Now, I see her isolated childhood sliding by in slow motion; the days endless, the pandemic a long tunnel we can't yet see out of. You'd think I'd be part of the rallying cry to open up the schools, but I'm not.
In an ideal world, opening schools is what everyone wants, sure. But this isn't an ideal world and it certainly won't be in a few weeks' time. Considering in-person instruction as cases continue to climb is unfathomable.
Vietnam recently evacuated 80,000 people from a city because three people tested positive for Covid-19. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Texas alone reported more than 1,000 Covid-related deaths in less than a week and school districts all over the US are debating plans for in-person instruction. It seems like federal and local leaders are hinging the country's economic recovery on whether teachers and students survive when we throw them all into buildings together. But teachers and students aren't expendable economic experiments.
I live in Michigan, where early on in the pandemic, our state was one of the top 10 for confirmed Covid-19 cases. In mid-June, Michigan began relaxing stay-at-home orders as cases began to flatten. But, like much of the rest of the country, cases here have begun to climb again.
In early July, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced an executive order that required enforcement of a mandate that people wear masks when they are in public starting July 13. Two weeks before the enforcement order, my teenager resumed drivers ed, where his instructor didn't wear a mask at all while he taught. By the end of the week of instruction, none of the students did either. I've seen on a small scale how fruitless personal protective equipment efforts can be in a classroom and I'm deeply worried about the impacts to teachers, children and the greater community if schools reopen in the fall.
When this all began in March, districts around the country scrambled to make sure that students had the things they needed to succeed at home. The day after schools closed, my kid's district had meals available at satellite locations for students who rely on them. They obtained Chromebooks for students who did not have computers at home, and over the summer they collaborated with the public library and other local funders to offer hotspots to families without internet access.
Necessities like access to food, technology and internet were essentials for remote instruction in the spring. As cases continued to rise into the summer, preparation for the start of the school year should have been focused on making it possible for safe remote learning to be the primary vehicle for education. What kind of equitable, robust online learning systems, community support networks, and childcare options could have been meaningfully coordinated if remote learning weren't considered a contingency plan?
While my family's income has been less reliable since the pandemic began, we are privileged in the sense that my partner and I both work from home. We have the ability to abruptl
