Thread by @jdeq

There has been a back and forth for the past few days between paediatricians pushing for schools to reopen for the sake of kids’ mental health and educators concerned about safety.

Here are some thoughts. 1/

Generally I think everyone is united in that they are concerned about safety during a pandemic. Concerned to varying degrees.
2/

Everyone recognizes the importance a secure and stable public education system plays in the lives of kids.

Everyone recognizes the importance of public education in society.
3/

It seems that the paediatricians are prioritizing the mental health concerns of some students over everything else. Frankly, that isn’t how significant policy decisions that will impart millions should be made.
4/

The doctors aren’t talking about the mental health concerns of educators. They aren’t talking about the disruption switching back to in-person learning at this point in the year will cause. There is a shocking level of naïveté about what is involved in reopening schools.
5/

Let me be clear - educators seem united in preferring in person learning - they want to be in class with their kids. I have watched so many of my educator friends slowly ebb away throughout the shut down.

Let me also be clear that educators remained concerned about safety.
6/

There is plenty of scientific evidence now that COVID is spread through aerosol transmission. Most of the safety measures in place don’t deal with that.
7/

Anyone who has been in a school recently knows that the ventilation is bad. Little has been done to improve that. Schools in a hot and sticky June will be unbearable and have terrible ventilation. Educators are rightly concerned about this. The docs should be too.
/8

There is also a pretty clear correlation between schools being open and rising COVID rates. The biggest impact on Covid rates seems to be the closure of schools. Reopening too soon will prolong wave three and limit the freedom we are all hoping for in the summer.
/9

COVID had had a horrific impact on everyone’s mental health. The conversation driven by the paediatricians is narrow and frankly offensive in the broader context. Where is the concern for restaurant and non essential retail owners and workers? Health care workers? Parents?
/10

Where is the concern about the impact this has all had on educators? Educators are normally at their lowest point in June, having given everything they had throughout the year. This year has taken a significantly greater toll - people are running in empty.
/11

In fact this very conversation is endemic of all of our COVID failures - prioritizing the apparent needs of one small group over the greater need or common good of society. We know that COVID spreads quickly when bad policy decisions are made.
/12

We know that when COVID cases go up Ford won’t accept responsibilities for his actions. He won’t say ‘folks, we ignored the science again, I’m sorry’. He won’t say ‘I shouldn’t have listened to those doctors’.

Instead somehow this will be blamed on educators!
/13

Ford set this up with his foolish ‘we have to get the doctors and the unions to agree’ statements. He doesn’t care what the unions think, never has and never will. Since he made that comment no one picked up the phone and had a conversation. He has been too busy hiding away.
/14

We know how this will play out. Schools will be thrown into chaos again with insufficient warning. The lives of millions of Ontarians will be unrooted. All because Ford made another bad policy decision. We will have the limited satisfaction of adding to the list of Ford failures.