What to do About The Schools
by Ken Melvin
What to do About The Schools
There needs to be a plan in place that deals with: grade levels, Covid Virus testing, schedules, classroom size, in-school traffic flow patterns, staffing, transportation, … The how and when are tied together.
And yes, all these are interconnected.
How to safely get 3,000 high school students to and from school; from class to class; to, into and out of classrooms; to, into and out of the cafeteria; … while maintaining social distancing?
Class schedules, school hours, the school year, … these all involve time. To allow for social distancing in the classroom, class size will need be cut in half. More classes and more classrooms will be needed. Requiring perhaps more teachers, certainly more hours per day, per week.
To avoid jam-packed hallways, to achieve social distance spacing, class periods will need be staggered by groups. Security will need be enhanced to enforce between class traffic rules, to eliminate wandering about during class, congregating in bathrooms, …
Now is the time to work out the kinks in online teaching.
Students and Teachers may need to wear masks. Teachers make need to be miked.
All these things are more difficult in the lower grades, in the more troubled schools.
All these problems and more have to be dealt with in the context of pressure from parents to reopen schools and pandemic depleted state budgets.
Should schools be reopened?
Is any return to ‘normal’ delusional?
well, i hadn’t thought about it much lately but based on my experience in schools it would probably be bettter if they just shut them down and let parents find very small alternate “schools.”
this does not mean i am a fan of “private” schools.. as they now seem to be prone to all the ills of private enterprise and anti social indoctrination.
but the model of public schools i experienced was… for the most part… a kind of cattle-drive prison camp political tool of indoctrination.
i don’t have any answers.
The only thing working in our favor on this is the shrinking school age cohort. We could try a baby boom era strategy and move schools to double shifts and get twice the square footage per student. My sister’s high school went 7:30-noon, noon-4:30. It sucked, but it worked. They finessed the lunchroom issue with no lunch and got a waiver for gym. This was in the unionized NYC school system, so I’m guessing the teachers’ unions would roll with a plan like this.
Laura Chapman: Bad News from Ohio
by dianeravitch
Laura Chapman reports on budget cuts to schools in Ohio, which hurt public schools but protect charters and vouchers.
She writes:
Bad news from Ohio again. Not quite Lord of the Flies (fiction or non-fiction truth)
This week, Governor DeWine is proposing $355 million in K-12 education cuts with $300 million coming out of foundation aid to local school districts from the current state budget that expires in July.
While public education accounts for about 42% of state expenditures, it will absorb about 45.8% of the loss.
He has not asked private schools that take public funds to sacrifice anything. This proposed cut will exacerbate the underfunding of public schools in favor of EdChoice vouchers that raid public school dollars for private schools.
In addition public school funds should not be supporting charter schools that are the pet project of billionaires who think they are entitled to raid public dollars for their preferred undemocratic system of education.
This proposed cut will shift a large portion of public school funding from the state to local districts. I have not looked at all of DeWine’s proposed budget cuts but these sure look like they are designed to hit public schools and favor private schools as well as charters schools that have declared they are eligible for small business loans, these likely to be foregiven.
If you are in Ohio, please open the link below and follow-up with emails to the people who are planning for this cut to be passed well before school starts. Start with this link:
https://mailchi.mp/ac594ace4a33/action-alert-355-million-in-education-cuts-in-ohio?e=ba8653e702
Hi Dan
In the 11 or so years that I’ve been involved as a sub/volunteer with the schools here in the SF Bay Area, the effect of the charter and private schools on public schools is ever greater. The last two-three years I/we’ve seen the middle school kids with ‘issues’ double?? The charter and private schools won’t take these kids; so, proportionally they may represent more than half the class in public schools when before they constituted more like 1/4 to 1/3 (there’s a critical mass involved). The toll on teachers is frightening; we see more and more younger teachers go down with bleeding ulcers, heart attacks, (teachers suffer PTSD)… and more and more planning to retire earlier. I rarely go into the middle-schools these years, only a few science teachers that I will sub for, But when I do, I see a wave coming; a wave generated by the charter schools. I’m emailing, it’s long, you something I wrote 5 years ago in response to all the self-anointed educational experts who have no clue.
One stay at home parent and online public schooling (e.g., K-12, Fusion Academy, Proximity Academy, Connections Academy) is not necessarily the end of the world. Setting educational standards independent of the demagoguery of the pedagogy is a win. Good teachers are great, but all too few.
The billionaires like Gates et. al. have been attacking the public schools for decades for the same reason Willie Horton robbed banks: It’s where the money is.
Fascinating how the last large segment of public employment that still has nominal levels of unionization and some nods to retirement security and health care benefits can’t be protected from constant predation. It’s bipartisan so how could it be wrong?
And with the pandemic available why would sociopaths like Rahm Emmanuel and the Clintons et al let a disaster go to waste?