WaPo: How D.C. and its teachers, with shifting plans and demands, failed to reopen schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WTU may have won the battle to close schools for a year or so, but I wonder if they’ve lost the war to fund public schools in the future. Surely the union’s behavior over the past few months has lost the hearts and minds of many voters. I know I’ll think twice before voting for any candidates who touts their WTU endorsement.

+1

I am a DCPS teacher and worry that any support we had from parents or any goodwill is squandered by the union. I wonder if budgets will be cut and Bowser won’t negotiate to increase them.

I am a DCPS parent. Don’t worry. We know the mayor and chancellor have cut parents and teachers out of this process
And we back the union.

I am a DCPS parent and you should worry. The sick out was the final straw - I will never be able to look at DCPS teachers without some level of disdain again.

Why is there so much vitriol towards DCPS and WTU. My charter is closed too. The teachers there are non-union and still say they do not feel safe returning. If WTU was solely to blame, charters would be open across the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WTU may have won the battle to close schools for a year or so, but I wonder if they’ve lost the war to fund public schools in the future. Surely the union’s behavior over the past few months has lost the hearts and minds of many voters. I know I’ll think twice before voting for any candidates who touts their WTU endorsement.

+1

I am a DCPS teacher and worry that any support we had from parents or any goodwill is squandered by the union. I wonder if budgets will be cut and Bowser won’t negotiate to increase them.

I am a DCPS parent. Don’t worry. We know the mayor and chancellor have cut parents and teachers out of this process
And we back the union.

I am a DCPS parent and you should worry. The sick out was the final straw - I will never be able to look at DCPS teachers without some level of disdain again.

Why is there so much vitriol towards DCPS and WTU. My charter is closed too. The teachers there are non-union and still say they do not feel safe returning. If WTU was solely to blame, charters would be open across the city.

Thank you. Especially as 61% of the wtu DIDN’T participate in the sick out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a labor attorney (and DCPS parent), I find the accounts in this article about the union’s tactics to be deeply disturbing. Talk about bargaining in bad faith.

Look, maybe you’re a labor attorney and maybe you’re a DCPS parent.

But the whole conservative “education” establishment, led by Betsy DeVos and echoed at Heritage and Manhattan and all the other donor-funded privateers,
is braying to reopen DCPS. But not because they care about kids. Because they care about union busting to enrich themselves and their donor class.

DC has long been a laboratory for greedy rightwing rich donors to privatize schools. And they’re doing it again.

(Also, for the crowd reading this: “labor attorney” means you work for corporations AGAINST unions. I’m a law firm partner, and we have other partners who are labor attorney. Maybe PP will come back and say they really meant they are a huge liberal and Democrat who voted for Obama and just happens to be echoing DeVos and want to bust up the WTU. But when that reply comes, I gonna be skeptical.)

Huh? Labor attorney does not necessarily mean management side. And if the reporting is correct, WTU is engaging in some bizarre and frustrating negotiation tactics. (Not PP.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WTU may have won the battle to close schools for a year or so, but I wonder if they’ve lost the war to fund public schools in the future. Surely the union’s behavior over the past few months has lost the hearts and minds of many voters. I know I’ll think twice before voting for any candidates who touts their WTU endorsement.

+1

I am a DCPS teacher and worry that any support we had from parents or any goodwill is squandered by the union. I wonder if budgets will be cut and Bowser won’t negotiate to increase them.

I am a DCPS parent. Don’t worry. We know the mayor and chancellor have cut parents and teachers out of this process
And we back the union.

I am a DCPS parent and you should worry. The sick out was the final straw - I will never be able to look at DCPS teachers without some level of disdain again.

Why is there so much vitriol towards DCPS and WTU. My charter is closed too. The teachers there are non-union and still say they do not feel safe returning. If WTU was solely to blame, charters would be open across the city.

I see what you’re saying, but that’s not happening in practice. My kid’s charter has made it clear it is following DCPS’s decisions. I am disappointed it isn’t removing itself from the cluster that is DCPS and making its own decision, which I see as lack of competent leadership, but rightly or wrongly, it seems most charters feel hamstrung by the decision the district is making. Otherwise more would be open.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disgusting. Disgusted with the teachers. No civic duty.

"Civic duty." LOL. Teachers are not your babysitters in a pandemic. They provide education via DL. If you need childcare, hire it.

+1000000

Teachers are not babysitters dude.

Yes all the low income parents in dc will go out and hire a tutor and nanny. Also stop using the word pandemic to justify keeping schools closed. It’s meant to scare people and avoid discussion of facts and data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disgusting. Disgusted with the teachers. No civic duty.

"Civic duty." LOL. Teachers are not your babysitters in a pandemic. They provide education via DL. If you need childcare, hire it.

As a taxpayer, I have a right to have my child in a public school teacher’s care from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Not even just a right; I HAVE to send my kid to school by law. So yes, part of your job, even (arguably especially) in a pandemic, is babysitting, so I can, oh I don’t know, do my own damn job.

[Anonymous]

At least Bowser tried to get kids back in school. It’s more than I can say for leaders in neighboring jurisdictions who sat on their hands.

[Anonymous]

Both sides look bad in the article, but i already knew that the union had been obstructionist. It was helpful to see laid out how the Mayor missed so many opportunities to get the public, parents and principals on her side. Things might have played out differently if Bowser had effectively built up a coalition behind her. Unions will run amok if there is no counter pressure pushing back against them and the Mayor alone was not enough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Both sides look bad in the article, but i already knew that the union had been obstructionist. It was helpful to see laid out how the Mayor missed so many opportunities to get the public, parents and principals on her side. Things might have played out differently if Bowser had effectively built up a coalition behind her. Unions will run amok if there is no counter pressure pushing back against them and the Mayor alone was not enough.

Agreed. I am no deBlasio booster but he decided to make schools a priority and approached each road block from a problem-solving position. Bowser and Ferebee repeatedly responded to challenges by throwing up their hands and just blaming the union, which made itself an extremely convenient scapegoat (if I were a teacher I’d be livid about the decision-making and messaging from the union, which was seemingly designed to enrage parents).

The point is: if they really wanted to open schools, they would have found a way. This wasn’t the moon landing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both sides look bad in the article, but i already knew that the union had been obstructionist. It was helpful to see laid out how the Mayor missed so many opportunities to get the public, parents and principals on her side. Things might have played out differently if Bowser had effectively built up a coalition behind her. Unions will run amok if there is no counter pressure pushing back against them and the Mayor alone was not enough.

Agreed. I am no deBlasio booster but he decided to make schools a priority and approached each road block from a problem-solving position. Bowser and Ferebee repeatedly responded to challenges by throwing up their hands and just blaming the union, which made itself an extremely convenient scapegoat (if I were a teacher I’d be livid about the decision-making and messaging from the union, which was seemingly designed to enrage parents).

The point is: if they really wanted to open schools, they would have found a way. This wasn’t the moon landing.

Yep. It absolutely wasn’t a priority. They’re starting HVAC renovations at our school in January which will shut down a big chunk of the building for the rest of the year (as I understand it). Couldn’t they have done this in summer? Fall? I’m sure we’re not the only ones. Oh, and our reopening dashboard says that everything is complete at our school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. As a parent whose child is not thriving in virtual first grade, this is demoralizing. Hard to say who looks worse in this piece. Bumbling leadership and base selfishness at every turn.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/washington-dc-failed-school-reopening/2021/01/02/af6d6b56-2532-11eb-952e-0c475972cfc0_story.html

Unreal. What a disgrace.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disgusting. Disgusted with the teachers. No civic duty.

"Civic duty." LOL. Teachers are not your babysitters in a pandemic. They provide education via DL. If you need childcare, hire it.

+1000000

Teachers are not babysitters dude.

And the "Teacher Babysitter" loser is back.

Head over to the unemployment line, please. I think that the pandemic has shown has us that there is a contingent of teachers who are so very bad at actual TEACHING that they consider themselves babysitters, because that is all that they do. And tax dollars are enabling them to do nothing.

+1 So sick of this line. In all schools that are not online by design, supervision is PART OF THE JOB. A big one. Stop demeaning babysitters too. WTF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Both sides look bad in the article, but i already knew that the union had been obstructionist. It was helpful to see laid out how the Mayor missed so many opportunities to get the public, parents and principals on her side. Things might have played out differently if Bowser had effectively built up a coalition behind her. Unions will run amok if there is no counter pressure pushing back against them and the Mayor alone was not enough.

Agreed. I am no deBlasio booster but he decided to make schools a priority and approached each road block from a problem-solving position. Bowser and Ferebee repeatedly responded to challenges by throwing up their hands and just blaming the union, which made itself an extremely convenient scapegoat (if I were a teacher I’d be livid about the decision-making and messaging from the union, which was seemingly designed to enrage parents).

The point is: if they really wanted to open schools, they would have found a way. This wasn’t the moon landing.

I said in the very early days of the pandemic that DeBlasio's priority of keeping schools open for in-person learning was the true liberal/leftist position on the issue, just like what many of our leftist European country friends have prioritized. It's really messed up in the USA that wanting to open schools gets you accused of being a Trumper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WTU may have won the battle to close schools for a year or so, but I wonder if they’ve lost the war to fund public schools in the future. Surely the union’s behavior over the past few months has lost the hearts and minds of many voters. I know I’ll think twice before voting for any candidates who touts their WTU endorsement.

+1

I am a DCPS teacher and worry that any support we had from parents or any goodwill is squandered by the union. I wonder if budgets will be cut and Bowser won’t negotiate to increase them.

I am a DCPS parent. Don’t worry. We know the mayor and chancellor have cut parents and teachers out of this process
And we back the union.

I am a DCPS parent and you should worry. The sick out was the final straw - I will never be able to look at DCPS teachers without some level of disdain again.

Why is there so much vitriol towards DCPS and WTU. My charter is closed too. The teachers there are non-union and still say they do not feel safe returning. If WTU was solely to blame, charters would be open across the city.

Thank you. Especially as 61% of the wtu DIDN’T participate in the sick out.

The charters are following DCPS. And the teachers that did not sick out were likely not elementary teachers. All of my kids’ teachers went on strike, all to prevent kids with SN from going to school, like my DS. Trust I won’t forget or forgive that, ever.

[Anonymous]

Per pupil spending in DC is sky high (https://www.asumag.com/research/top-10s/article/21131107/states-with-the-highest-perpupil-expenditure-201718) and THIS is the best we can do? Schools should have been opened August through November. Instead precious time was wasted.

Looking forward to voting against everyone mentioned in this article and the candidates they support.