What I Wish Happened When It Came to Opening Schools.

What I wish had happened when it came to reopening schools:

1. Back in April, when it looked like a return to school was unlikely, a committee of doctors, engineers, mothers, fathers, teachers, experienced fundraisers, writers, inventors, and white house officials should have been established to kick ideas around how to help states navigate education in the fall.
2. As we headed into June, the President should have talked to Americans about sacrifice. He should have had the courage to admit that we still didn’t know what a return to school would mean, and that it could lead to more people dying of the coronavirus, and that because of that, Americans must begin to think about what they can do to help.
3. The first step would have been a month long mask mandate. The conversation might have ended there.
4. The President should have asked parents to seriously examine whether or not they could safely keep their children home for the 2021 year. Parents who have jobs that allow them to work remotely would need to dig deep and ask themselves if they have the strength and adaptability to take that on.
5. Parents who are willing to do this (and it’s surely miserable) should receive government money to hire a tutor…a housekeeper, order take-out, whatever they need to release some of the pressure.
6. Kids should not return to total isolation, and that by keeping kids home, it means they can take on smaller risks to see peers for shorter periods of time.
7. Grandparents who help should be given government money for their help in keeping things afloat.
8. By these parents keeping their kids home, the parents who can’t keep their kids home, either because they are essential workers (includes teachers) or have shit bosses or simply because they know themselves well enough and know that they might injure their child, can send their kids to school and those kids can comfortably social distance. Bonus — some of these kids may be the very kids that need this extra attention the most at school — maybe a year of education like this helps them enormously for years to come.
9. You have some kids at school, and some teachers focus on teaching those kids (younger teachers, teachers who already had covid-19, teachers with the right blood type, teachers with no kids at home, etc.).
10. You have some kids doing remote learning and they are taught by the teachers who aren’t in school.
11. You still need plans for when/if a student or teacher tests positive for coronavirus, but this could be a much less likely scenario with fewer people.

The Role of the Private Sector:

1. The President could have asked businesses to allow their employees to get creative with their time — perhaps giving parents an extra week of vacation so that parents have a moment to prepare for the coming year. Instead of hoping their employees never bring it up, they could have welcomed the discussion, even asking if employees without kids in school would be willing to donate vacation time or take on some extra work.

Local businesses can be called upon to help:

1. Does your factory have a kick ass sledding hill outside? Can you coordinate visits from school kids, organized by a local parent with sitters? Allow parents to access your wifi from their cars or an outdoor space so they can catch up with work while the kids are engaged. This cost is covered by the state/town or even local fundraisers.
2. Local farms can create two hour curriculums to keep groups of kids busy and active outdoors. Allow parents to access your wifi from their cars or an outdoor space so they can catch up with work while the kids are engaged.This cost is covered by the state/town or even local fundraisers.
3. Run an internet company? Have an empty office that is killing you in rent? Local schools (parents? The mayor? somebody) can find 10 kids interested in engineering and your space can be used to teach them. Your rent is now covered by the state/town.
4. Bowling alley — Every day, two groups of ten kids (one in the morning, one in the afternoon — between cleaning) come for one hour to bowl. Keep siblings together. Again, this cost is covered by the state/town.
5. Own a bike shop? Do a bike drive, fix up the bikes, and host rides of ten kids a few times a week. Keep siblings together. Again, cost covered by the state/town.
6. Vacation rentals and Hotels: These are spaces that can be used to educate kids in small groups, help them learn to swim, have spaces to run around in.
7. There are travel agencies that, if given government money, could pivot their efforts to help arrange these spaces (vacation rentals, hotels). These companies need something to do while people simply do not book travel.
8. Colleges: Let’s enlist education majors and give them a free ride next year if they will offer to tutor 4 kids at a time as they remote learn. Maybe education majors should be the only students allowed to return to colleges to make that happen, or maybe that can happen remotely within their own hometowns.
9. Facebook — Facebook alone could have administered surveys back in June to help districts understand what parents are and aren’t comfortable with. They have access to much better technology and data than any school district.
10. Communities: Every single person in a community has skin in the game on this. You don’t want kids or teachers to get sick because that means your grocer gets sick and then you get sick. If you look at this mess and all you have to add is some bullshit about your taxes then you have literally given up on America. You are not a patriot.

I am sure there are many more ideas. America was built on courage and innovation and with some ingenuity we can do better when it comes to educating our kids and keeping parents working during a pandemic.

But at this moment, individual districts are scrambling to come up with a solution and every potential answer is wrong. If everyone goes back to school, it’s incredibly likely someone will die — it could be a teacher, a student, an admin, or a custodian. And then what? Should the 10 people who sincerely want to help and signed up for the volunteer “back to school” committee carry the weight of that death?

If a school uses a hybrid model, how the hell are working parents going to fill the gaps? We’ve already put so much on the shoulders of working parents, this could destroy marriages and it’s absolutely detrimental to working mothers. Who is responsible for the breakdown of American families?

And if a school goes 100% remote, which is likely to happen if we go 100% back, then the kids who live in risky situations will languish. All will suffer. Some may die. Who is responsible?

And for the love of god, close the bars. Figure out how to keep the people who own and operate bars from falling apart financially and ask them to wait it out a year.

At the time I write this, the only way I can think to end it is “Fingers Crossed.” What a plan.