Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
Yes we know how much you care about the schools and kids. That was obvious 2020-21. Stop the lies.
We, the people who have been showing up for years before the pandemic? Who have been engaged and putting in the work?
We care more about kids than the complainers who never took any interest in school until the pandemic and who now just want vouchers to subsidize private school.
Let me ask you this - how much of your time did you personally spend to improve public schools before the pandemic? I don't mean PTA or fundraisers. Did you spend time tutoring kids, helping with after-school programs, assisting teachers with administrative tasks, or anything like that? Tell me what you did.
I did help teachers in the classroom (back when it was allowed) and ran an after-school activity. In addition to PTA roles and fundraising.
^ and I volunteered on a school district advisory committee.
As another person who showed up and gave my time to support public schools before the pandemic, when I read these discussions, I sometimes feel like a spouse who was cheated on by a partner who has broken off the affair, never apologized, but is now angry that I'm struggling to forgive a betrayal they refuse to discuss. I'm the bad guy in every way, and it's 100% my fault I can't move past this unacknowledged breach of trust.
This is so freaking dramatic
Trivializing - Check. Another hallmark of abuse.
The teachers at your school didn't abuse you, and didn't betray you. They're the ones who were told to wfh, and are the ones picking up the pieces now.
You might want to examine your own relationships with schools and why you feel they have a spousal responsibility to you. It's our job, not a marriage
Why do you think this is about individual teachers? It's about public education - an institution responsible for educating children. But thank you, denying the harm and blaming others are two more characteristics of abuse.
It's just wild to me. Our kids are supposedly in crisis and yet all these parents are more concerned about having their feelings validated and restored. I'm sorry but I just don't get it and don't think it's where time and energy should go
You are really good at this - shutting down conversations (check), disputing feelings (check), lecturing (check). You've made your views perfectly clear, over and over. I'm saying that healthy relations between families and schools are essential for effective public education, and you are brilliantly illustrating why it has been hard to get people to come together. We should keep trying, but healthy relationships aren't forged by shutting down discussions and ignoring how actions affect others.
I'm clearly making very good points because you're not disputing them, just attacking me.
Your actions and other people on DCUM attacking schools and teachers has hurt me plenty. And I'm sure some teachers responding on here have hurt you (I don't agree with the ppl who say parents just wanted day care, fwiw).
However when you claim that you were abused and betrayed by the same people who are trying to repair the mess, who made the choice that they thought was best, I have to call you on it.
Please. You want all the trust, faith and support, but then you're dishonest. You are taking this personally but the facts are what they are. The closures were a disaster and kids have been harmed. Who do you think harmed them? If we don't know the answer how can we pretend to help them?
I don't think it's appropriate to accuse me of taking things personally and then framing a question as "who" I think harmed them. I think they were harmed by being school age during a once in a lifetime. I'm at peace with the choices I made. I don't accept people still seeking these trials of who was right and wrong because it doesn't change anything and I don't know that it would really have much impact if a new deadly virus swept the country.
A lot of teachers have no qualms in blaming the parents for the learning loss. There's a lot of that going on in here. It's hard to accept blame for your mistakes. But it would be a good step forward because the public no longer trusts schools, teachers, admins, to be looking out of their kids. You did what was right for you, and you threw the kids under the bus. You've already said as much. And you clearly have no interest in rebuilding that trust. You're just looking out for #1.
In that I wanted to protect my own health and well being, yes I was looking out for me first. I don't see anything I've wrote blaming parents for learning loss. I see a lot of parents telling other parents how they supplemented, but I've said nothing of the sort. I would add that my school which is in DCPS has had record enrollment growth the past few years, so I don't agree with your premise that the public has lost faith in public schools.
There have been many comments in here about parent not helping their kids. Not working with them, blaming them, accusing them of just not wanting to spend time with their own kids. An if you're worried about vouchers taking money out of the schools, all that says is that you know you're offering an inferior product and given a choice people would bail out. Doesn't say much about public schools. Private schools literally showed up for kids throughout 2020-21, no wonder people would prefer to use those schools given a choice.
Private schools did show up. They're also better resources, have more space, and the ability to hold their own buildings accountable for being safe. They also serve a self selected community. Vouchers would do nothing to support our population at a scale that would be effective. You can't compare two products that exist in alternate universes
+1
Vouchers only benefit a small % of kids to the detriment of the vast majority of kids who won’t be able to get a seat at private schools.
The voucher pushers should just admit that they DGAF about the vast majority of kids in public school. They have purely selfish motives.
You are such a weird union parrot. Sorry, we don’t buy the gaslighting any more.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
Yes we know how much you care about the schools and kids. That was obvious 2020-21. Stop the lies.
We, the people who have been showing up for years before the pandemic? Who have been engaged and putting in the work?
We care more about kids than the complainers who never took any interest in school until the pandemic and who now just want vouchers to subsidize private school.
Let me ask you this - how much of your time did you personally spend to improve public schools before the pandemic? I don't mean PTA or fundraisers. Did you spend time tutoring kids, helping with after-school programs, assisting teachers with administrative tasks, or anything like that? Tell me what you did.
I did help teachers in the classroom (back when it was allowed) and ran an after-school activity. In addition to PTA roles and fundraising.
^ and I volunteered on a school district advisory committee.
As another person who showed up and gave my time to support public schools before the pandemic, when I read these discussions, I sometimes feel like a spouse who was cheated on by a partner who has broken off the affair, never apologized, but is now angry that I'm struggling to forgive a betrayal they refuse to discuss. I'm the bad guy in every way, and it's 100% my fault I can't move past this unacknowledged breach of trust.
This is so freaking dramatic
Trivializing - Check. Another hallmark of abuse.
The teachers at your school didn't abuse you, and didn't betray you. They're the ones who were told to wfh, and are the ones picking up the pieces now.
You might want to examine your own relationships with schools and why you feel they have a spousal responsibility to you. It's our job, not a marriage
Why do you think this is about individual teachers? It's about public education - an institution responsible for educating children. But thank you, denying the harm and blaming others are two more characteristics of abuse.
It's just wild to me. Our kids are supposedly in crisis and yet all these parents are more concerned about having their feelings validated and restored. I'm sorry but I just don't get it and don't think it's where time and energy should go
You are really good at this - shutting down conversations (check), disputing feelings (check), lecturing (check). You've made your views perfectly clear, over and over. I'm saying that healthy relations between families and schools are essential for effective public education, and you are brilliantly illustrating why it has been hard to get people to come together. We should keep trying, but healthy relationships aren't forged by shutting down discussions and ignoring how actions affect others.
I'm clearly making very good points because you're not disputing them, just attacking me.
Your actions and other people on DCUM attacking schools and teachers has hurt me plenty. And I'm sure some teachers responding on here have hurt you (I don't agree with the ppl who say parents just wanted day care, fwiw).
However when you claim that you were abused and betrayed by the same people who are trying to repair the mess, who made the choice that they thought was best, I have to call you on it.
Please. You want all the trust, faith and support, but then you're dishonest. You are taking this personally but the facts are what they are. The closures were a disaster and kids have been harmed. Who do you think harmed them? If we don't know the answer how can we pretend to help them?
I don't think it's appropriate to accuse me of taking things personally and then framing a question as "who" I think harmed them. I think they were harmed by being school age during a once in a lifetime. I'm at peace with the choices I made. I don't accept people still seeking these trials of who was right and wrong because it doesn't change anything and I don't know that it would really have much impact if a new deadly virus swept the country.
A lot of teachers have no qualms in blaming the parents for the learning loss. There's a lot of that going on in here. It's hard to accept blame for your mistakes. But it would be a good step forward because the public no longer trusts schools, teachers, admins, to be looking out of their kids. You did what was right for you, and you threw the kids under the bus. You've already said as much. And you clearly have no interest in rebuilding that trust. You're just looking out for #1.
In that I wanted to protect my own health and well being, yes I was looking out for me first. I don't see anything I've wrote blaming parents for learning loss. I see a lot of parents telling other parents how they supplemented, but I've said nothing of the sort. I would add that my school which is in DCPS has had record enrollment growth the past few years, so I don't agree with your premise that the public has lost faith in public schools.
There have been many comments in here about parent not helping their kids. Not working with them, blaming them, accusing them of just not wanting to spend time with their own kids. An if you're worried about vouchers taking money out of the schools, all that says is that you know you're offering an inferior product and given a choice people would bail out. Doesn't say much about public schools. Private schools literally showed up for kids throughout 2020-21, no wonder people would prefer to use those schools given a choice.
Private schools did show up. They're also better resources, have more space, and the ability to hold their own buildings accountable for being safe. They also serve a self selected community. Vouchers would do nothing to support our population at a scale that would be effective. You can't compare two products that exist in alternate universes
So why be anti voucher if it makes no difference? It's just a knee jerk response.
I don't see how they would help all people, but see how they benefit the middle class and UMC. Not the population I'm interested in lifting up personally, so I'd continue to votes against them. I apologize for engaging you on vouchers, as thats not the discussion I'm interested in pursuing on this thread - just responded bc it popped up in between messages
I can't imagine being against something that I'm actually indifferent about. It doesn't hurt but may not help, so vote against it? Or it might help some people, but I don't care about those people, so I'm going to cast a vote out of spite. Huh?
I'm open to being educated. Can you point to a study where vouchers have supported low income and high risk families? I don't see how they help all people and that's why I vote against them
+1
Look at Indiana. Most of the kids who were able to use vouchers were already at private school. So public schools lost that funding, hurting the vast majority of kids who were still there.
And look at what happened when VA did the tutoring grants. All of the informed (mostly UMC families) jumped on that and used up the funding. It didn’t actually help the kids who would have benefited the most.
Vouchers hurt kids in our public schools.
What also hurts kids is shutting them out of school for a year. But you don't actually care about that. It's not clear what you actually do care about.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
I care about public schools and was anti-voucher pre-pandemic. I am now pro-voucher.
+1
We are pro-education.
You mean anti-public school.
See, you can’t gaslight me like this any more. That’s the thing with the closures: they opened my eyes. I am very pro public school, and as part of that, I think children deserve access to the best public schools they can attend. And if that’s not possible then they deserve to go where they can be well-educated. School choice and vouchers allow this.
What I see is an educational structure that is designed to keep poor and vulnerable children uneducated. Poor children were the ones harmed the most by the closures. The education system is essentially dedicated to keeping those kids poorly educated. I didn’t understand the scope of this prior to the pandemic, but watching actual school administrators and unions fight to keep poor children from education while their rich peers got educated is not something I can forget.
I used to believe school choice and vouchers were anti-education. I don’t any more.
So some small % of kids will get private school at the expense of the vast majority of public school kids. That’s not pro-public school. Not pro-kids. That’s just selfish AF.
In our district, the families who were lower income were most likely to want to stay virtual. You don’t speak for them.
How are those kids doing now? All caught up?
Many are not. Which is why we should strengthen our public schools to support these kids instead of hurting them further.
Yes please give schools more money to squander and misappropriate. It's the only way to help kids! Wink wink.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
Yes we know how much you care about the schools and kids. That was obvious 2020-21. Stop the lies.
We, the people who have been showing up for years before the pandemic? Who have been engaged and putting in the work?
We care more about kids than the complainers who never took any interest in school until the pandemic and who now just want vouchers to subsidize private school.
Let me ask you this - how much of your time did you personally spend to improve public schools before the pandemic? I don't mean PTA or fundraisers. Did you spend time tutoring kids, helping with after-school programs, assisting teachers with administrative tasks, or anything like that? Tell me what you did.
I did help teachers in the classroom (back when it was allowed) and ran an after-school activity. In addition to PTA roles and fundraising.
^ and I volunteered on a school district advisory committee.
As another person who showed up and gave my time to support public schools before the pandemic, when I read these discussions, I sometimes feel like a spouse who was cheated on by a partner who has broken off the affair, never apologized, but is now angry that I'm struggling to forgive a betrayal they refuse to discuss. I'm the bad guy in every way, and it's 100% my fault I can't move past this unacknowledged breach of trust.
This is so freaking dramatic
Trivializing - Check. Another hallmark of abuse.
The teachers at your school didn't abuse you, and didn't betray you. They're the ones who were told to wfh, and are the ones picking up the pieces now.
You might want to examine your own relationships with schools and why you feel they have a spousal responsibility to you. It's our job, not a marriage
Why do you think this is about individual teachers? It's about public education - an institution responsible for educating children. But thank you, denying the harm and blaming others are two more characteristics of abuse.
It's just wild to me. Our kids are supposedly in crisis and yet all these parents are more concerned about having their feelings validated and restored. I'm sorry but I just don't get it and don't think it's where time and energy should go
You are really good at this - shutting down conversations (check), disputing feelings (check), lecturing (check). You've made your views perfectly clear, over and over. I'm saying that healthy relations between families and schools are essential for effective public education, and you are brilliantly illustrating why it has been hard to get people to come together. We should keep trying, but healthy relationships aren't forged by shutting down discussions and ignoring how actions affect others.
I'm clearly making very good points because you're not disputing them, just attacking me.
Your actions and other people on DCUM attacking schools and teachers has hurt me plenty. And I'm sure some teachers responding on here have hurt you (I don't agree with the ppl who say parents just wanted day care, fwiw).
However when you claim that you were abused and betrayed by the same people who are trying to repair the mess, who made the choice that they thought was best, I have to call you on it.
Please. You want all the trust, faith and support, but then you're dishonest. You are taking this personally but the facts are what they are. The closures were a disaster and kids have been harmed. Who do you think harmed them? If we don't know the answer how can we pretend to help them?
I don't think it's appropriate to accuse me of taking things personally and then framing a question as "who" I think harmed them. I think they were harmed by being school age during a once in a lifetime. I'm at peace with the choices I made. I don't accept people still seeking these trials of who was right and wrong because it doesn't change anything and I don't know that it would really have much impact if a new deadly virus swept the country.
A lot of teachers have no qualms in blaming the parents for the learning loss. There's a lot of that going on in here. It's hard to accept blame for your mistakes. But it would be a good step forward because the public no longer trusts schools, teachers, admins, to be looking out of their kids. You did what was right for you, and you threw the kids under the bus. You've already said as much. And you clearly have no interest in rebuilding that trust. You're just looking out for #1.
In that I wanted to protect my own health and well being, yes I was looking out for me first. I don't see anything I've wrote blaming parents for learning loss. I see a lot of parents telling other parents how they supplemented, but I've said nothing of the sort. I would add that my school which is in DCPS has had record enrollment growth the past few years, so I don't agree with your premise that the public has lost faith in public schools.
LOL how can you say that with a straight face given DCPS’s skyrocketing chronic absenteeism rate and all the kids out carjacking when they should be in middle school …
Because it's accurate? We have kids in rooms that aren't even designated as classrooms bc we have more students than space. In seat attendance is also up. Not every school has the same issues.
DC’s chronic absenteeism is way up. Yes we know the parents in your JKLM school get their kids there. And yes we know you do not care about the balance of DCPS kids who will never recover from your selfish actions.
What is selfish? You realize there could have been many more deaths if those same kids were packed into classrooms like sardines, like they are now, and worse, if they brought it home to their parents, grandparents and other family members living in their home. You may live in a 4000-8000 square foot house, but many of us live in very small homes where there is no way to isolate and people share rooms. Do you realize how many kids lost their parents and grandparents? I think most kids would rather be virtual for school for a year WITH parental support vs. having to bury their parent.
There would not have been more deaths. That is the whole point. The paranoia was unfounded.
DP. You have no basis for this statement. And it makes no logical sense. In some families with at risk individuals there could have been more deaths.
I am actually not a supporter of the virtual school going on as long as it did, but people like you are just FOS.
You make zero sense. We have the data, you are totally and completely wrong.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
Yes we know how much you care about the schools and kids. That was obvious 2020-21. Stop the lies.
We, the people who have been showing up for years before the pandemic? Who have been engaged and putting in the work?
We care more about kids than the complainers who never took any interest in school until the pandemic and who now just want vouchers to subsidize private school.
Let me ask you this - how much of your time did you personally spend to improve public schools before the pandemic? I don't mean PTA or fundraisers. Did you spend time tutoring kids, helping with after-school programs, assisting teachers with administrative tasks, or anything like that? Tell me what you did.
I did help teachers in the classroom (back when it was allowed) and ran an after-school activity. In addition to PTA roles and fundraising.
^ and I volunteered on a school district advisory committee.
As another person who showed up and gave my time to support public schools before the pandemic, when I read these discussions, I sometimes feel like a spouse who was cheated on by a partner who has broken off the affair, never apologized, but is now angry that I'm struggling to forgive a betrayal they refuse to discuss. I'm the bad guy in every way, and it's 100% my fault I can't move past this unacknowledged breach of trust.
This is so freaking dramatic
Trivializing - Check. Another hallmark of abuse.
The teachers at your school didn't abuse you, and didn't betray you. They're the ones who were told to wfh, and are the ones picking up the pieces now.
You might want to examine your own relationships with schools and why you feel they have a spousal responsibility to you. It's our job, not a marriage
Why do you think this is about individual teachers? It's about public education - an institution responsible for educating children. But thank you, denying the harm and blaming others are two more characteristics of abuse.
It's just wild to me. Our kids are supposedly in crisis and yet all these parents are more concerned about having their feelings validated and restored. I'm sorry but I just don't get it and don't think it's where time and energy should go
You are really good at this - shutting down conversations (check), disputing feelings (check), lecturing (check). You've made your views perfectly clear, over and over. I'm saying that healthy relations between families and schools are essential for effective public education, and you are brilliantly illustrating why it has been hard to get people to come together. We should keep trying, but healthy relationships aren't forged by shutting down discussions and ignoring how actions affect others.
I'm clearly making very good points because you're not disputing them, just attacking me.
Your actions and other people on DCUM attacking schools and teachers has hurt me plenty. And I'm sure some teachers responding on here have hurt you (I don't agree with the ppl who say parents just wanted day care, fwiw).
However when you claim that you were abused and betrayed by the same people who are trying to repair the mess, who made the choice that they thought was best, I have to call you on it.
Please. You want all the trust, faith and support, but then you're dishonest. You are taking this personally but the facts are what they are. The closures were a disaster and kids have been harmed. Who do you think harmed them? If we don't know the answer how can we pretend to help them?
I don't think it's appropriate to accuse me of taking things personally and then framing a question as "who" I think harmed them. I think they were harmed by being school age during a once in a lifetime. I'm at peace with the choices I made. I don't accept people still seeking these trials of who was right and wrong because it doesn't change anything and I don't know that it would really have much impact if a new deadly virus swept the country.
A lot of teachers have no qualms in blaming the parents for the learning loss. There's a lot of that going on in here. It's hard to accept blame for your mistakes. But it would be a good step forward because the public no longer trusts schools, teachers, admins, to be looking out of their kids. You did what was right for you, and you threw the kids under the bus. You've already said as much. And you clearly have no interest in rebuilding that trust. You're just looking out for #1.
In that I wanted to protect my own health and well being, yes I was looking out for me first. I don't see anything I've wrote blaming parents for learning loss. I see a lot of parents telling other parents how they supplemented, but I've said nothing of the sort. I would add that my school which is in DCPS has had record enrollment growth the past few years, so I don't agree with your premise that the public has lost faith in public schools.
LOL how can you say that with a straight face given DCPS’s skyrocketing chronic absenteeism rate and all the kids out carjacking when they should be in middle school …
Because it's accurate? We have kids in rooms that aren't even designated as classrooms bc we have more students than space. In seat attendance is also up. Not every school has the same issues.
DC’s chronic absenteeism is way up. Yes we know the parents in your JKLM school get their kids there. And yes we know you do not care about the balance of DCPS kids who will never recover from your selfish actions.
What is selfish? You realize there could have been many more deaths if those same kids were packed into classrooms like sardines, like they are now, and worse, if they brought it home to their parents, grandparents and other family members living in their home. You may live in a 4000-8000 square foot house, but many of us live in very small homes where there is no way to isolate and people share rooms. Do you realize how many kids lost their parents and grandparents? I think most kids would rather be virtual for school for a year WITH parental support vs. having to bury their parent.
There would not have been more deaths. That is the whole point. The paranoia was unfounded.
DP. You have no basis for this statement. And it makes no logical sense. In some families with at risk individuals there could have been more deaths.
I am actually not a supporter of the virtual school going on as long as it did, but people like you are just FOS.
You make zero sense. We have the data, you are totally and completely wrong.
No, you make no sense. Kids were not immune to covid. They usually did not get it severely ill or die (which is good), but they certainly could get it and they certainly could pass it to others in their home. If an individual child had an at risk relative in their home, they could acquire covid and give it to that relative and the at risk relative could die. How can you deny that this is possible? What data denies that kids could pass covid to at risk relatives?
I'm not saying by any means that I believe that we needed to keep schools closed as long as we did. I'm saying on an individual basis, some families may have had different priorities and choices and that had schools been open and unrestricted in any way, it is entirely possible more people could have died from spread from kids as it passed through schools. It was and is very contagious. Our school actually was in person and we had waves where tons of kids were out.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
I care about public schools and was anti-voucher pre-pandemic. I am now pro-voucher.
+1
We are pro-education.
You mean anti-public school.
See, you can’t gaslight me like this any more. That’s the thing with the closures: they opened my eyes. I am very pro public school, and as part of that, I think children deserve access to the best public schools they can attend. And if that’s not possible then they deserve to go where they can be well-educated. School choice and vouchers allow this.
What I see is an educational structure that is designed to keep poor and vulnerable children uneducated. Poor children were the ones harmed the most by the closures. The education system is essentially dedicated to keeping those kids poorly educated. I didn’t understand the scope of this prior to the pandemic, but watching actual school administrators and unions fight to keep poor children from education while their rich peers got educated is not something I can forget.
I used to believe school choice and vouchers were anti-education. I don’t any more.
So some small % of kids will get private school at the expense of the vast majority of public school kids. That’s not pro-public school. Not pro-kids. That’s just selfish AF.
In our district, the families who were lower income were most likely to want to stay virtual. You don’t speak for them.
How are those kids doing now? All caught up?
Many are not. Which is why we should strengthen our public schools to support these kids instead of hurting them further.
Yes please give schools more money to squander and misappropriate. It's the only way to help kids! Wink wink.
Wait, so you claim you care about kids but you don't want to fund schools?
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
Yes we know how much you care about the schools and kids. That was obvious 2020-21. Stop the lies.
We, the people who have been showing up for years before the pandemic? Who have been engaged and putting in the work?
We care more about kids than the complainers who never took any interest in school until the pandemic and who now just want vouchers to subsidize private school.
Let me ask you this - how much of your time did you personally spend to improve public schools before the pandemic? I don't mean PTA or fundraisers. Did you spend time tutoring kids, helping with after-school programs, assisting teachers with administrative tasks, or anything like that? Tell me what you did.
I did help teachers in the classroom (back when it was allowed) and ran an after-school activity. In addition to PTA roles and fundraising.
^ and I volunteered on a school district advisory committee.
As another person who showed up and gave my time to support public schools before the pandemic, when I read these discussions, I sometimes feel like a spouse who was cheated on by a partner who has broken off the affair, never apologized, but is now angry that I'm struggling to forgive a betrayal they refuse to discuss. I'm the bad guy in every way, and it's 100% my fault I can't move past this unacknowledged breach of trust.
This is so freaking dramatic
Trivializing - Check. Another hallmark of abuse.
The teachers at your school didn't abuse you, and didn't betray you. They're the ones who were told to wfh, and are the ones picking up the pieces now.
You might want to examine your own relationships with schools and why you feel they have a spousal responsibility to you. It's our job, not a marriage
Why do you think this is about individual teachers? It's about public education - an institution responsible for educating children. But thank you, denying the harm and blaming others are two more characteristics of abuse.
It's just wild to me. Our kids are supposedly in crisis and yet all these parents are more concerned about having their feelings validated and restored. I'm sorry but I just don't get it and don't think it's where time and energy should go
You are really good at this - shutting down conversations (check), disputing feelings (check), lecturing (check). You've made your views perfectly clear, over and over. I'm saying that healthy relations between families and schools are essential for effective public education, and you are brilliantly illustrating why it has been hard to get people to come together. We should keep trying, but healthy relationships aren't forged by shutting down discussions and ignoring how actions affect others.
I'm clearly making very good points because you're not disputing them, just attacking me.
Your actions and other people on DCUM attacking schools and teachers has hurt me plenty. And I'm sure some teachers responding on here have hurt you (I don't agree with the ppl who say parents just wanted day care, fwiw).
However when you claim that you were abused and betrayed by the same people who are trying to repair the mess, who made the choice that they thought was best, I have to call you on it.
Please. You want all the trust, faith and support, but then you're dishonest. You are taking this personally but the facts are what they are. The closures were a disaster and kids have been harmed. Who do you think harmed them? If we don't know the answer how can we pretend to help them?
I don't think it's appropriate to accuse me of taking things personally and then framing a question as "who" I think harmed them. I think they were harmed by being school age during a once in a lifetime. I'm at peace with the choices I made. I don't accept people still seeking these trials of who was right and wrong because it doesn't change anything and I don't know that it would really have much impact if a new deadly virus swept the country.
A lot of teachers have no qualms in blaming the parents for the learning loss. There's a lot of that going on in here. It's hard to accept blame for your mistakes. But it would be a good step forward because the public no longer trusts schools, teachers, admins, to be looking out of their kids. You did what was right for you, and you threw the kids under the bus. You've already said as much. And you clearly have no interest in rebuilding that trust. You're just looking out for #1.
In that I wanted to protect my own health and well being, yes I was looking out for me first. I don't see anything I've wrote blaming parents for learning loss. I see a lot of parents telling other parents how they supplemented, but I've said nothing of the sort. I would add that my school which is in DCPS has had record enrollment growth the past few years, so I don't agree with your premise that the public has lost faith in public schools.
There have been many comments in here about parent not helping their kids. Not working with them, blaming them, accusing them of just not wanting to spend time with their own kids. An if you're worried about vouchers taking money out of the schools, all that says is that you know you're offering an inferior product and given a choice people would bail out. Doesn't say much about public schools. Private schools literally showed up for kids throughout 2020-21, no wonder people would prefer to use those schools given a choice.
Private schools did show up. They're also better resources, have more space, and the ability to hold their own buildings accountable for being safe. They also serve a self selected community. Vouchers would do nothing to support our population at a scale that would be effective. You can't compare two products that exist in alternate universes
So why be anti voucher if it makes no difference? It's just a knee jerk response.
I don't see how they would help all people, but see how they benefit the middle class and UMC. Not the population I'm interested in lifting up personally, so I'd continue to votes against them. I apologize for engaging you on vouchers, as thats not the discussion I'm interested in pursuing on this thread - just responded bc it popped up in between messages
I can't imagine being against something that I'm actually indifferent about. It doesn't hurt but may not help, so vote against it? Or it might help some people, but I don't care about those people, so I'm going to cast a vote out of spite. Huh?
I'm open to being educated. Can you point to a study where vouchers have supported low income and high risk families? I don't see how they help all people and that's why I vote against them
+1
Look at Indiana. Most of the kids who were able to use vouchers were already at private school. So public schools lost that funding, hurting the vast majority of kids who were still there.
And look at what happened when VA did the tutoring grants. All of the informed (mostly UMC families) jumped on that and used up the funding. It didn’t actually help the kids who would have benefited the most.
Vouchers hurt kids in our public schools.
What also hurts kids is shutting them out of school for a year. But you don't actually care about that. It's not clear what you actually do care about.
Yes, the pandemic really sucked.
It’s 2023. Do you want to support public schools and help these kids? Or not?
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
I care about public schools and was anti-voucher pre-pandemic. I am now pro-voucher.
+1
We are pro-education.
You mean anti-public school.
See, you can’t gaslight me like this any more. That’s the thing with the closures: they opened my eyes. I am very pro public school, and as part of that, I think children deserve access to the best public schools they can attend. And if that’s not possible then they deserve to go where they can be well-educated. School choice and vouchers allow this.
What I see is an educational structure that is designed to keep poor and vulnerable children uneducated. Poor children were the ones harmed the most by the closures. The education system is essentially dedicated to keeping those kids poorly educated. I didn’t understand the scope of this prior to the pandemic, but watching actual school administrators and unions fight to keep poor children from education while their rich peers got educated is not something I can forget.
I used to believe school choice and vouchers were anti-education. I don’t any more.
So some small % of kids will get private school at the expense of the vast majority of public school kids. That’s not pro-public school. Not pro-kids. That’s just selfish AF.
In our district, the families who were lower income were most likely to want to stay virtual. You don’t speak for them.
How are those kids doing now? All caught up?
Many are not. Which is why we should strengthen our public schools to support these kids instead of hurting them further.
Yes please give schools more money to squander and misappropriate. It's the only way to help kids! Wink wink.
Wait, so you claim you care about kids but you don't want to fund schools?
Go away loser troll.
Fund schools for what? What are they going to do differently with yet more money? The more money they get the worse they perform.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
I care about public schools and was anti-voucher pre-pandemic. I am now pro-voucher.
+1
We are pro-education.
You mean anti-public school.
See, you can’t gaslight me like this any more. That’s the thing with the closures: they opened my eyes. I am very pro public school, and as part of that, I think children deserve access to the best public schools they can attend. And if that’s not possible then they deserve to go where they can be well-educated. School choice and vouchers allow this.
What I see is an educational structure that is designed to keep poor and vulnerable children uneducated. Poor children were the ones harmed the most by the closures. The education system is essentially dedicated to keeping those kids poorly educated. I didn’t understand the scope of this prior to the pandemic, but watching actual school administrators and unions fight to keep poor children from education while their rich peers got educated is not something I can forget.
I used to believe school choice and vouchers were anti-education. I don’t any more.
So some small % of kids will get private school at the expense of the vast majority of public school kids. That’s not pro-public school. Not pro-kids. That’s just selfish AF.
In our district, the families who were lower income were most likely to want to stay virtual. You don’t speak for them.
How are those kids doing now? All caught up?
Many are not. Which is why we should strengthen our public schools to support these kids instead of hurting them further.
Yes please give schools more money to squander and misappropriate. It's the only way to help kids! Wink wink.
Wait, so you claim you care about kids but you don't want to fund schools?
Go away loser troll.
Fund schools for what? What are they going to do differently with yet more money? The more money they get the worse they perform.
And once again the nutty anti-public schools PPs reveal their true colors. You are anti education and anti kids.
Anonymous wrote:Ok. To some of us this was obvious from the get-go. Now go apologize to Ron DeSantis.
+ a billion.
Plus, let's demand some accountability. Time for NYT Editorial Board to resign. All of them.
Ha ha. Some of you are really pieces of work.
Worried you will lose your job?
What?
What is your interest in trying to shut down any discussion about where things went wrong? You are awfully defensive and paranoid that we might have to admit mistakes were made. Why is that?
My kids go to Catholic school, so they were back in person school in fall 2020.
Some of you are kind of crazy.
Mine too, but I had to move from a batshit crazy place to get that. Had we stayed put the kids would have been out until late spring 2021. That's messed up. There was no reason for that whatsoever. There were some terrible decisions and we should hold people accountable for that. Why not?
And you think you get to command the NYT editorial board to resign? Move on. It is 2023. The kids who were hurt the most are the ones who have crazy parents.
Why don't you just sit this conversation out if you aren't interested? What harm is it to you if people want to learn where we went wrong and how do to better in the future?
Let it go. Let it go. Some of you have lost your minds. Go for a walk or something.
You are obsessed with shutting this down. What are you so worried about? Go for a walk yourself if this doesn't interest you.
I realize that posting on a message board that the NYT editorial board must resign is crazy. And ineffective. Go run for your school board if you want to make decisions. Instead of posting nonsense here.
It's amusing how much this bothers you. Must be hitting close to home.
Everyone should be concerned with the nutters running around in 2023 trying to blame people for handling the pandemic in a reasonable, rational way. I’m sorry that the pandemic was hard for you but you’re misdirecting your anger.
The important thing now is addressing educational gaps. Focus on that.
(And glad you finally care about some of the many educational challenges that have existed for a long time and were magnified by the pandemic.)
How do you suggest we do that without admitting that there are problems? Why did the closures set kids back? What do you propose we do right now to address the problems in our public schools?
Have you ever been in a school? These problems existed before the pandemic. The pandemic just exacerbated them. Glad you are paying attention now.
Exactly.
Instead of attacking the people who are actively addressing these issues why don’t you find a way to support them.
Unless you have ulterior (political) motives.
So you are a teacher, is that why you're hyper defensive?
I’m a parent who detests irrational a-holes still attacking our schools/teachers YEARS later. It’s almost as if you don’t want to fix anything at all, just complain about it.
At least you admit your bias.
Yes, I’m biased against school-hating a-holes.
You didn't tolerate the complaining back in 2020 either. Not all of us agree that teachers and admins are beyond reproach. It's ok to hold their feet to the fire now. They were wrong.
OMG, I'm a DP and you are just gone. Out there. You don't want solutions. You want blood. Honestly, seek therapy. This anger won't help anyone. Not your kids. Not the school system. This kind of anger will lead to stupid decisions that make the situation worse.
Our kids need help. There are already teacher shortages. We need more, good teachers and parents like you will drive any decent ones out of the system. We need more funding for schools and more services for our kids. Channel your energy into that. Otherwise, you are just a worthless blowhard.
I’m touched you’re so worked up. Maybe next time you will do the right thing and advocate for schools to stay open knowing now how awful your emotionally driven, factless opinions got us to where we are. Be the change.
DP. The evidence wasn’t there. The people pushing to open no matter what in summer 2020 were irrational. “Emotionally driven, factless opinions” describe it perfectly.
Tell that to all the schools that opened in Fall 2020. If you didn't want to see the evidence, that's on you. But it was there. But you can't rewrite history to suit yourself.
They opened without evidence.
Yep, so much of the type of hindsight is 20-20 BS on this thread is a waste of time. This virus kept changing and continues to do so. It's what they do. To say they "knew" anything in Fall of 2020 is ridiculous. I actually do think schools should have reopened in person much earlier than they did in this area, but to pretend we had certainties? BS.
“Knew” in this context means “knew” to a reasonable degree of confidence. I would think that anyone who is old enough to be a parent is old enough to have discovered that there are no certainties in life.
You “knew” without substantial data to back it up. Other people were looking for actual data and/or CDC guidelines. Faulting people for being rational is ridiculous.
What are you talking about? Point to the data showing young children dying or getting seriously ill en masse at ANY point during the pandemic. You can’t, because that wasn’t happening, ever.
The ABSENCE of such cases was all the “substantial data” needed to determine that the priority should have been to keep life as normal as possible for the kids, who were not in danger, and to instead focus on keeping the elderly and other vulnerable members of society as isolated as possible for their own protection.
In late summer 2020, we did not have substantial data demonstrating that it was safe. There was IIRC just one study of a small daycare centers.
You responded to my post but you did not address the point. The absence of data showing children becoming seriously ill WAS the data.
You seem to think it’s reasonable to demand a study to prove that continuing to engage in an historically safe behavior will continue to be safe. In actuality, it is reasonable to assume a behavior that has been safe in the past will continue to be safe unless there is new evidence indicating harm. There was no such evidence to justify keeping the schools closed. At no point was Covid killing kids.
That’s not how science works…
Jesus Christ. It’s exactly how one is supposed to apply the scientific method. Generate a hypothesis (covid is gonna kill us all!), make observations (covid is killing old people and people with underlying immune, respiratory, and heart conditions), interpret results (there is a very clear and direct exponential trend of severity of outcomes from covid infection as a function of age), draw conclusions (this virus is dangerous to old people but not to kids), and in this case, suggest/implement policy (keep the schools open).
So I suppose you are correct in that “that’s not how science works” because we have an entire generation of people who don’t understand how to correctly utilize the scientific method making decisions because SCIENCE.
We did not studies on how it affected kids - particularly those crammed into tight spaces en masse - at that point. No observation. No data.
This is tiresome. Do you need a study before you walk out your front door in the morning?
No, but I’m not responsible for the health of millions of people.
In countries with universal healthcare and therefore where policymakers are actually "responsible for the health of millions of people" .... they did everything possible to OPEN schools in September 2020.
So are you pushing for universal healthcare here?
In principle I would, in practice I see the disaster in universal education in this country because so many prioritize politics over sound policy.
Fire anyone who was responsible for stealing years of education from millions of children. That should be step number 1 in fixing this.
And then what? Who will backfill those positions?
What do you want their replacements to do?
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.
Are there? There is a massive shortage of teachers and teachers unions where the ones pushing closure the hardest
DP. Yep, and with parents like the ones on this board and all the other politically-motivated nonsense going on right now, who is going to want to fill those positions? Answer = no one.
Which is why we need to fire anyone in the unions, boards and districts who made this disaster take place.
Untill that happens it's all mere empty words.
If we fire people, and no one wants to fill the positions, how does this help kids???????????
It doesn’t help kids. PP DGAF about public school kids.
It does hurt public schools (and our kids). It gives the pro-voucher clowns more excuses for why taxpayers should subsidize their private school education.
You don't care if your kids were hurt. They were sacrificial lambs in the grand experiment. So don't pretend you care now.
I absolutely care then and I care now.
And I see the way to help kids now is to support schools, not tear them down for ulterior political motives.
What specifically are you doing to support schools other than accusing others of wanting vouchers?
That’s certainly the goal for some posters here - they clearly admitted it.
Just gave my personal list of ideas.
Why are you attacking ideas you don’t agree with? None of us is responsible to make any of it happen any way, right?
Because vouchers won’t fix public schools.
We know you don’t have any good ideas. So your opinion is irrelevant. You’ve done enough damage.
I haven’t done any damage and I already posted a list of things we can do.
Vouchers aren’t on the list because they hurt public schools/students.
School closures also hurt kids, but you supported those whole heartedly. You have zero credibility.
I wasn’t pushing for them to stay virtual, but I did acknowledge that the school districts were taking a reasonable approach. I supported the teachers who were doing the best they could under crazy circumstances.
Vouchers will hurt our public school kids. You want to hurt them more?
We might have to think outside the box to undo all the damage people like you inflicted on them. Are you prepared to do that? Or do you want to keep banging your head against the wall wondering why the same things fail again and again?
Defunding public schools isn’t the answer no matter how you slice it.
No vouchers.
Ok, you get but one vote.
It’s the same vote for anyone who cares about public schools.
I care about public schools and was anti-voucher pre-pandemic. I am now pro-voucher.
+1
We are pro-education.
You mean anti-public school.
See, you can’t gaslight me like this any more. That’s the thing with the closures: they opened my eyes. I am very pro public school, and as part of that, I think children deserve access to the best public schools they can attend. And if that’s not possible then they deserve to go where they can be well-educated. School choice and vouchers allow this.
What I see is an educational structure that is designed to keep poor and vulnerable children uneducated. Poor children were the ones harmed the most by the closures. The education system is essentially dedicated to keeping those kids poorly educated. I didn’t understand the scope of this prior to the pandemic, but watching actual school administrators and unions fight to keep poor children from education while their rich peers got educated is not something I can forget.
I used to believe school choice and vouchers were anti-education. I don’t any more.
So some small % of kids will get private school at the expense of the vast majority of public school kids. That’s not pro-public school. Not pro-kids. That’s just selfish AF.
In our district, the families who were lower income were most likely to want to stay virtual. You don’t speak for them.
How are those kids doing now? All caught up?
Many are not. Which is why we should strengthen our public schools to support these kids instead of hurting them further.
Yes please give schools more money to squander and misappropriate. It's the only way to help kids! Wink wink.
Wait, so you claim you care about kids but you don't want to fund schools?
Go away loser troll.
Fund schools for what? What are they going to do differently with yet more money? The more money they get the worse they perform.
And once again the nutty anti-public schools PPs reveal their true colors. You are anti education and anti kids.
Please just homeschool and F off.
I am? What about the so called teachers who abdicated their jobs for over a year? It’s hard to support a system failing kids on a daily basis.
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