The School Opening Conundrum

By Charles Dervarics

A few years back, I visited a high-poverty middle school during a lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and the doors closed. It also was a 90-degree day in an old building without air conditioning. Observing a math class, I couldn’t help but notice how the teacher had strategically placed 19 small and medium-size fans around the room, generating air flow to take advantage of the one open window. Clearly, she had faced similar challenges before, probably using her geometry skills for the best fan placement.

While this visit took place before COVID, I sometimes think about that school – still open during any normal academic year – when considering how fast schools should reopen in 2021.

With medical facilities and some colleges open for months now, conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t take that long for most K-12 schools to offer more than remote learning. With PPE, partitions, masks, and a goal to vaccinate teachers, it makes sense to offer in-person learning especially for low-income youngsters with the least technology access and the most chance of falling behind. But just as achievement among schools can vary greatly, so do the facilities and crowding that teachers and students have to deal with on a daily basis.

National debate on this issue has erupted anew now that President Biden has pledged to reopen the majority of schools during his first 100 days in office. But that plan is putting the president in crosshairs with some teacher unions, who warn of the risks posed by overcrowding, substandard ventilation systems and lagging vaccination rates.

Similar debates are playing out across the country, as typified by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long battle with the Chicago Teachers Union on school reopening. And in San Francisco, the city just sued its own school district, citing a lack of planning and vision to get back to in-person instruction.

Meanwhile, Republicans have remained largely unified in calling for schools to re-open. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, recently called remote learning a “pale shadow of proper schooling” and said the science shows that schools can offer in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the House GOP tried to require schools to provide a reopening plan before getting funds from last December’s COVID relief bill. Democrats rebuffed that idea.

This GOP message plays well with its base. In some communities, it’s not uncommon to see residents who have replaced their Trump 2020 signs with signs pushing for school re-openings. A Republican push on this issue also may help recapture the attention of suburban parents weary of the school-at-home trend.

According to Burbio, a research and data company, about 39% of schools are currently open for traditional, in-person learning. That leaves the administration until late April – the end of Biden’s first 100 days – to reach the 50% mark.

On Feb. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also offered a possible way forward. The agency outlined a series of steps to promote safe school openings, including use of masks by students, teachers and staff, social distancing, handwashing, strong cleaning and maintenance practices and speedy contact tracing in response to COVID cases. With the school year more than half over, those guidelines may arrive just in time.

_____
•Address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Low Risk to School-Age Youth vs. Being Deprived of Learning, Socialization

By Andrew Boyd

I met recently with a friend and colleague whose spouse and he made a decision some years back to pursue public schooling for their two young children, despite having the resources to have put them into private institutions. They are preparing now to graduate their son to the public middle school, which is not as well regarded as was the elementary program; however, they imagined that their son, and a couple dozen of his friends and their parents, could do some good in helping this school to advance and grow.

Then, the pandemic. Then two weeks to slow the spread. Then national lockdowns. And as our great national nightmare dragged on, many of those same parents have decided that they will be enrolling their kids in private institutions going forward. Add this little story to a growing pile of evidence favoring the argument that the extended national lockdown, in particular as it relates to schools, has been a complete disaster of both economic and social policy.

The costs of these policies are far-flung and harder to measure in the near-term relative to the daily updates on COVID infections and deaths, and as we all know, if it bleeds it leads, the ever-present failure of journalism to take its responsibility seriously. Add to that the disease of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has run wild through our political, social and media institutions, accompanied as it is by all loss of perspective, which only compounds the problem: That is, our inability, as a people to engage in reasoned, rational and thoughtful discussion of deadly serious issues. In such environs, all suffer, but none so much as the children, deprived of learning, socialization, protections from abuse and despair. One can hardly imagine the scale of this tragedy.

Now, as both COVID and TDS ebb, we see all kinds of interesting after-effects, including the breaking of bonds between staunch Democratic, even leftist, institutions such as the Chicago mayor's office and San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the teachers’ unions. Said unions will not escape unscathed, as the masses take note of their moral depravity, abject cowardice, and total lack of commitment to the children they purport to serve. So, too, with that megalomaniacal, Emmy-award nominated, dare I say Trump-esque simulacrum of a human being, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, who may yet get his just desserts if Joey from Scranton lives up to his promise of a depoliticized DOJ (not holding my breath, exactly).

Need I revisit the science as it stands today (understanding evolves, you see)? The almost statistically insignificant danger to our children from COVID, the presence of a 95%-effective vaccine, soon to be broadly administered to “essentials,” or the countervailing dangers presented by this sham that is virtual schooling? Surely, all reasonable and reasoning people are beginning to see the need for change and fast. That, at least, is my hope.

We all have a stake in this, unquestionably, so the fact that I have three school-age children grants me no special ownership of the issue or moral high ground. My children, as best I can tell, are extraordinarily well-adapted, loved and supported, and the damage to their lives is arguably minimized, but I can see in their eyes a pressing sense of loneliness and a creeping despair. It’s not just COVID we’re fighting here. It’s the tragedy of the human condition and the ever-so-thin layer of social organization, friendship, support and shared sense of purpose that keep us all from the edge of the abyss. We must work now to repair and uphold these structures, lest we lose a grip on the whole damned thing.

_____
•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.

Biden to the Rescue?

By Todd Lassa

President-elect Biden is ready to test the mettle of his party’s wafer-thin majorities in the House and Senate with his $1.9-trillion coronavirus American Rescue Plan. Key feature of the plan is $1,400 in stimulus payments to complement the $600 mailed out late last year, thus matching the $2,000 President Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought.

In campaigning for Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof in their successful January 6 Georgia runoff races for U.S. Senate, Biden suggested that it would take their victories, which give the party a 50-50 count plus Vice President-elect Harris’ tiebreaker, to pass the additional $1,400 stimulus checks. The Trump administration 2017 tax cuts and last March’s $2.2-trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the largest stimulus package in U.S. history, pushed the federal deficit to record levels. Now Republicans on Capitol Hill are starting to move back to their more traditional model fiscal responsibility and opposing such large deficits.

After details of The American Rescue Plan (or TARP, which recalls the Targeted Asset Relief Program of the Bush 43 and Obama administrations in response to the 2008 credit crisis) were released, The Wall Street Journal suggested in a Friday morning story that Biden’s proposal, along with a 0.7% drop in December retail sales, were to blame for a decrease in stock market averages. But the story quoted one analyst as suggesting that the market was expecting a larger dollar amount that would better stimulate the economy as vaccinations continued across the country and the economy started opening up.

Conversely, critics of the CARES Act and the short-term extension passed by Congress just before the New Year say the stimulus funds, when distributed to Americans who need it most, were being saved rather than spent (the objective of the payments is to help generate commerce) as they feared for their future employment.

In addition to direct payments for individuals, Biden’s TARP proposes an additional $400 per week in unemployment insurance supplement through September, expanded paid leave and increases in the child tax credit. About half the package would be claimed by household costs.

There is $20-billion for national vaccination centers across the U.S., open to anyone living here regardless of immigration status, with the goal of reopening public shools by May 1, within Biden’s first 100 days. Most of the rest of the remaining $950-billion or so would pay for relief to state and local governments, which have suffered severe tax revenue declines due to small business failures and higher unemployment, and to vaccine distribution, including the national centers.

“If we invest now boldly, smartly and with unwavering focus on American workers and families, we will strengthen our economy, reduce inequity and put our nation’s long-term finances on the most sustainable course,” Biden said Thursday evening (AP).

Deaths globally from the coronavirus pandemic topped 2 million on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. death toll accounts for nearly one-fifth of that, now close to 400,000.

—–
Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

The Decline in Standards

By Stephen Macaulay

Marco Rubio did not attend an Ivy League school. After graduating from South Miami Senior High School, he went northwest, to Missouri, where he spent a year at Tarkio College, as he received a football scholarship. Then it was back to Florida, Gainesville, where he attended what was then Santa Fe Community College. That was followed by attendance at the University of Florida, where he received a BA in political science in 1993. Then he attended the University of Miami School of Law in 1996.

Using what seems to be the communication tool of choice for Trump wannabes, Twitter, Rubio tweeted out that Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees “went to Ivy League schools, have strong resumes, attend all the right conferences & will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline.”

There’s a lot to break down there. And we’ll give Rubio the benefit of the doubt that he’s not simply annoyed that he didn’t make that league.

But let’s start with the conclusion. That America is in decline. And who has been the president for the past four years? Who has failed to rally the American public to do the right things to stop the coronavirus in the way that a leader who has lost more than a quarter million of his people would? Whose lack of response has led to not only high rates of unemployment right now, but what is likely to get worse as the fall turns to winter. . .and the funding and restrictions against evictions run out?

Oh, and who had control of the Senate?

If America is declining, we can see where it started. And would it have been better to reinforce that decline by re-electing the person who has gotten the proverbial ball rolling?

Are manners now a thing of the past, politeness something that is to be demeaned?

If you are a parent and have a high school student, odds are it would be your fondest dream for them to attend an Ivy League school. You would be so very proud if they can achieve a strong resume. It would be something to brag about if they were able to attend the right conferences. And regardless of all of that, you want them to be polite and orderly.

When people start calling out other people for being smart and good mannered, there is evidently decline.

A decline in standards.

And we can clearly identify when that started: June 16, 2015.

—–

Debate Audience Wins as Trump and Biden Mind the Mute Button

By Charles Dervarics

Voters claimed at least a small victory Thursday night when the major party presidential candidates had to accept a tool familiar to anyone working in remote video meetings during the pandemic – the all-important mute button.

Both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden had to follow this new rule, which significantly reduced interruptions during their final debate in Nashville. The president showed occasional frustration at having to wait for an open microphone, but the new guideline kept shouting to a minimum and gave viewers a chance to hear the candidates’ views on key issues.

During the 90-minute debate moderated by NBC’s Kristen Welker, the two candidates sparred over every issue from COVID-19 and race relations to China, North Korea, immigration and climate change.

On COVID-19, Trump laid blame primarily on China and said that “we’re rounding the corner” on the virus with a vaccine announcement likely within weeks. “We can’t close up our nation or we won’t have a nation,” he said. Biden countered that the president’s performance has fallen far short with 220,000 Americans dead from the disease. “Anyone responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States,” he said.

The former vice president also said he planned to implement “Bidencare,” with Affordable Care Act improvements such as lower premiums and drug prices and the ability of low-income individuals to opt into Medicaid. Trump criticized this plan, saying it would lead to socialized medicine and a loss of private insurance for 180 million Americans.

An extended segment on race relations saw the candidates approach the issue from different directions. Trump touted his administration’s passage of criminal justice reform and more funding for historically Black colleges, saying the Obama-Biden administration failed on these and other issues. “I ran because of you,” he said. “If I thought you did a good job, I would’ve never run.”

For his part, Biden said he regretted past support for minimum sentencing laws and promised to give states $20 billion to eliminate these standards and create drug courts so offenders go to treatment rather than prison. “We should fundamentally change the system, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Some of the most heated moments came when Trump challenged Biden over alleged misdeeds by his son in gaining international business and whether the former vice president benefitted from deals in China and Ukraine. Biden denied any wrongdoing and the debate turned to Trump’s own international business dealings, bank accounts and unseen tax returns. At one point, Biden turned to the camera and noted that the election is “not about his family or my family. It’s about your family, and your family’s hurting badly.”

With the debates now complete, both candidates head into the final 11 days of campaigning. Nearly 50 million Americans already have cast early votes, with Election Day set for Nov. 3.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

—–

It’s Not the Masks We Reject; It’s the Mandate

By Bryan Williams

Joe Biden is running on a promise to America that he would protect us better from COVID-19 than Trump and his team. He has even gone so far as to say he would implement a national mask mandate. If the past 7 months has shown us anything it’s that Americans really don’t like being told what to do. But we’ve known that forever anyway - I mean a bunch of dudes threw perfectly good tea into Boston Harbor in the 1700s because they didn’t like King George telling them what to do.

We can go back and forth all day, split hairs over when a travel ban from China was put in place until we’re blue in the face, or whether or not President Trump wearing a mask would have made a big difference in the number of deaths related to COVID-19. I have never really given much credence to any of the above, and just go with what I know from my little corner of the world, and yes, I know this is anecdotal.

At the height of the pandemic, I worked in a mental health crisis clinic. We had no employer-provided masks for weeks and the layout of our building made it so social distancing was simply not possible. We also had no limit to the number of people we could admit. Patients we admitted were anyone from anywhere, most of them users of substances that inhaled, ingested, or intravenously injected those illicit substances with other people most assuredly in distances less than 6 feet, and many of them homeless. No one at my clinic in March through May 2020 contracted COVID-19 (my last day there was in May).

Then, in June, my family and I visited my parents (in their 60s) and grandparents (83 and 82) in Northern Nevada. All of us have used our common sense during the pandemic: we’ve worn masks everywhere we go, we socially distance ourselves as much as possible, and we limit our contact with others. Not a single one of us has contracted the coronavirus, and I think it’s because of my family’s common sense, prudence, and overall good health (we don’t smoke, vape or drink alcohol in excess, and we’re not morbidly obese).

What’s my point? I don’t think political leadership has a lot to do with whether or not people begin wearing masks or socially distance themselves more. Now I now work in a hospital, and I am around doctors all day. I cannot begin to tell you how many of them “wear” their mask with their nose still protruding in naked glory. These are men and women that should know better! Joe Biden mandating mask wearing won’t make these doctors pull their mask up over their nose. That old American chestnut -- personal responsibility -- still holds. Please wear a mask, and don’t party, okay? I just don’t want Joe Biden to tell me what to do. Donald J. Trump gets that.

Williams is a mental health professional in California and a former Republican party official.

Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

—–

View from the Left: Talk with a Biden Supporter in Rural Pennsylvania

Jennifer Clark, of Meyersdale, Penn., did not vote in the 2016 presidential election, but now supports former Vice President Joe Biden.

“It’s more so anti-Trump,” Clark says of her favored candidate. “Anti the man. I as I’ve gotten older, I can very much see both sides. For years I was a huge listener of right-wing talk radio. It drove my deceased husband crazy. I really believe that I’m pretty well-informed on both sides. I’m not a slave to MSNBC. I used to watch Fox News.

“Some key core values of the Republican party I don’t jell with. Those deep-seated abortion things. The Supreme Court is terrifying me right now.” Meyersdale voters are more concerned about economic issues than abortion, Clark believes.

“Even before he was elected,” Clark was troubled about “the way he talks about women. I’ve been through some of that. The way a white rich man in power thinks he can speak that way to anybody.”

Clark is “a little bit concerned” about Biden’s age. “I respect what he’s saying, what he stands for. But when Kamala got on board, I was really like, yes, this could be a positive change.”

She doesn’t believe Hilary Clinton “was the way to go” in 2016. Clark considers Kamala Harris sufficiently center-left “to bring people together,” and was encouraged to find a substantial number of members on a Facebook group page for Democratic women in Somerset County, where Meyersdale is located.

“I love talking politics to people who are like, Trumpsters,” she says, adding,“I’ve heard so many crazy conspiracy theories” about the coronavirus pandemic, and the president’s response. “Even the mask-wearing, and it makes me so mad because my kids go to school.”

Clark’s 15-year-old daughter returned to school Sep. 1, and often argues politics. She and her classmates must wear masks at school, but Clark often runs into her fellow parents, who do not.

Clark fears what the post-pandemic economy would be under Trump. “What are you going to do about that, Mr. Trump?” she says, noting that most Meyersdale residents do not play the stock market. She feels it’s time for Meyersdale voters still connected to the stagnant coal economy to find new lines of work.

President Obama and Vice President Biden “jumpstarted” the economy, Clark believes, “and (Trump) just comes along riding on the shirttails of that.”

Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

—–

Talking to Trump and Biden Supporters in Small-Town Pennsylvania

By Todd Lassa

MEYERSDALE, Penn. -- “Make American Great Again,” “Keep America Great,” “Trump Digs Coal” and “Pro-Life, Pro-Trump” signs prevail in and near this small town in Southern Somerset County, just north of the Maryland border in the important swing-state. It is conceivable that some of these signs have been up since before November 2016.

Just after Labor Day weekend, campaign signs for Joe Biden began to appear on lawns in this one-time coal town of about 2,000 residents. Driving on the Mason-Dixon Highway leading into town, we spotted a Biden sign on a lawn just north of a lawn featuring a Trump sign. Could The Hustings, in the interest of civil discourse, talk two neighbors into a socially distanced friendly discussion together?

Not this time. A widow who lives at the Trump-signed home says she put up the sign for her late husband, a much more fervent supporter of the president, and she doesn’t like to talk politics. Neither does her Biden-supporting neighbor, who says she has two signs in case the first one is stolen.

In Meyersdale, The Hustings found a Trump supporter on her front porch on Main Street, in front of her large Trump campaign sign, on a street where at least half of homes feature pro-Trump banners. After striking out with the single Main Street home with a Biden sign, we found a Biden supporter a couple of blocks away who says she loves to talk politics.

Our Trump supporter is Terri Walker, a retired employee of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Walker voted for President Trump in 2016 and says that while she grew up in a Democratic household (which she says still prevails in Meyersdale), registered as a Republican about 30 years ago due to her support for President Ronald Reagan.

Our Biden supporter is Jennifer Clark, a costume designer who returns to her job in Maryland October 15 when the Cumberland Theater reopens. Clark is recently widowed. Her husband voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016, though she sat out that presidential election, after voting for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. She has a 15-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son.

The Hustings spoke to Walker and Clark just prior to the first presidential debate. Their comments, in the right and left columns, respectively, are edited for clarity and length.

Please address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

—–