Thread by @TracyNovick

There have been times when it has been clear to me that folks in charge haven’t been teachers and that has mattered a lot.
Right now it’s clear that we don’t have experienced district administrators running things.

There’s what keeps being said, and then the reality at the district level.

“You need to be more flexible with staffing.”

First, you’ve clearly not reflected on how much time teachers and others put in versus what the perception is.
Second, there are (rightfully) regulatory and contractual issues with “flexibility” in staffing.

Some of that has to do with, you know, actually educating kids, but some of that has to do with actual safety (remember that?) and reasonable working conditions.

“The state and federal government has funded COVID relief at X millions/billions, and districts should use their relief funding for…”

The COVID relief hasn’t been close to any actual estimates of real costs, and it’s not a patch on operating costs.

Off-the-too of my head list of what districts have been told to spend their COVID funding on:
•PPE for staff and students
•Technology for staff and students for remote learning

•”Learning loss” (20% set aside on ESSER III)
•increases in salary/stipends to address staffing shortages.
•air quality improvements (which has included everything from redoing HVAC systems to portable filtration units)

•mental health supports for staff and students
•revamped curriculum (yes, this has come up)

• “activities that are necessary to maintain the operation of
and continuity of services...and continuing to employ existing
staff”
(That last is right from ARP on ESSER III, so, yeah, keeping the district running and folks employed was explicitly included)

I’m sure there is more that I am not remembering.
And no, the numbers don’t line up on that. I don’t know of anyone at the local education level who honestly thought they would. They never do.

But you’d best be grateful and smile about it. Heaven forbid you note that actual needs aren’t being met.

I’ve been making this list in my head over the week about what actually would have helped.
Many such lists have been made…

Access to testing had been shouted about for years now (I’ll admit I didn’t think quite so much of the pandemic would involve standing in lines in the cold), but it is an enormous problem.

Of course we should have COVID testing, and in any space where groups are gathered regularly, especially if such gatherings are required, of course we need to just have regular testing happening.

But instead it has been “this is one of many things you can do with the limited pool of funding you have, assuming you can get staff.”
(No, MA testing isn’t free; it takes local staff to make it happen.)

And we need better info on if rapid tests are really the firewall with omicron, BTW. There’s a lot riding on them with test and stay.

Of course everyone should have—and yes, be required to wear—masks that actually take care of the issue.
That, to me, along with the actual capacity building for testing, is a FEDERAL issue.

On air quality:
First—and this is more generally true—we have a lot of adults walking around who think they know about schools because they went to school and are parents.
We base our knowledge of education off our own experiences.

If you haven’t experienced the enormously wide range of what public school, and public school buildings, are in this country (or even state), you should really take some listening time.

Remember back when DESE told districts that they were quite sure that everyone could stuff kids back into buildings, and they literally gave us classroom layouts, having pulled the state databases on our buildings?

What if, instead of that, they’d pulled the actual heating and ventilation info for every school, had figured out how to make the high level filtration needed happen, and then funded that?

(We still would have run into massive supply issues without other help; MSBA has tanked school window suppliers some years.)

Not every building can take MERV 13 filters in their HCAC; many school buildings don’t actually have HVAC. But they can have portables.
(Important note: this can involve electrical access and support, too.)

What if we actually valued health?
What if, instead of the Secretary continually tweeting about being in school buildings, the message was that we want a healthy country, and healthy children, and healthy adults?

Again, district leadership knows we live in communities.
Teachers go home to families.
Administrative staff takes the bus to work.
Bus drivers have grandchildren that are under five.

We are all dependent on an all-too-fragile health care system.

I genuinely don’t remember the last time that the mail message was “stay home if you’re sick.”

And we don’t—and this also goes well beyond what districts can do on their own—give the kinds of supports families need for that to be the standard.

But it is also in how we talk to kids; I know kids who are panicked to miss anything because they’ll fall behind.

And teachers are juggling the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” of material, as soon as any larger cohort of kids is out.

If you were never the kid who missed school the day new material was covered in math class, or never the teacher that was going to start a new unit the day that flu took out half of third period, you may not really know what this is like.

Our public education has always been about a lot more than education, and that is certainly true again now.

But I’m not seeing a lot of care for the people who make up the public education system:

•for the young people in my own district whose parents don’t have time to scramble to complete their vaccinations;
•for the staff who have family members who aren’t eligible for vaccination;
•for anyone who knows they have been exposed and can’t find a test;

•for anyone who gets sick and can’t afford to take time off;

Education is about people and it runs on people.
And people get sick. And people sometimes don’t get well again.

And I don’t see enough being done or even said about that.