Yup. I’m another one who won’t have my early elementary child participate if it’s virtual. What are they going to do? Nothing. |
Yes they had their hands tied because the Northern Virginia districts showed zero intention to get or keep kids in school. In fact, last spring it was also the state who forced them to get kids back. Maybe if they’d done something, anything, they’d still have some autonomy. But nope. |
But maybe they could ensure ES stays home by directing scarce staff resources (subs, bus drivers, etc.) to the ES. They could do that if they had authority to place MS and/or HS in virtual mode. But they lack that authority. |
Who says they can’t do that if staffing is low? They won’t do that because they don’t give a shit. If they had any intention of appropriately differentiating for younger kids and doing sensible things like that they would have done it last year. |
Thank you APE, OpenFCPS and Chap Petersen for SB1303. I'm so glad that law took out the legs of the vocal closed-school extremists in our community. Ventilation Woman is in full force now on social media, complaining that schools can't close now. |
Those closed school extremists want to hurt poor brown kids by locking them out of school so they can fruitlessly try to avoid getting a virus while triple-vaccinated that everyone will get and that will never be eradicated. The Zero Colds, Zero School caucus. |
There is zero reason to believe they would do that. It didn’t happen last year, it wouldn’t happen this year. |
It would be totally consistent with SB1303. The only reason it won't is because Duran and Loft are incompetent and don't care about educating early elementary. They've gotten the shift since the beginning. |
*shaft |
I thought district wide positions like speech specialists who go to multiple schools are assigned to Syphax |
WTF is wrong with you? Why are you so out of touch with reality & hostile? |
Instead of attacking me, perhaps reply to the facts? What is Duran's plan for ensuring learning for K-2 kids who can't meaningfully access virtual learning? Having seen the terrible test scores, have you seen any evidence that he's going to do anything differently from last year? That is the source of a great deal of frustration. His equitable solution is no learning for those students, plus no plan for learning recovery. |
There are hardly any subs this year. Maybe if all the whining parents on DCUM stopped complaining and signed up to be subs instead, the schools wouldn't have staff shortages and would be able to stay in-person. |
Basically this. My first grader missed half a year of preschool (ours closed overnight like many others in March 2020), spent the bulk of his K year in virtual school with only a few months of 2-day per week hybrid, and was just now in a pretty good place with in-person 1st grade. It has taken Herculean efforts and an incredible amount of privilege (being able to hire a pod teacher, educated parents who can supplement, etc.) to even be in this position at all and now I’m worried the solution to the inevitable staffing issues will once again be to treat these young kids as if they’re the same as teenagers who can engage in distance learning. And I’m tired of being gaslighted by a segment of society who thinks this continues to be ok because the infinitesimal risk of death/serious disease for vaccinated adults. Must be nice to be able to wring your hands over tiny hypothetical risks while parents of young kids have suffered actual harm over the last 2 years. I don’t even have the energy anymore to care about what could happen if sick with COVID because I’ve been so busy dealing with the actual damage of the pandemic response to COVID. Yes, I know hospitals are getting full. But like so many on here use as a refrain “it’s not the job of the schools to fix society’s problems.” Why don’t we let the politicians, private sector, healthcare workers, etc. figure out how to get community spread down and have the school systems focus on actually educating kids, which is, you know their entire.freaking.purpose. If elementary schools go virtual, I hope all parents of young kids boycott this mess. I honestly don’t think APS should get to count this toward academic hours because they’re not actually educating students. If the test scores drop even more, then perhaps Duran will have to finally come up with a solution or get booted. |
Maybe we should have spent our COVID relief money on increasing substitute pay/adding actual attractive recruitment bonuses instead of blowing it on a VLP program that serves a tiny fragment of the APS community. Unfortunately Duran decided virtual was going to be *the* solution to COVID early on and didn’t bother allocating extra reserves to staffing in-person. Did you see subs make $18/hour before taxes? That is pitiful. We pay our college sitter $23/hour cash to watch 2 kids. APS is not offering realistic market rate for what it would take to get qualified adults to sub in a classroom right now. |