Rock and a Hard Place

In Saint Paul yesterday, several groups of students staged a walkout to protest the city’s refusal to shift to distance learning. This comes in the middle of another wave of COVID infections. Many other districts in the state have moved their classes online, including Minneapolis and Roseville. Pretty much every district that surrounds the school district I work for has gone virtual as well. The kids had a good reason to be upset. In January (which is only half over) there were almost 2,500 reported cases of COVID in the district, up from 600 the month before. Seems bad!

Online learning wasn’t the only thing the students wanted. Along with the educators that they see every day, the students asked for nine conditions to be met that increase and support safe in-person instruction. Things like mask provisions, testing, and vaccines. Everything is reasonable and could be done for the most part. As I’ve stated before, the time for planning was over the summer. But it seems many places were hoping COVID would be gone by now and didn’t really come up with a concrete plan for something like omicron.

From my perspective, there doesn’t seem to be a good solution or course of action to take at this point. No matter what happens, kids will suffer the consequences. Online learning can be a very effective way to educate, given the correct support structure. Are schools really prepared for it? If the last year was any indication I don’t think so. The problem goes beyond what teachers are capable of though. Reliable internet access and having a safe place to learn at not always available to every child in school. Some kids live under bad circumstances and relegating them to spending more time at home can be very detrimental. And as crazy as it seems, given the country we live in, some kids might not have a home at all. This doesn’t even take into account young children who can’t be left alone. Are parents supposed to not work? What if they can’t afford daycare? It raises a number of questions about equity.

This is about more than education alone. I can tell you from observing and interacting with the kids who lost a year or more to lockdowns and distance learning that their social skills are impaired. Sometimes, it feels as though they’ve forgotten how to behave in school. The kids who lost their 8th and 9th-grade years have had the biggest struggle adapting back to a school environment. Again, this is just from what I’ve observed. There are times when it feels like I am running a 2nd-grade class and not high school math.

To be clear, I don’t blame the kids. Losing a year or two of socializing at the very moment that a child’s brain is beginning to understand the world has been rough. Not to mention a year of being home with mom or dad (or no one) could make for a very comfortable and unproductive workspace. You can tell the kids are used to bargaining with authority figures and usually getting what they want. Oh and the number of sweatpants and pajamas I see every day is amazing.

This is all to say that I am not sure how beneficial going back to distance learning will be in the long run. Yes, in the short term it will probably keep people from getting sick. And it would give schools the time to adequately prepare for the kids’ safe return. But are they really going to change? We’ve been dealing with this pandemic for what feels like forever. If things aren’t different by now, do we really think that two weeks or a month will do anything? I think it will simply be delaying the inevitable.

Which is a massive outbreak of COVID in our schools. Many districts already have experienced them. One day, a week or so ago, there were almost 20 teachers out with it at my school alone. That’s on top of the hundreds of students who have tested positive. And since there are quarantining guidelines in place, that means long mandatory periods for teachers and students to be out. Luckily, the CDC has changed the rules a bit so the hit isn’t as bad. But I do feel it is only a matter of time, statistically, that a teacher or student will catch COVID and it will kill them.

Sometimes in life, there are no good solutions. Kobayashi Maru scenarios arise. If we were to move to distance learning, education would suffer and some kids, in particular, would suffer greatly. If we stay open, COVID will tear through schools, potentially knocking out so many staff members that the education suffers anyway as a school full of subs is no good either. Not to mention it’s been hard to find enough subs in the first place. The choices we face seem bleak. But, I suppose, that’s to be expected of a pandemic that killed nearly 900,000 of our fellow citizens.

In my opinion, I think we should resist going to distance learning until we absolutely have to. The threshold for that should be dependent upon staffing. If there are enough adults in the building then classes should go on. Kids will get sick. So will teachers. The learning won’t be as good as it could be. But unless the plan is to go to distance learning until the end of the year, I’m not sure what delaying two weeks or a month will do. Omicron is spreading rampantly now. And maybe we’d be able to duck some of the infections now. But as soon as you have kids back in the building it’ll take just one infected person to potentially start another outbreak. And then what? Going back and forth between distance and in-person learning doesn’t seem all that productive.

In the meantime, I think we can still do A LOT in schools to keep them safe. For starters, we need to have much more rigorous mask policies. It’s been a struggle to get every teacher to mask up. That needs to change. There also needs to be actual consequences for kids who don’t wear one. No more of this exemption nonsense. If the kids don’t wear a mask, they can stay home. Let their parents figure it out (who are probably the ones filling their heads with anti-mask idiocy, to begin with). We also need to have mandatory testing at least once a week. Twice would be ideal but with test shortages that might not be possible. That’s for everyone, vaxxed and un-vaxxed. We also need much more detailed contact tracing. If we can get ahead of potential outbreaks we might be able to shut them down.

The time to come up with plans and solutions came and went. I hope the people in charge have learned their lesson and will spend the summer making the changes we need to stay in school safely. It is important that we remember we’re all in this together. Blaming teachers or students for wanting safe conditions is nothing to be upset about. We should be proud of our student activists. I know I am. Even though I don’t 100% agree with what they want I am so proud that they are organizing and making demands. Even if it came to nothing (the school board voted last night 4-3 to keep classes in-person).

Wearing a mask sucks. I hate it. But if it helps, then whatever, I’ll do it. And when I get COVID I hope to have a much less severe case because I am vaxxed and boosted. The odds are good. If we are going to survive this (and we will) then we need to be creative and flexible. Stop screaming at school board meetings. Stop with the conspiracy nonsense. This is a great opportunity to teach our kids about social responsibility. Let’s take full advantage of it.