NYT and school closures

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Anonymous wrote:Interesting how all these RWNJs are suddenly so interested in giving credence to an *editorial* in what they normally call "the liberal media" NYTimes.


Haha. Very true.


I think you’d be honestly shocked if you knew how many people posting here are liberal Democrats …
I'm a liberal Democrat but leftists view us the same way they do MAGAs. To them, you're either woke and insane or you're Hitler. John McWhorter wrote a great book on the subject, "Woke Racism."


“Leftist”.


Leftists are the natural enemies of Liberals.

Read Animal Farm.
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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.


It’s 2023. Do you want to support public school kids or not?


Yes, it is 2023. Why haven't the kid caught up? What's going on at school?


Scores are trending back up. It’s not an instant fix.


Do you want to support kids in public schools or not?


Do you think there is a problem or not? Seems like every thing is great and going in the right direction right?
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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.


It’s 2023. Do you want to support public school kids or not?


Yes, it is 2023. Why haven't the kid caught up? What's going on at school?


Scores are trending back up. It’s not an instant fix.


Do you want to support kids in public schools or not?


Do you think there is a problem or not? Seems like every thing is great and going in the right direction right?


I think they are headed in the right direction but aren’t those scores snapshots of one grade vs all kids? The grade whose scores fell off a cliff in a critical year may still be having issues.
Anonymous
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Anonymous wrote:Interesting how all these RWNJs are suddenly so interested in giving credence to an *editorial* in what they normally call "the liberal media" NYTimes.


Haha. Very true.


I think you’d be honestly shocked if you knew how many people posting here are liberal Democrats …


I'm a liberal Democrat and find many people posting on this thread about "I'll never forget and I'll never forgive" to be...idiots. I wasn't hiding in my basement during the pandemic, either. They are like broken records and they can do serious damage if they vote based on some twisted need for a scapegoat versus trying to find candidates to improve education and help kids in the here and now. So many idiots perseverating on their covid trauma and missing the big picture.

If people tell you you sound like MAGA it might be because you sound like MAGA.
It's not people. It's leftists. Leftists are unable to differentiate between a normal liberal and MAGA because of their fundamentalist beliefs.
Anonymous
Can we at least all agree,

“mistakes were made.” ??
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Can we at least all agree,

“mistakes were made.” ??


We know more for the next pandemic.
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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.


It’s 2023. Do you want to support public school kids or not?


Yes, it is 2023. Why haven't the kid caught up? What's going on at school?


Scores are trending back up. It’s not an instant fix.


Do you want to support kids in public schools or not?


Do you think there is a problem or not? Seems like every thing is great and going in the right direction right?


Things are not great but are heading in the right direction.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Can we at least all agree,

“mistakes were made.” ??


No because the "we did the best we could" crowd will apparently never admit that in fact, mistakes were made.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Can we at least all agree,

“mistakes were made.” ??


No because the "we did the best we could" crowd will apparently never admit that in fact, mistakes were made.


I still think the biggest mistake that we can learn from is how we remediate after a global crisis. In DCPS for example, they used ESSER funds for "high impact tutoring" which was essentially principals getting a little extra money in their budgets to create their own tutoring programs from scratch using already burnt out teachers to run the program. If there was ever a time to have put more bodies into schools, this was it.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Can we at least all agree,

“mistakes were made.” ??


No because the "we did the best we could" crowd will apparently never admit that in fact, mistakes were made.


I still think the biggest mistake that we can learn from is how we remediate after a global crisis. In DCPS for example, they used ESSER funds for "high impact tutoring" which was essentially principals getting a little extra money in their budgets to create their own tutoring programs from scratch using already burnt out teachers to run the program. If there was ever a time to have put more bodies into schools, this was it.


We should also be prepared to shift or extend the school year if there is strong evidence of seasonality. If an unprecedented global pandemic necessitated closing schools, it should have also necessitated considering ways to mitigate educational and other losses.
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