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Heads up. Alex Berenson, wing nut, is stirring the pot to rile up parents/GOP vs teachers unions (Original Post) OrlandoDem2 Jun 2020 OP
Feudal lords hate an educated populace. LakeArenal Jun 2020 #1
Part of it is PR. Igel Jun 2020 #2
Twitter announces that it has permanently banned pro-Trump author Alex Berenson, LetMyPeopleVote Aug 2021 #3

Igel

(35,282 posts)
2. Part of it is PR.
Thu Jun 18, 2020, 03:02 PM
Jun 2020

There were articles with the ambiguous headlines that "Teachers unions oppose re-opening".

Then they listed fairly small unions or city/state teacher unions. Not national ones, not a lot.

The Berenson thing is in opposition to those unions. Meaning in favor of having teaching in the classroom.

Most parents and teachers I know are strongly in favor of re-opening schools if possible, with "if possible" having a bar set a lot lower than many would think. They're not zero risk in their thinking. There's a variety of reasons for it.

Some teachers and parents *are* concerned about at-risk populations or just their kids in general. But others have trouble with work and leaving kids unattended. Or they don't want to have to discipline their kids to do their online assignments, or sort out how to tutor. A lot of schools had maybe 20% of their students completely skip the last 9-10 weeks of school in the spring. Some had more than 20% skip. Typically the lower achieving the school, the more students didn't log in, which presages having those schools be even *lower* achieving next year.

At the same time, schools have to have a palette of instructional options, ranging from normal, to mildly socially distanced, to greater social distancing, to all online. They have to be ready to have one campus locked down while others are open. They have to be ready for things to be done one way Tuesday and then Wednesday flip to another modality. They have to find a way of increasing their available space, esp. for younger grades, but still find a way of serving all the special needs groups, the at-risk kids, and those they need to feed.

It's basically a nightmare.

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