Or rather less than babysitters if you use the hourly pay rate as an indicator.
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That’s clearly the kind of math teacher the politicians wish the district hadn’t hired.
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You left out “expressly forbidden to institute remote learning protocols.”
Gov’s remote learning ban sparks concern - The Bay State Banner
Forbidding Remote Learning: Why Some Schools Won’t Offer a Virtual Option This Fall (edweek.org)
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Well, fuck.
And thanks for pointing that out. Cutting off yet another sensible option seems to be the 21st century on-brand for institution management.
It’s a dang miracle U.S.ians have managed to get any K-12 student education in at all. And here we are, starting Year 3 of the pandemic.
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I agree your point that teachers are overall disrespected, because I have seen it following my teacher friends who are at odds with both school boards and school administration. They are also underpaid and many school districts woefully underfunded. That was all here before Covid and needs to be addressed at some point.
I don’t think this move means they care about education. I already said this wasn’t about education, it is about keeping the schools open. If they aren’t certified teachers or subs, then they aren’t serving the actual role of a teacher. They aren’t equipped to.
Like it or not, it affects everyone else because of most people don’t have easy options if their kids aren’t in school. If the kids are home, they have to scramble to find someone to watch them or take off work. Which means people aren’t showing up to do the work that others rely on through out the day. Many people do not have any other options here.
We don’t have the increased unemployment. There will be no more Covid support checks. Hell the daycare industry was struggling before Covid and is in tatters from the disruptions of Covid. This is why there is the push to keep schools open. Biden just bragged about something like 95% of schools being open.
Completely agree teachers (cops or otherwise) and students should be masked, even if vaccinated. It is ridiculous school boards aren’t all implementing mask wearing.
Again, I am looking at this from a pragmatic solution. I can agree it is fucked up, but I will ask again what is the solution? Shutting school down? I agree that is the best for preventing the spread. In some cases that is happening, but there is pressure from multiple fronts to not do that if possible due to the reasons above.
And if it is determined to try to keep them open, then again, what other options do they have?
There is no pragmatic solution because they won’t do any of the pragmatic solutions—they brag about explicitly banning them.
Teachers I know were talking about how far kids fell behind academically (and how poor they behave) since Covid. I’m confident the long term sacrifices in education are worse than short term economic impacts. I’m also confident the economic impacts are much worse because of the focus on status quo.
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Basically they made a conscious decision to not implement any of the reasonable solutions (remote teaching, masks, vaccine mandates, paying subs enough money that there wouldn’t be a shortage of qualified applicants) and then went straight to “well we had to lower the qualifications for subs, what other choice do we have?”
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The fuck there isn’t.
If my school district ever tried a stunt like this, I’d pull my kid out of school so fast, their fucking heads would spin right off.
IDK about OK, but CA schools’ funding is tied to attendance.
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Seems apt to me. What if a major city decided enough was enough and disbanded their police force during the summer, and could only get about 20% temporary replacement through county and state resources while they trained up replacements? Teachers would be available to fill in the gaps and just drive around in patrol cars.
Heck, that would probably more effective at the job than cops in classrooms.
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You use remote learning for as long as you can until you run out of budget and reserves, then shut down. Because ultimately, a short school year is still better than dead kids and dead teachers.
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Yeah. It’s just a hunch, but I feel like trained educators would be better at “protecting and serving” the community than cops would be at educating young minds about things like…well, anything other than being kind of an asshole bully.
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“Look, I know you’re upset, and you are lashing out at others. But this isn’t going to make it any better. Why don’t you put down the baseball bat and let’s talk this out. There’s no need for me to get out my Teacher’s Voice™”
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I agree there should be both mask and vaccine mandates. Paying subs better was a problem pre-covid, Because of this the pool of subs is smaller and the whole system can’t ramp up quickly to accommodate need.
Remote learning isn’t a perfect solution either. I suppose teachers not actively sick could still teach remotely, but not all of them are going to be feeling up to it and then you have non teachers attempting to do online learning which would probably work even worse than in class.
But again, this isn’t a perfect solution because soooo many Americans do not have a position where they can work from home and have their kid learn online, nor have access to good/consistent internet. When the economy was shut down and people were surviving on unemployment, this was a better option, but we aren’t in the same space we were then.
You’re right there could have been more forethought for both prevention and creating a backup system. But since neither of those things were done, they are scrambling to make it work.
And even then, they are doing stupid things. According to one of my teacher friend, several of the schools in the Wichita district, both public and private, have been forced to close throughout the week. But HS sports are still on! 
I mean, considering their training on how to deal with people in distress would be applicable in many caes, probably!
But a more apt analogy would be teacher sitting in cop cars making sure they don’t get stolen. Like I said, these people being brought in are just there to watch the kids. If they think they are going to be good at teaching, most of them will not be.
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Oh you sweet summer child.
How will the plebes serve their betters if they have to stay home with their larvae?
Who cares how many die! Too many mouths to feed as is! (or something similarly Scroogey)
(/s)
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This is obviously a huge part of it.
But there’s also the whole part of kids having a safe place to go (and this isn’t directed at you, I know you and several here know this) because their home isn’t that. Or, even if they’re the kind of kid who can do distance learning, their home is overcrowded or hectic.
The safe places could be schools or rec centers or libraries, with WiFi and remote learning. In those cases, they just need some on site adult supervision. Which, cops should definitely not be the default solution. It shows how shitty things have gotten.
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unfortunately, the school year is generally set at the state rather than the municipal level so any school district which tried to do that would be in violation of the state education code and be at risk of the state taking the district over and put into the hands of an administration which would “follow the law”.
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Even after the fact? After all the money is gone and the kids and teachers dismissed for the summer? What budget would they use for that?
I don’t see many GOP state legislatures digging into state coffers to fund a school district being forced to finish a school year in-person.
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@navarro please correct me if I’m mistaken, but I think the bigger picture is the GOP using this kind of “non compliance” to wrest control away from local boards moving forward. And who knows if it would ever go back.
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That was my first thought. If they didn’t have their guns, those kids would eat them alive. (I say that as a former high school teacher who had nothing but mad respect for my students. As per their job description, they were always looking for loopholes and ways to beat the system.)
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I was surprised how thoughtful my district was when this started. I can’t say how well they followed through, but they seemed really good in identifying these issues. When schools first closed they reached out offering childcare, they made all lunches free and offered pickup meals that included families of students, they offered tech and support for remote learning, and had teachers discreetly reach out to individuals for things that weren’t otherwise addressed.
I realize money is a part of it. When they first talked about remote learning they said they had to coordinate with the state and federal government to fulfill their education and funding requirements before they could offer anything. With a physically closed school it did free up a lot of staff that were furloughed or could be reassigned temporarily.
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