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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DH and I both voted for White but I was really on the fence and almost changed to Bowser last second. We are white and MC but live in a heavily gentrifying neighborhood with lots of UMC folks.

I don’t love Bowser and think she’s a pretty typical cynical, special-interest focused politician. But unlike White and many of his supporters, Bowser did actually seem to think that closing schools for an entire year, even after teachers had received priority vaccination and Covid rates were low, was a bad thing. Like Bowser at least seemed to get that closing schools for so long would have a horrible impact, especially on kids who are at high risk, and lead to increased hunger, drop out rates, and criminality among many DCPS students. And it did, and continues to have repercussions in the city, and most people seem not to care at all, which is very confusing to me. We’ve seen an increase in violent crime committed by teenagers and people argue about it but very few seem to remember “oh these kids were largely left to their own devices for months on end and many simply stopped going to school at all and this is an unsurprising outcome of that.” At least Bowser TRIED to get schools open again. I seriously cannot believe how little city progressives seem to care about this. You know what serves as a violence interruptor so fewer kids wind up in the criminal justice system? School! But whatever I guess.

Ultimately, though, Bowser failed to mobilize the DC constituencies that understood this, and failed to adequately convince teachers and reluctant parents (by making concessions on WTU demands and virtual options) and that’s on her. So I voted against her. But I’m not disappointed White lost, since he doesn’t seem to even see a problem with what happened.

I mostly feel like I live in some upside down world where we all make progressive sounds with our mouths but then support policies that are terrible for poor people and black people and families for… reasons. [/quote]

You realize that White wanted to keep schools closed for LONGER? How did your vote make any sense?[/quote]

+1. DP here but it sounds like pp believed the teacher union propaganda that they wanted to return to work sooner but Bowser just wouldn't negotiate. The truth is that they fought returning to work despite Bowser meeting more of the union demands to appease them (HVAC upgrades, required masking, requiring hand sanitizer, ask ask look forms completed and reviewed every day, and many other covid protocols that sadly and ironically ended up burning out teachers) than almost any other school district in the country.

Meanwhile Robert White and Janeese Lewis George introduced legislation that if enacted would have kept schools closed for almost half of this current 2021-2022 school year, yet many parents aren't connecting the dots. The union expends so many resources on professional PR to develop lies and propaganda because it works. The pp you're responding to is proof.[/quote]

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