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[quote=Anonymous][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]

If Bowser actually cared about schools, do you think she would have installed the crap chancellor we have?[/quote]

No, but Bowser doesn't have to actually care about schools to want them open. She ultimately worked hard to open schools because she knew it was in her political best interests (and see how it paid off). Meanwhile, White and the other progressives on the council continued to advocate for school closures and virtual school even months after schools had been reopened without incident, to appease a couple specific demographics who are, frankly, insane outliers on this subject.

There's this tiny handful of parents and teachers in DC who STILL keep predicting massive outbreaks and terrible consequences of open schools (as recently as the April "surge" that was barely a blip and impacted schools almost not at all) and that is the target audience for White and others on the subject of education.

I'd rather have the self-interested political who can read the way the political winds are blowing and realize she better open school ASAP or have her constituents are going to lose their ever-loving minds. That's actually constituent service! Sometimes we want politicians to just do what most people want them to![/quote]

Yep. White actually tweeted one of those crazy moms in his feed as a political supported and claimed that he would "defeat covid." IN JUNE 2022!  Interesting point that Bowser just read the political winds better. Maybe, but I also like to believe that in her position as mayor, she realized that she needed to keep the city basically functional, and that includes school.  I see this in her effort to reopen in Nov 2020. [/quote]

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