The “Great” Reopening
“So, let’s just call the
situation what it is: a misguided attempt to prop up an economy failing at near
Great Depression levels because federal, state, and local governments have been
remarkably unwilling to make public policy grounded in evidence-based science. In
other words, we’re living in a nation struggling to come to terms with the
deadly repercussions of a social safety net gutted even before the virus
reached our shores and decisions guided by the most
self-interested kind of politics rather than the public good.
“Seventeen years ago,
against the advice of my parents, I decided to become a public school teacher.
Once I did, both my mother and father, educators themselves, warned me that
choosing to teach was to invite attacks from those who viewed the profession
with derision and contempt. They advised me to stay strong and push through when
budgets were cut, my intellect questioned, or my dedication to my
students exploited.
“Nobody, however, warned
me that someday I might have to defend myself against those who asked me to
step back into my classroom and risk my own life, the lives of my students and
their families, of my friends, my husband, and my child in the middle of a
global pandemic. And nobody told me that I’d be worrying about whether or not
our nation’s public schools, already under siege, would survive the chaos of
Covid-19.
“Pushing students back
into school buildings right now simply telegraphs an even larger desire in this
society to return to business as usual. We want our schools to
open because we want a sense of normalcy in a time of the deepest uncertainty.
We want to pretend that schools (like bars) will deliver us from the
stresses created by a massive public health crisis. We want to believe that if
we simply put our children back in their classrooms, the economy will recover
and life as we used to know it will resume.
“In reality, the
coronavirus is -- or at least should be -- teaching us that there can be
no going back to that past. As the first students and teachers start to return
to school buildings, images of crowded hallways, unmasked kids,
and reports of school-induced
Covid-19 outbreaks have already revealed the depths to which we seem willing to
plunge when it comes to the safety and well-being of our children.
A Return to School?
“For teachers like me,
with the privilege of not having to work a second or third
job, summer can be a time to reflect on the previous school year and prepare
for the next. I take classes, read, develop new curriculum, and spend time with
family and friends. Summer has been a time to catch up with all the pieces of
my life I’ve neglected during the school year and recharge my physical and
emotional batteries. Like many other public school teachers I know, I step away
in order to step back in.
“Not this summer,
though. In these months, there’s been no reprieve. In Portland, Oregon, where I
live, the confluence of the historic Black Lives Matter uprising, a subsequent invasion by the president’s
federal agents, the hovering menace and tragic devastation of the coronavirus,
and rising rates of homelessness and joblessness have contributed to a seismic
disruption of the routines and structures of our community. A feeling of
uncertainty and anxiety now permeates every facet of daily life. Like so many,
I’ve been parenting full time without relief since March, acutely aware of the
absence of the usual indispensable web of teachers, caregivers, coaches, camp
counselors, family, and friends who have helped me raise my child so that I can
help raise the children of others.
“The dislocation from my
community and the isolation caused by the breakdown of normal social ties, as
well as my daughter’s and my lack of access to school, has had a profound
effect on our lives. And yet, knowing all that, feeling it all so deeply, I
would still never advocate sending our children back to school in person as
Covid-19 still rages out of control.
“Without a concerted effort to stop the spread
of the virus -- as cases in this country soar past five million and deaths top
170,000 -- including masking mandates, widespread testing, effective contact
tracing, enough funding to change the physical layout of classrooms and school
buildings, a radical reduction in class sizes, and proper personal protective
equipment for all school employees, returning to school becomes folly on a
grand scale. Of course, an effort like that would require a kind of social cohesion,
innovation, and focused allocation of resources that, by definition, is
nonexistent in the age of Trump.
Sacrificing the
Vulnerable
“In late July, when it
was announced that school districts across the state of Oregon would open fully
online again this fall, I felt two things: enormous relief and profound grief.
The experience of virtual schooling in the spring had resulted in many families
suffering due to a lack of access to the social, emotional, and educational
resources of school. No one understands that reality better than the teachers
who have dedicated our waking hours to supporting those students and the
parents who have watched them suffer.
“As refreshing as it
should be to hear politicians across the political spectrum communicating their
worries about a widening achievement gap and the ways in
which the most vulnerable American children will fall behind if they don’t
experience in-person schooling, their concerns ring hollow. Our most vulnerable
children are historically the least served by our schools and
the most likely to get sick if
they go back. Having never prioritized the needs of those very students, their
families, and the communities they live in, those politicians have the audacity
to demand that schools open now.
“Truly caring for the
health and well-being of such students during the pandemic would mean
extending unemployment benefits, providing rental assistance, and enacting universal health care. The answer is hardly
sending vulnerable kids into a building where they could possibly become
infected and carry the virus back to communities that have already been
disproportionately affected by Covid-19.
“Take the example of my
school, which has an air ventilation system that’s been on the fritz for more
than a decade, insufficient soap or even places to wash your hands, and windows
that don’t open. In other words, perfect conditions for spreading a virus. Even
if I were given a face shield and ample hand sanitizer, I’d still be stuck in
classrooms with far too many students and inadequate air flow. And those are
just the physical concerns.
“What very few people
seem to be considering, no less discussing, is the long-term psychological
trauma associated with the spread of the virus. What if I unknowingly infected
my students or their family members? What if I brought the virus home to my
family and friends? What if I contracted the virus from a student and died? No
educator I know believes that online teaching will better serve our students,
but stepping back into in-person learning while the virus is still out of
control in America will clearly only contribute to its further spread.
“Schools are unable to
shoulder the burden of this crisis. Politicizing the return to
school and pitting parents against
teachers -- as if many teachers weren’t themselves parents -- is a devious way
of once again scapegoating those very schools for perennial failures of
funding, leadership, and policy. Forty years of the neoliberal
version of austerity and divestment from public
schools by both Democratic and Republican administrations have ensured that,
unlike in many of the wealthiest nations on this planet,
public schools in the U.S. don’t have the necessary institutional support,
infrastructure, or resources to envision and carry out a safe and
effective return to school.
“To put all this in
perspective, in its budget proposal for 2021, the Trump administration
requested $66.6 billion for the Department of Education, $6.1 billion less than
in 2020. In contrast, Congress just passed the National Defense Authorization
Act authorizing $740 billion in spending for the Defense Department. Even with
the proposed allocation of an additional $70 billion dollars for schools in the
Republican-backed HEALS Act, the now-stalled second attempt to respond to the
spreading pandemic, two-thirds of those funds would only be available to school
districts that hold in-person classes. And because a majority of school funding
is tied to local and state tax revenues, badly hit by an economy hobbled by the
virus, schools will actually be operating on even smaller budgets this year.
Grassroots Privatization
“It’s as if they want us
to fail. Perhaps the most powerful foe of public education in the Trump
administration, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, even threatened
to withhold federal funding if local school
districts decided to resume school totally online this fall. After she was
reminded that she didn’t have the authority to do so, she pivoted instead to
asking parents to consider other options for their children. That request
amounted to encouraging them to pull their children from public schools
(depriving them of essential funding) and instead seek out vouchers for private
or charter schools.
“DeVos didn’t just stop
there. In an attempt to redirect funds
allocated to low-income students by the CARES Act, Congress’s initial response
to the pandemic, she ruled that school districts deciding to use that money for
programs that might benefit all students (instead of just low-income students)
must also pay for “equitable services” for all private schools in the district.
This would potentially siphon up to $1.5 billion dollars of CARES Act money
from public to private schools. Such schools have already benefited from
Paycheck Protection Program loans that were distributed as part of the CARES
Act. I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that they stand to receive yet
more money if anything like the present version of the Senate’s HEALS Act ever
passes. It’s easy to see who wins and who loses in such an equation.
“The fear and anxiety
prompted by uncertainty about how public schools will function in the chaos of
this moment is giving way to grassroots decision-making that will adversely
affect such basic institutions for the foreseeable future and may even
contribute to even more segregated schools. People like me -- white, highly
educated, and accustomed to having options -- are scrambling to figure out
individual solutions to problems that would best be solved by community
organizing.
“Some families are
indeed choosing to pull their children out of public schools, enrolling them in
online academies, private schools, or simply homeschooling their kids. Others
are forming small instructional pods, or micro schools, and hiring private teachers or tutors to
educate their kids.
“The twisted irony of
these developments is that many white people who support the Black Lives Matter
movement are making decisions for their own children that will adversely affect
Black students for years to come. Declining enrollment and white divestment in
public schools will bring about funding shortages and educational disparities
sure to undermine whatever gains those protests achieve.
“The inevitable result
will be more segregated schools, while the gap between
the haves and the have-nots only widens. Ultimately, privatization on the
smallest scale plays into the desire of those like DeVos who seek to undermine
and, in the end, even potentially dismantle public education in favor of private
schools and charter schools, which, unsurprisingly enough, were first formed
to perpetuate school
segregation.
The Survival of Public
Schools
“Public schools are
deeply imperfect institutions. Historically, they’ve perpetuated racial inequities
and solidified economic and social disparities. In many ways, they’ve failed
all our children on almost every conceivable level. Their funding models are little short
of criminal and the lack of resources across the system should have been (but
generally wasn’t) considered unconscionable long before the coronavirus struck.
“Yet institutions are
made up of people and, many of them, myself included, believe that a free
public education accessible to all is a foundation for hope in the future. In
the end, schools may still prove to be our last best chance for salvaging
what’s left of our fractured nation and the promise of democracy. Abandon them
now, when they’re under threat at the federal, state, and grassroots level, and
you imperil the fate of the nation.
“Needed today are creative
solutions that put the focus on the most vulnerable of our children. Perhaps
enlisting our nation’s retirees, many of whom are currently isolated at home,
to help small groups of students, or launching a civilian corps of the
currently unemployed, paid to step in to rebuild critical public school
infrastructure or provide supplementary support and tutoring for kids who might
otherwise be left behind, would help. I know there are creative solutions out
there that don’t just benefit the most privileged among us, that could, in
fact, focus on the most marginalized students. Now is the time to be creative,
not to withdraw from the system. Now is the time to pool resources, while
amplifying the voices of students, parents, and families historically not
invited into such conversations.
“Long-term divestment in
public education has brought America’s schools to a dangerous crossroads, where
mistrust of science and expert advice is threatening the very fabric of this
nation. The only way out of this mess is to reverse the tide. Do we really want
to be governed by fear and self-imposed scarcity? Do we really want the gears
of institutional racism to grind on, whether virtually or in person? It’s time
to act more collectively, to truly put the “public” back in public schools.
It’s time to set partisanship aside to protect all our children as we navigate
the unknown and unknowable.
“As I prepare for an
academic year unlike any other, I expect to watch with terror as many of our
nation’s schools, woefully unprepared, open in the midst of a pandemic.
Exhausted and heartbroken, I will worry nonstop about the students and teachers
walking through those doors” (Vox Populi).
-Belle Chesler
is a visual arts teacher at a public school in Beaverton, Oregon.
Great written blog post.
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