a leg up. And certainly every parent who enrolls their kid in PK wants them to advance academically -- it's very normal to want your kid to achieve academically, and PK hopefully does that for many kids. But the program itself was designed to help kids by helping families. See: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/early-childhood/reports/2018/09/26/458208/effects-universal-preschool-washington-d-c/

The availability of childcare in DC is dire. There are not enough daycare slots to go around, and it gets worse every year. The cost of daycare is hugely burdensome on many middle class families and is completely out of reach from poor families. This article is about infant care, which is more expensive than PK care, but is still indicative of childcare costs in DC: https://wtop.com/local/2019/07/dc-ranks-no-1-in-us-for-most-expensive-infant-child-care/

When we priced out daycares back in May, we only found two in our area with open slots (I would be surprised if they are still open). Either would have eaten up my entire take-home pay. Plus, if we enrolled our child and the daycare was forced to shutdown due to Covid, we would need to continue to pay tuition in order to hold our slot and in order to ensure the school could continue to pay its teachers until they reopened. So we would be out my entire paycheck while also providing all childcare ourselves. This is not economically feasible for our family. We also cannot get assistance from our extended family, many of whom are in increasingly precarious financial situations due to loss of work due to the pandemic. We're on our own.

Nannies are more expensive than daycare, so we didn't even look into it. But we also live in an apartment with little room to host another adult during the day. We are open to a nanny share and are actively looking for one, but know from our prior experience when our child was younger that it can be hard to get into one where we can't host the share (having a nanny in our home with our kid would be tight, having multiple kids in our home with a nanny while we both work from home is not feasible).

I am aware if schools opened under a hybrid model, it would only be a couple days a week. That sounds amazing to me right now. I'm not looking for full-time childcare. I'm looking for an ounce of relief. I would take two mornings a week of my kid attending PK in an outdoor classroom that would shutdown if the weather was bad. In fact, I'd happily pay out of pocket for that option if it was available to me. I'm not looking for anyone to solve all my problems -- everyone has problems right now. I am looking for policymakers to consider the dire situation that the parents of young children are in, the financial and mental stress we are under, and the built-in problems in our society that make childcare difficult even during the best of times.

But yes, apparently I'm an entitled, self-involved, hands-off parent who just wants other people (I obviously don't pay taxes) to provide me with free, full-time childcare. Also, I don't care about academics and I'm super lazy and don't want to parent my own kid. Ok.

OP, you can easily find a sitter or even a mother's helper for the hours school would conceivably happen - at a fraction of the cost of a nanny for FT daycare. That seems like it would solve your problems, no?

Here's the thing - we are all with you that the child care issue is huge for all working parents, from babies through ES and higher. Aside from people getting sick and taking leave, its one of the greatest drains on the economy and biggest issue within this pandemic.

BUT- you are conflating two things here. Your need for childcare is not a need for school; its a need for child care. Valid in its own right, but a different issue with different problems to solve but with more possible solutions.

All of which to say is, 1) you have options and 2) stop using daycare needs as a reason to open school -- it degrades the argument for actual education and certainly doesn't bring comfort to the education professionals that you are thinking about anyone else but your adult self.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's weird how parents who desperately need childcare are being told to suck it up and deal but private companies who employ those parents are not being told the same when their employees' productivity declines. Interesting.

This is where the push needs to go- companies need to be pushed/forced to accommodate childcare issues during the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's weird how parents who desperately need childcare are being told to suck it up and deal but private companies who employ those parents are not being told the same when their employees' productivity declines. Interesting.

Not the reality on the ground. Companies have been forced to accept, officially but most often unofficially, telework with parents who are clearly also caring for children. Companies have been forced to accept subpar work and lower productivity.

And since there are no laws explicitly protecting workers in such a time, some of them have been fired! But many, many businesses realize they have to live with their employees right now - they can't fire all their working parents, because everyone is in the same boat!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's weird how parents who desperately need childcare are being told to suck it up and deal but private companies who employ those parents are not being told the same when their employees' productivity declines. Interesting.

Also interesting that somehow it's impossible to have any form of in-person school this year and yet.... people are dining in restaurants. Indoors! Some museums haver reopened. In-person fitness classes have resumed, also indoors. You can get your hair cut in a salon with a dozen people in it. People are drinking at bars.

But yes, the real problem is in-person schooling, which has not occurred since the middle of march.

Just kicking an idea around. What if we got rid of these non-essential in-person activities, especially the ones that take place indoors, so that kids that need to go to school could go to school? Why is that such a crazy idea?

[Anonymous]

You have the same voice as any one else.

It's not the schools job to babysit our children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post reminds me of the mothers at the playground who get angry at all the "big kids" running around and making it hard for her 9 month old to crawl up the slide.

1) PK is a voluntary year - you don't get to hog resources for a non-required grade level
2) School actually becomes more critical for a kids education the older they get. So while you are focused on your own need for child care, we're also focused on the need to actually educate our kids.

I don't agree with your second point at all. I would argue that not learning biology as a ninth grader is much less critical to long term success than not learning phonics in lower elementary. Those lower grades are crucial to supporting kids learning throughout middle and high school.

I have a rising K and I disagree. Your kid does not have to be in school to learn how to read. You can get together with a small group of kids to work on sharing/listeninn/taking turns. And worst case, they will learn it next year when there is hopefully In person school. The older kids don’t have the “gift of time” that a 5 year old has.

[Anonymous]

It's not the schools job to babysit our children.

I mean, whether you like it or not, this actually is a literal function school provides. My kid isn't as young as OPs, but I would not be okay with a school that just let him wander off in the middle of the day. I know that aspect of running schools sucks, but it's actually one of the purposes they serve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This post reminds me of the mothers at the playground who get angry at all the "big kids" running around and making it hard for her 9 month old to crawl up the slide.

1) PK is a voluntary year - you don't get to hog resources for a non-required grade level
2) School actually becomes more critical for a kids education the older they get. So while you are focused on your own need for child care, we're also focused on the need to actually educate our kids.

This ^^^^

Spots at daycares for 4yos are really not hard to find. Neither are nanny shares or mother's helpers. A lot easier than finding an alternative for AP Physics or Chinese 5 for a HS junior.

BTW the most obnoxious part of your posts here is the whine about the fact that extended family can't help you. "We're on our own" - like it's a unique dilemma. Protip: your kids are your responsibility. If you're actually poor, there are government services that can help. If you just maxxed out your budget on the expectation that you could use the DC public schools for free preschool, then you made a bad gamble.

[Anonymous]

OP, I am on your side on this but I also don't think that it's helpful to pit "parents with older kids" against "parents with younger kids." The whole situation sucks for everyone but in different ways.

I have young kids (2YO and 5YO, rising kindergartner) and there is an approximately 0% chance that "distance learning" for my kindergartner will teach him squat. He is a smart kid, but doesn't interact with his teachers through fuzzy zoom connections with crosstalk in the same way he does in the classroom. It gives me heart palpitations to consider teaching him at home full time, because now he actually is supposed to learn things like reading and I don't think I can fathom just plunking him in front of a tv all day since although I will be working full time at home (as will my husband) I actually have a job to do.

Fact of the matter, regardless of how much people will disagree, is that distance learning is just not tenable for kindergarten, 4-7yoish education without an involved and present adult. Teachers have been expected by parents and communities to be those adults which has allowed women to go into the workforce, but now that many are working full time, we cannot just sub back in to that role without major adjustments and costs. The options for parents of young kids are to find an adult to care for and educate your kid, be that adult, or sacrifice education.

And to all the parents of rising juniors, etc = a neurotypical 16 year old can 100% learn online. There are whole curricula designed for that and students in rural locations (think: parts of Alaska, rural Montana, etc) have been doing this for decades. It's far from ideal, but older kids can get more from dl and also can do so without needing full-time attention from their parents.

Additionally, and this will start a firestorm I'm sure, younger kids do.not.transmit.covid.to.the.same.degree.that.older.kids.do (ote: I'm not saying they don't transmit! Or that they don't get sick! Just that they don't transmit *as much* and don't get sick *as much*, or *as sick*). And, despite what people assume, IME, younger kids are totally fine with masks. My kids are both at daycare and although it isn't required all the kids I have seen at pickup have been masked. So, the need is higher for those kids (and for those parents) for in-person ed, AND the risks are lower. And yet, many districts and states seem to be going with something closer to one-size-fits-all. It's frustrating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's not the schools job to babysit our children.

I mean, whether you like it or not, this actually is a literal function school provides. My kid isn't as young as OPs, but I would not be okay with a school that just let him wander off in the middle of the day. I know that aspect of running schools sucks, but it's actually one of the purposes they serve.

Yes, but there are other solutions to child care aside from schools.