lowest common denominator thinking
by airborneirish (2024-01-02 15:56:49)

In reply to: My wife is a teacher in low income area of NYC  posted by DBCooper

Cannot Reply Return to Political

I would argue that you are making this sound harder than it was going to be. But for sake of argument, I'll assume you are correct and that there was *no way* to ventilate your wife's school.

So why did students in well ventilated schools have go remote for that reason?

In fact, my issue is that teachers unions and democratic city leaders used a 'lowest common denominator' way of thinking their default response to the pandemic. "Hey, some miniscule percentage of households have a grandmom at home so no one anywhere can go to school in person."

If you want to know what drove me insane that's what it was. There was always some hypothetical monster in the closet to keep schools closed. When I say to ditch your attitude that's what I mean. I don't mean that your wife's classroom could have been made serviceable and she's a bad person. I mean that your wife's situation should not have any impact on the system at large AND letting it do so was what got us into a never ending justification to close schools.

In my opinion, incredibly risk averse / innumerate people were in charge of the decision around risk mitigation and we got no kids in school through spring of 2021 as a result. Ewill reported from the front and is definitely more risk averse than I am but even now says it was stupid to do what we did with schools.


Finally, it's not arrogant to point out these failings. It is proper. As others have pointed out, no one that made decisions has come out with an after action review to talk about what worked and didn't work. The best response to this all has been on south park where the guys make the point that everyone was stressed and doing their best. That said, the best of some folks was awful and if we are going to heal as a nation there needs to be some accountability.

Without it, there is a lot of simmering anger that is going to boil over.



Bit nit: it wasn't "stupid" in 2020.
by ewillND  (2024-01-02 16:39:30)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

We went back in large part because our school year runs through the end of June (public schools end of July), so we were going to miss a lot more school than most of the US schools.

Again, I will never fault a teacher, or most administrators, for anything that they did during that time. It was a total nightmare, and we were just trying to do the best that we could for the kids with the requirements that we had. We threw the kitchen sink at it, and had a lot of data to share with our friends in the US about what worked (ventilation) and what didn't (I still have a half-full bottle of spray disinfectant in my office that I keep as a reminder that it can always be worse. We each had to have our own bottle of spray that we used after every class to clean the desks. Because *that* was helpful.)
I think we are closer on this than we both realize
by DBCooper  (2024-01-02 16:35:12)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

As I stated to ewill, I don’t think there are any all encompassing decisions that fit all schools, students, teachers, etc. But, to me, in a situation like Covid, which was an unknown situation, it makes more sense to be more cautious in the beginning, and listen to the experts in the field, as opposed to acting quick and listening to people who just want to be opposite of certain political viewpoints.

I think you do minimize the amount of people who have older and comorbid adults in their immediate lives. I assume it’s more prevalent in cities and rural areas and probably more so with low income families. But my wife’s school has plenty of grandparents who are the primary caregivers of the children, as their parent (s), work a lot and are not able to help out with kids in the morning or after school. And they are the lucky ones who have help.

Covid sucked for kids, no one can argue that. My daughter with ADHD was in K for 2020/21, waste, barely had school in 21/22 as class was suspended every time their was a positive Covid test, annoying, and then her second grade was fucked up because her teacher got Covid and never came back (some bad case of Long Covid) and the school screwed up by not getting a new consistent teacher until the spring. But, we will never know if she and her classmates saved lives by not going to school before vaccines.

I’m with you once vaccines were available it should be game on. I just don’t think that should have been easy to say in fall of 2020 and spring of 21 to me is a toss up. But again, some places might have been able to go earlier than others.

I do look at it as sacrifice. Sacrifice this generation had to deal with, just like our lives were fucked up for a while after 9/11, our parents during the Nam draft, and things were messed up during WW2 and the Great Depression for older generations. But, it does make me pause when you, BI and WB, who sacrificed so much for this country, do think we sacrificed way too much for Covid.

But I apologize if I’m being short tempered. I’m still dealing with the Michigan win from last night. It’s mad me an insufferable prick today.

The problem with what you've been saying in these posts is..
by IrishApache  (2024-01-02 22:04:51)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

That the Catholic schools in places like NYC and Bridgeport still serve very poor neighborhoods, and they still occupy facilities that are as dated as any public school and lack ultra-modern ventilation. They still had elderly teachers and teachers with co-morbidities. But they dealt with it - those teachers either came to work or were furloughed until they felt ready. Because the Catholic schools put the students first.

The Catholic Schools in NYC opened in September 2020, and by October 2020, it was clear they were NOT super-spreaders. Even without opening windows, masking and distancing proved adequate to keep the virus from running rampant in Catholic schools. NYC should have been using the data from Catholic schools to revise whatever ventilation standards the City decided to rely on. But they didn't, and remained closed because of intense pressure from one of the most powerful teachers unions in the country.

I'm not even totally anti-teachers' union, but they proactively lobbied to keep to schools closed, and were even shameless enough to call for the closing of Catholic schools. (Do you remember the union protests during which the teachers dumped child sized body bags on the ground?)


It was a simple formula for the Catholic Schools:

"They followed the science: Faculty and students adapted to masking, social distancing, teaching in small cohorts and contact tracing. They demonstrated that safe in-person learning was possible despite the pandemic.

In the 2020-2021 school year, only one case of COVID-19 in New York’s Catholic schools was traced to in-school transmission. Similarly in Boston, Catholic schools reopened almost a year ahead of public schools without any COVID-19 outbreaks.

With New York schools adopting safety measures similar to the proven Catholic-school measures, Adams can say that “the safest place for children is inside school.”
My wife taught in a poor Catholic school in Chicago
by mjmcend  (2024-01-03 18:32:17)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

that went back in person late August 2020.

The school was in a poor, multi-generational neighborhood. The 100 year old school had windows that didn't open, poor ventilation and 28 kids with less than 3 feet between desks. Her second graders did a great job overall with masks, but they still often took them off especially while eating lunch daily at their desks. No mass outbreaks, no really sick kids, and no dead abuelas despite their presence in person in school. Plus the poor everywhere had parents all working essential and manual labor jobs where they had no luxury to work home. It was stunningly clear it was safe for children of all socioeconomic levels to be in person, in school in the fall of 2020. And the science was there based on the bravery and dedication of teachers in Europe (like ewill) and in Catholic schools.

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) did the same bullshit lobbying as NYC. What still galls me to this day is that CPS teachers and admins were 1st in line behind medical professionals for the vaccine BEFORE Catholic school teachers DESPITE not teaching in person in the spring of 2021. What a scandal that should be. Pure selfishness of the CTU and pure cowardice by Chicago's political leadership to be cowed by their lobbying. And don't forget the CTU board member on her Caribbean vacation, tweeting support for not returning to in person teaching.

Amen. But CTU still wants COVID tests before back to schoop
by airborneirish  (2024-01-09 16:41:40)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

In 2024! No rsv test. No flu test. Covid. 2024. These are the people who make decisions. Idiots.

Thank you for this. *
by IrishApache  (2024-01-03 22:22:11)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

Amen - the data were there
by airborneirish  (2024-01-03 12:40:53)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

We had two in catholic school and they had no instances except for the sister of the one poster here who got sick before school even started and then made it seem like a kid got her sick. I have no personal animus towards her but to was clear there was a strong media agenda to make it seem like Catholic schools were reckless. We got through the year with no issues.