Reply to Howard County remote until April 2021.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

You need to have an arrangement. The school  system is not a day care provider.  The school  system is not going to endanger everyone's lives  because  this is difficult. The federal and state government  need to provide funding for  the things people need during  an unprecedented global pandemic .
As for me? No, it's not great, it's not  easy.  I would not ever presume it should be. [/quote]

What? This poster never signed up for being an unpaid educational aide. The school system needs to acknowledge that they cannot provide a good education to their students at the moment without outside help from a parent, daycare provider or extended family member. You can teach whatever you want to a google meet but if someone hasn't found the link and the meeting code to help a kindergartener log on, you are teaching to no one.
No one could plan for a pandemic and virtual learning for a year. It's ridiculous to think that somehow this family should have found someone available and affordable to help their children all day when for years, the public school system was the bedrock of the community which did so. It's more than "daycare". It's an unpaid teaching assistant role. 
[/quote]

DP here.  What you are describing is not an unpaid teaching assistant role, it's being a parent.

While the public education system provides most of what students need, it has never provided all that students need.  Yes, in normal times, most students get most of what they need with fairly little parental involvement, but the public school system has never been meant to be a complete and self-sufficient education for their students.  Parents have always been expected to pay attention and address what is not being covered.  In some cases, like children with special needs, parents need to do a lot, ranging from getting diagnoses for their children, arranging for IEP's and 504's to arranging for special educator assistance, be it private tutors, or public plans like county and state resources for children with special needs.  Even in the case of students without special needs, parents have been responsible for determining if their child needs remedial assistance, enrolling them in such programs like summer school or camps.  Parents have to pay attention to the school calendar and arrange for childcare when school cannot meet in person, so for teacher training days, holidays, school closings, snow days, and summer vacation.

Assisting your child in accessing school is part of your parental responsibilities.  Trying to say that parents are not prepared to be an unpaid teaching assistant is as outrageous as those who insist that fathers are helping when they feed their children, babysit their child or help with household chores.  No, that is called parenting and while mothers do most of parenting, fathers are expect to parent their children sometimes as well.  Likewise, while teachers do the bulk of teaching children, parents sometimes need to step up and provide some of their child's education or assist with their child's education.  It's parenting.

I can certainly understand people who are unprepared for the strain that the pandemic has caused on their lives, but this is no different than if a school had an environmental problem like a gas leak, fire or structural damage and the building was unusable.  If that were to happen, and the school implemented remote learning, parents would need to cope with the situation.  This is a world-wide pandemic that makes in-person learning dangerous.  While the children themselves are less susceptible and in less danger, they can be carriers of the disease and can infect their family members and others that their family members come into contact with.  How would you feel if you became ill because your child was exposed in school and while your child was fine, she came back and infected you.  How would you feel if a child took the illness home and infected their grandparent who lived in their house?  Or their mother was pregnant and lost the sibling because of exposure to the virus?  How would you feel if your child was exposed, and exposed you; you and your child were fine, but you took the virus to work and infected a coworker who became seriously ill or died?

It's not just the risk to the teachers, but the fact that this is an extremely virulent virus and children can become carriers to infect teachers, family members, friends and coworkers.  This is also problematic because carriers can be asymptomatic and infectious and can also be infectious for 2-4 days before any symptoms appear.

I sympathize with the PP's problem, but providing support for your child's education is a part of parenting.  Yes, I understand that the additional burden of assisting your child is not normal, but part of parenting is learning to adapt to the change of situation and find a backup solution that allows you to work and to provide for your child's participation in school.  Endangering thousands of people unnecessarily is not an option just because your child needs assistance with distance learning.[/quote]

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