Is the solution for parents to move to small towns?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is full of right wing Nazis. Who would have thought?

Right wing nazis actually pay people to sit here and sock puppet all day and make it sound like all the former democrats and independents are "fed up" and ready for fascism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Democrat, not only would I consider moving to keep my kids in school and keep my job from being threatened by being unable to focus and perform, but I'm also enraged at the betrayal by the party. Just look at the dialogue on this forum. The party that is supposed to be concerned with social issues vilifies mothers struggling to balance work and remote learning as "shrieking" for free child care and not taking personal responsibility before deciding to have children. Sexist. They would rather signal that they take the virus more seriously the Republicans with extremist school closure policies than be concerned about working families, learning loss, child development, and low income families. They put the pajama/zoom class that can whether closed schools and unemployment and public health zero covid bureacrats before everyone else. It's disgusting. I've pretty much become an independent.

We wouldn't even be in this situation if everyone would just get vaccinated. And the only reason they aren't is because Republicans have morphed into some kind of anti-medicine cult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maryland is a whole state of whiners. I am from Texas and nobody ever made all this ruckus there. People here whine about nothing too. Teachers make a max of 48k in Texas, have no rights, cover recess, lunch and dropoff/pickup and it is a right to fire state so you can be let go off for no reason. Send these whiny teachers down to Texas and we will fix 'em.

... it's like you think those are virtues or something?

I would never consider a relocation to Texas for many reasons, like:

-racists who will stop at nothing to continue harming Black people. Like the first black principal in Colleyville, an UMC suburb, who was fired in 2021 because in 2020 he sent a somewhat innocuous letter post George Floyd, but really the problem is that he is a black man with a white wife and the people of Colleyville needed to put him in his place. Do your own googling, all true. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/11/10/colleyville-principal-critical-race-theory/

-the power grid drama

-women's health

-crazy people with guns everywhere (like the toddler with crap parents who had a loaded gun between the car seats (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-toddler-gets-gun-car-shoots-mother-sibling-rcna11159 ). People love to point to things like that as unusual, but every time I've been to Texas, I have seen more guns than anywhere else I've been in the US.

Sure, Austin is a really fun place to visit. That is it. Never, will I ever live there.

As a black woman aware of the black femcide rate (which is increasing), and who knows exactly who it is doing the vast majority of the murdering I stay the hell out of heavily democrat-voting urban centers. They are Crime-ridden, the schools are terrible and the criminals are coddled if not actually celebrated. Lots of guns going off all over the place and bodies of dead black people stacking up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Democrat, not only would I consider moving to keep my kids in school and keep my job from being threatened by being unable to focus and perform, but I'm also enraged at the betrayal by the party. Just look at the dialogue on this forum. The party that is supposed to be concerned with social issues vilifies mothers struggling to balance work and remote learning as "shrieking" for free child care and not taking personal responsibility before deciding to have children. Sexist. They would rather signal that they take the virus more seriously the Republicans with extremist school closure policies than be concerned about working families, learning loss, child development, and low income families. They put the pajama/zoom class that can whether closed schools and unemployment and public health zero covid bureacrats before everyone else. It's disgusting. I've pretty much become an independent.

+1. And then when schools finally reopened they spend inordinate amounts of time teaching woke-ism, even though two thirds of students are now reading well below grade level. I’ve spent countless hours volunteering and raising money for progressive politicians since I was young but especially over the past five years - I’m done. Obviously couldn’t vote for anyone overtly Trumpy but for local politics I will not be supporting liberals or progressives anymore. Feeling betrayed is a good word. Never did I thing the Democratic Party would turn anti-children.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in a small town. The people there aren’t wearing masks and schools have stayed open almost the whole pandemic. It’s a very heavily Republican area. There are very few high paying jobs. A small percentage of the population has a bachelors degree. Manufacturing used to be big there, but has been greatly reduced over the last 40 years. Half the kids qualify for FARMs. The population is disproportionately elderly. A couple years ago, the last grocery store in town closed, although a new one just opened in the same location. There is little diversity. Taxes are low, but there are very few services provided by local government. In the last decade, the opioid epidemic hit the area hard and burglaries were on the rise. The “downtown” area is super rundown and completely depressing to drive through. The people are generally very kind and generous. Neighbors help each other. If you walk down the street, strangers will say hello.

There are people living there who I care about deeply, but I would not raise my children there. If schools staying open is your number one priority, you’re welcome to move there. You can probably afford the nicest house in town.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in a small town. The people there aren’t wearing masks and schools have stayed open almost the whole pandemic. It’s a very heavily Republican area. There are very few high paying jobs. A small percentage of the population has a bachelors degree. Manufacturing used to be big there, but has been greatly reduced over the last 40 years. Half the kids qualify for FARMs. The population is disproportionately elderly. A couple years ago, the last grocery store in town closed, although a new one just opened in the same location. There is little diversity. Taxes are low, but there are very few services provided by local government. In the last decade, the opioid epidemic hit the area hard and burglaries were on the rise. The “downtown” area is super rundown and completely depressing to drive through. The people are generally very kind and generous. Neighbors help each other. If you walk down the street, strangers will say hello.

There are people living there who I care about deeply, but I would not raise my children there. If schools staying open is your number one priority, you’re welcome to move there. You can probably afford the nicest house in town.

I appreciate this post. There are pluses and minuses to every area and every type of area. While small towns vary there are obviously things they have in common (like the ups and downs of everyone knowing everyone)

The towns are real places with real people, they aren’t postcards. Don’t act on assumption.

[Anonymous]

My hometown is much like that of the previous poster. Though schools have mostly been open, the area has been hard hit by Covid, and my cousins tell me their children have been quarantined due to exposures many times, so still lots of virtual learning (if your family is fortunate enough to have access to the internet). The quality of education is low - no improvement in the past 30 years since I attended, few AP courses, no real gifted services, etc. Private school is not a real option since the two in the area are of even lower quality than the public school. This town is about a two hour drive from DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Democrat, not only would I consider moving to keep my kids in school and keep my job from being threatened by being unable to focus and perform, but I'm also enraged at the betrayal by the party. Just look at the dialogue on this forum. The party that is supposed to be concerned with social issues vilifies mothers struggling to balance work and remote learning as "shrieking" for free child care and not taking personal responsibility before deciding to have children. Sexist. They would rather signal that they take the virus more seriously the Republicans with extremist school closure policies than be concerned about working families, learning loss, child development, and low income families. They put the pajama/zoom class that can whether closed schools and unemployment and public health zero covid bureacrats before everyone else. It's disgusting. I've pretty much become an independent.

We wouldn't even be in this situation if everyone would just get vaccinated. And the only reason they aren't is because Republicans have morphed into some kind of anti-medicine cult.

How can you possibly believe this is about vaccination? Covid is spreading like wildfire, especially in highly vaccinated states and countries. At this point you have to be delusional to believe we just need to vaccinate more people.

[Anonymous]

Many of these posts seem to be about dying small towns with mostly uneducated residents and bad schools.

My experience is the opposite but we moved to an affluent small town.

Pros:
- fantastic schools
- proximity to outdoors and beaches
- low to no crime (don’t need to lock your doors)
- no homeless or vagrancy
- everything is 10-15 min away max
- local shopping including upscale food market, home goods stores, and boutiques
- a lot of family friendly activities

Cons:
- no diversity
- Need a car unless you don’t mind biking
- cold winters

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Democrat, not only would I consider moving to keep my kids in school and keep my job from being threatened by being unable to focus and perform, but I'm also enraged at the betrayal by the party. Just look at the dialogue on this forum. The party that is supposed to be concerned with social issues vilifies mothers struggling to balance work and remote learning as "shrieking" for free child care and not taking personal responsibility before deciding to have children. Sexist. They would rather signal that they take the virus more seriously the Republicans with extremist school closure policies than be concerned about working families, learning loss, child development, and low income families. They put the pajama/zoom class that can whether closed schools and unemployment and public health zero covid bureacrats before everyone else. It's disgusting. I've pretty much become an independent.

We wouldn't even be in this situation if everyone would just get vaccinated. And the only reason they aren't is because Republicans have morphed into some kind of anti-medicine cult.

How can you possibly believe this is about vaccination? Covid is spreading like wildfire, especially in highly vaccinated states and countries. At this point you have to be delusional to believe we just need to vaccinate more people.

Vaxianity is a religion.

Facts don’t matter in religion, only faith.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Democrat, not only would I consider moving to keep my kids in school and keep my job from being threatened by being unable to focus and perform, but I'm also enraged at the betrayal by the party. Just look at the dialogue on this forum. The party that is supposed to be concerned with social issues vilifies mothers struggling to balance work and remote learning as "shrieking" for free child care and not taking personal responsibility before deciding to have children. Sexist. They would rather signal that they take the virus more seriously the Republicans with extremist school closure policies than be concerned about working families, learning loss, child development, and low income families. They put the pajama/zoom class that can whether closed schools and unemployment and public health zero covid bureacrats before everyone else. It's disgusting. I've pretty much become an independent.

We wouldn't even be in this situation if everyone would just get vaccinated. And the only reason they aren't is because Republicans have morphed into some kind of anti-medicine cult.

It is called the "South African Variant" not the "right-wing-anti-medicine-cult variant". Vaccinated and boosted liberal democrats are catching and spreading Omicron which originated in an area of the world which does not have easy and equitable access to the vaccine.

Stop making this political when it isn't. It's a virus. It will continue to mutate and spread. Luckily, it's going in the right direction by becoming more contagious but less deadly.

[Anonymous]

In my opinion, the bottle neck in pandemic is hospitals/clinics.

We should have concentrated efforts over the last two years on expanding hospitals and medical workforce.

[Anonymous]

I'm in town with 200-300K population.

Our public schools were virtual for a large part of the last two years and face the same issues with staff shortage, kids falling behind, etc.

DC goes to private school (only 24K/year in our low cost of living area) and it has been amazing. It was virtual for only the first couple of months of pandemic. I think they handled it very well and didn't skip a beat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:God forbid. The first thing people do when they move to a new town for socio-economic reasons is start voting for the same sort of politician that implemented all the things they hated about their old town.

Another "not necessarily"
Some fresh blood in these conservative small towns is a nice balance. They can favor some conservative values (genuine ones like family values; not "family" values of GOP) as well as schools being open and general weakness of the teacher union (why are they so bad? making all unions look bad), not have to deal with wokeness BS. But they are also infusing smarts, tolerance, science, education, WEALTH, yes wealth into the community and the schools and that can make a difference, if they don't get subsumed. Turn these areas blue! But in a good way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many of these posts seem to be about dying small towns with mostly uneducated residents and bad schools.

My experience is the opposite but we moved to an affluent small town.

Pros:
- fantastic schools
- proximity to outdoors and beaches
- low to no crime (don’t need to lock your doors)
- no homeless or vagrancy
- everything is 10-15 min away max
- local shopping including upscale food market, home goods stores, and boutiques
- a lot of family friendly activities

Cons:
- no diversity
- Need a car unless you don’t mind biking
- cold winters

Hamptons?