8 ms·

Here is a big problem. The children need to go somewhere. Parents need to work, bills need to be paid and tax incomes need to continue to flow. So what to do wi

Here is a big problem. The children need to go somewhere. Parents need to work, bills need to be paid and tax incomes need to continue to flow. So what to do with the kids? Right now, the options are either send them to school, where there are (in the US) government employees making sure they are safe. The workers are well represented by a strong union, have good healthcare and reasonable wages. The other option is to send them to private day care, where private citizens with no oversight, very low pay and no worker protections are being asked to shoulder the risk. It seems like we have no problem hoisting even more responsibility upon the poor and least represented in society. Teaches are essential workers, much like firefighters, DMV workers or court clerks. We expect a girl making minimum wage at Kroger to accept that she is an essential worker. Why do we not expect the same from school staff? Disclosure: I have siblings and other close relatives that work for and in school in the US. I am not externalizing the risk.

bpodgursky 6y ago
The teachers don't expect the same, because they are still getting paid. I'm not saying they don't have legitimate questions about how schools will reopen safely, but to be frank, it's really easy to argue that it's "just not safe enough", when you're still pulling a paycheck sitting at home and the closing of schools is felt by working parents who are SOL -- not by yourself.
- cheez 6y ago
  Ding ding ding. I heard of teachers outright disappearing, claiming "technical issues" during this time.
  - kilroy_jones 6y ago
    Of course there will be people like this. Do you think they are anywhere close to the majority?
    - cheez 6y ago
      No but it's unacceptable.
  - rurban 6y ago
    In my city all sports teachers were suddenly ill for several weeks. they had the lowest risk, but apparently also the smallest brains.
    - cheez 6y ago
      Lol. Nice work if you can get it
- kilroy_jones 6y ago
  Most teachers would rather be in the classroom than do online learning. They'd also like people to be safe. The issue comes with trying to force kids to wear masks when so many parents are against them in many places, maintain social distancing, and keeping things clean and sanitized. Keeping kids focused and learning has become difficult enough, but add on all those measures plus the possibility of contracting covid, just means you will lose a lot of experienced teaching staff.
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    "Most" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. And lets also be real, there is a self-reporting bias there, where I doubt very many people (myself included) would admit to _wanting_ to not work and still get paid, even if that is the motivation.
    - kilroy_jones 6y ago
      Most teachers are still working doing online learning though, which why I stated they'd prefer to be in the classroom. Online learning is all the worst parts of teaching with very little of the joy. Sure, if someone wanted to pay me to do whatever I wanted I'd take it no qualms whatsoever. But yes, I may not admit to it.
      - salmon30salmon 6y ago
        I think that like most things in the states, this is super dependent on where you are. I know in my area, teachers were _not_ working every day, despite still doing online learning. They were supposed to check in with the kids every few days. In fact, most went on unemployment (at the request of the district) to be able to make the lower work scheme work without impacting district budgets.
- jshaqaw 6y ago
  Are you kidding? Every teacher I know has had to radically reinvent their classrooms for fully remote learning on the fly with minimal support and are working around the clock to do so.
kilroy_jones 6y ago
Maybe the issue lies more in your first statement that children need to go somewhere. That's a fairly modern notion. If we've created a society where we rely on strangers to care for our kids, then maybe that's something that needs to be looked rather than creating additional covid hotspots? While we're doing that, maybe a compromise with A/B school days to limit student numbers, with online participation for whichever group is at home. Schools also need to create strict rules as far as cafeterias, masks, etc... With clear consequences for violations. The school I am at has dividers in the cafeteria and staggered lunches with no talking while eating. Masks at all times. Temperature checks at the doors and such. This is countrywide (not US) and there has been no spread in schools.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Well the issue may well lie in my first statement. I am not disagreeing in principle with you. But we a day late and a dollar short to actually make large scale societal change in the time needed to respond to _this_ pandemic. The children need an education, parents need to work. That is the fact of the times. Should this be an ongoing conversation to prepare for the _next_ pandemic? Certainty. But we lost the benefit of time on this one.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    Respectfully, this is a sunk cost fallacy. The idea that we’ve already screwed up so there’s no way to radically change course is a recipe for disaster. Even the UK, who foolishly tried to go the probably-nonexistent “herd immunity” route realized their error, turned things around, and is now doing much better than the US (although worse than Europe, because of their early mistakes).
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      It is only a fallacy if incorrectly applied :D In some cases, it is better to continue course with known variables. Also, I wouldn't say it is non-existent. As I said in another response, I currently see a lot of evidence for the cross-reactive t-cell immune response causing the virus to burn out after around 25% infection rate.
claudeganon 6y ago
The problem with this kind of framing is that it accepts the status quo as a sane premise in the face of a pandemic with largely unknown long term consequences. Having public schools function as de facto daycares when there’s not a pandemic makes a certain amount of sense, but in the circumstances of the US, where we have uncontrolled spread and a dysfunctional healthcare system on many levels, it makes little. The sane thing to do would be to implement some form of short term UBI that allows one parent or a designated caregiver to stay home and attend to children’s needs and do everything we can to get the situation under control (universal mask orders, regional lockdowns, replenish PPE, etc.)
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  Three questions: 1. What makes you think we _can_ get this under control without herd immunity or a vaccine? I am of the belief that there is a certain level of latent immunity via t-cells in a large portion of the population and thus effective herd immunity is around 25-30% infected. But for arguments sake, lets say it is around 70 based solely on Rt. 2. Who would pay for the UBI? My state is already running low on money. We are already having to cut programs. Raising taxes doesn't count, that would take a year to pass, a year to implement and collect and probably a few years in court litigating. So how do we pay for it? 3. How do you equitably select a parent to stay home? And how to do reimburse their employer for lost productivity? Do you guarantee their job upon the end of the pandemic?
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    >1. What makes you think we _can_ get this under control without herd immunity or a vaccine? I am of the belief that there is a certain level of latent immunity via t-cells in a large portion of the population and thus effective herd immunity is around 25-30% infected. But for arguments sake, lets say it is around 70 based solely on Rt. New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Germany have done it without herd immunity or a vaccine with a variety of strategies. We should follow their examples and stop using various forms of “American Exceptionalism” as an excuse to not learn from them. >2. Who would pay for the UBI? My state is already running low on money. We are already having to cut programs. Raising taxes doesn't count, that would take a year to pass, a year to implement and collect and probably a few years in court litigating. So how do we pay for it? Print the money. It’s short term and there’s already massive demand and supply shocks that will only get worse if the pandemic isn’t curbed. >3. How do you equitably select a parent to stay home? And how to do reimburse their employer for lost productivity? Do you guarantee their job upon the end of the pandemic? I believe Canada and some countries in Europe are doing this through an employer-based grants, where the government subsidizes wages to keep them on the payroll. Whether this is ultimately desirable is up for debate, but the companies are going to be screwed in terms of productivity (and everything else) if this ravages the US labor force. How to do it equitably? Just let the parents/caregivers decide for themselves.
09bjb 6y ago
> The workers are well represented by a strong union, have good healthcare and reasonable wages. My spouse and sister are both schoolteachers. Sister's situation: laid off from a private school where enrollment will drop significantly this year. Spouse's situation: works for a well-funded school in one of the most populous states in the U.S., where there is no strong union, the pay is below the poverty line after mandatory deductions, and the healthcare is so bad (no out-of-network benefits and in-network only applies within the county, basically) that most people have to expand their view of what "health insurance coverage" is in order to understand it. A number of the teachers in their network are considering teach 5 kids in a private daycare group (working 30 hours a week) instead of teaching 30+ kids working 50 hours a week under very constrained public school conditions. These are anecdotes, of course, but what we're seeing from over here is that teachers don't feel safe reopening schools, and aren't overly committed to their benefits since they're not particularly well taken care of by the standards of the average American worker. Just a different two cents.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  I appreciate your perspective and I am sorry that that is the situation in your state. I admit I can only speak for my state, and as such should limit my opinions to that context. Thank you!
duke_core 6y ago
Over here in Asia where we live in joint families or our parents/grandparents live in the same house as us for our entire lives this is a non-issue, I always found it weird how people in the west headed out to live independently as soon as they turn 18 or go to college. I knew a guy in Germany who was working a job and said he was peer pressured to leave his parents home because it was seen as something negative, that he was still "freeloading" by the time he was ~24.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  It could be argued that the multi-generational home is one of the cultural ingredients for such a bad outbreak in Italy. That is a lot more common in that country than in some other parts of Europe. It is also somewhat common in immigrant groups in western Europe and the US (though somewhat out of economic necessity rather than cultural norms) and those groups are also the hardest hit in the US (apart for retirement homes). Causality is hard to prove, but it is something worth looking at.
markvdb 6y ago
Non-US tenured teacher here. I'd have to do something very, very, very wrong before I'd ever have a snowball's chance in hell of getting fired. Most if not all of my colleagues and I have worked incredibly hard teaching remotely when that was the only option. We've been expected to use self purchased electronic equipment for that. When limited on-site teaching became possible again, we took the opportunity. Yes, older, overweight teachers most at risk also did. We saw our bosses cared. We saw a fairly competent chain of command up to the prime minister, very much guided by the scientific approach. My guess is that made a large difference. At least with me it did. Would we have done the same in the US? I don't think so. The scientific approach has been disregarded so badly, not to say ridiculed, at so many levels. Individual students, parents, school district leads, governors, the president. Don't expect me to voluntarily take the risk they've created. Here are some of the important questions that need to be answered before I'd consider going back to teach on site: - Will sufficient personal protective equipment be provided? - Will elementary technical precautions like distancing, natural ventilation etcetera be taken? - Will parents and students over 12 years old be required to use a facial mask in any physical proximity situation? - Will my obese colleague with a heart condition be shielded from teaching in direct physical contact with students? Also, it would be nice if government showed some appreciation for our hard remote work, by way of a budget for electronic equipment for remote teaching for example.
moeris 6y ago
> there are (in the US) government employees making sure they are safe. The workers are well represented by a strong union, have good healthcare and reasonable wages. What country do you live in? Most teachers are employees of the local school district, not directly of the government. (When I was a Title I teacher, I was a federal employee, but that's not very common). I was never in a union, because there weren't any in the Detroit charter schools I worked at. And I only made $27,000 a year. Does that sound well-paid to you? Even though we had decent health care, with student loans I couldn't afford the copay, so I forwent any health care unless it was an emergency.
tveita 6y ago
> We expect a girl making minimum wage at Kroger to accept that she is an essential worker. Why do we not expect the same from school staff? I wish that as a society we could decide that anyone we're going to call an "essential worker" and draft to the biohazardous front lines should bloody well be paid at least as much as the rest of us who can be gone for a week with little ill effect to society at large. Not just during an emergency either - they're essential the rest of the time too.
pizzazzaro 6y ago
Too often? Those "strong unions" for teachers are deeply, painfully localized. In fact, you saying that? Is specific enough to narrow down your siblings' workplaces to ~5 states in the US. Not exactly a dox, but certainly a good start. That's the reality in the rest of this country - we dont have these nice things. Our teachers are not paid like that. My high school physics teacher? Made more money delivering pizzas as his side-job. Two of my high-school math teachers had to live as roommates in a studio apartment - they didnt realize how much they talked about it in front of a small group of students. I've watched at some of my peers went to a leading state-school for Education degrees. Those had to have an entirely separate degree, on top of their teaching curriculum. Those who went for science or math degrees? Put in the work for a STEM degree, but got a piece of paper that said "education." (This alone is a partial dox I lectured you about... It doesnt offer direct info, but narrows it down. I guess meaningful communication sometimes requires giving up total anonymity!) More than half of those Stem-education graduates? Do not work as teachers anymore. The poverty wages, the lack of respect from management, the utterly degrading interactions with parents... Some became mechanical engineers. Most became quant/data science programmers. Others went into banking. People who had a passion for teaching children bailed, for their inability to do so as teachers. And that was before covid-19...

bpodgursky 6y ago

The teachers don't expect the same, because they are still getting paid. I'm not saying they don't have legitimate questions about how schools will reopen safely, but to be frank, it's really easy to argue that it's "just not safe enough", when you're still pulling a paycheck sitting at home and the closing of schools is felt by working parents who are SOL -- not by yourself.

cheez 6y ago
Ding ding ding. I heard of teachers outright disappearing, claiming "technical issues" during this time.
- kilroy_jones 6y ago
  Of course there will be people like this. Do you think they are anywhere close to the majority?
  - cheez 6y ago
    No but it's unacceptable.
- rurban 6y ago
  In my city all sports teachers were suddenly ill for several weeks. they had the lowest risk, but apparently also the smallest brains.
  - cheez 6y ago
    Lol. Nice work if you can get it
kilroy_jones 6y ago
Most teachers would rather be in the classroom than do online learning. They'd also like people to be safe. The issue comes with trying to force kids to wear masks when so many parents are against them in many places, maintain social distancing, and keeping things clean and sanitized. Keeping kids focused and learning has become difficult enough, but add on all those measures plus the possibility of contracting covid, just means you will lose a lot of experienced teaching staff.
- salmon30salmon 6y ago
  "Most" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. And lets also be real, there is a self-reporting bias there, where I doubt very many people (myself included) would admit to _wanting_ to not work and still get paid, even if that is the motivation.
  - kilroy_jones 6y ago
    Most teachers are still working doing online learning though, which why I stated they'd prefer to be in the classroom. Online learning is all the worst parts of teaching with very little of the joy. Sure, if someone wanted to pay me to do whatever I wanted I'd take it no qualms whatsoever. But yes, I may not admit to it.
    - salmon30salmon 6y ago
      I think that like most things in the states, this is super dependent on where you are. I know in my area, teachers were _not_ working every day, despite still doing online learning. They were supposed to check in with the kids every few days. In fact, most went on unemployment (at the request of the district) to be able to make the lower work scheme work without impacting district budgets.
jshaqaw 6y ago
Are you kidding? Every teacher I know has had to radically reinvent their classrooms for fully remote learning on the fly with minimal support and are working around the clock to do so.

kilroy_jones 6y ago

Maybe the issue lies more in your first statement that children need to go somewhere. That's a fairly modern notion. If we've created a society where we rely on strangers to care for our kids, then maybe that's something that needs to be looked rather than creating additional covid hotspots? While we're doing that, maybe a compromise with A/B school days to limit student numbers, with online participation for whichever group is at home. Schools also need to create strict rules as far as cafeterias, masks, etc... With clear consequences for violations. The school I am at has dividers in the cafeteria and staggered lunches with no talking while eating. Masks at all times. Temperature checks at the doors and such. This is countrywide (not US) and there has been no spread in schools.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Well the issue may well lie in my first statement. I am not disagreeing in principle with you. But we a day late and a dollar short to actually make large scale societal change in the time needed to respond to _this_ pandemic. The children need an education, parents need to work. That is the fact of the times. Should this be an ongoing conversation to prepare for the _next_ pandemic? Certainty. But we lost the benefit of time on this one.
- claudeganon 6y ago
  Respectfully, this is a sunk cost fallacy. The idea that we’ve already screwed up so there’s no way to radically change course is a recipe for disaster. Even the UK, who foolishly tried to go the probably-nonexistent “herd immunity” route realized their error, turned things around, and is now doing much better than the US (although worse than Europe, because of their early mistakes).
  - salmon30salmon 6y ago
    It is only a fallacy if incorrectly applied :D In some cases, it is better to continue course with known variables. Also, I wouldn't say it is non-existent. As I said in another response, I currently see a lot of evidence for the cross-reactive t-cell immune response causing the virus to burn out after around 25% infection rate.

claudeganon 6y ago

The problem with this kind of framing is that it accepts the status quo as a sane premise in the face of a pandemic with largely unknown long term consequences. Having public schools function as de facto daycares when there’s not a pandemic makes a certain amount of sense, but in the circumstances of the US, where we have uncontrolled spread and a dysfunctional healthcare system on many levels, it makes little. The sane thing to do would be to implement some form of short term UBI that allows one parent or a designated caregiver to stay home and attend to children’s needs and do everything we can to get the situation under control (universal mask orders, regional lockdowns, replenish PPE, etc.)

salmon30salmon 6y ago
Three questions: 1. What makes you think we _can_ get this under control without herd immunity or a vaccine? I am of the belief that there is a certain level of latent immunity via t-cells in a large portion of the population and thus effective herd immunity is around 25-30% infected. But for arguments sake, lets say it is around 70 based solely on Rt. 2. Who would pay for the UBI? My state is already running low on money. We are already having to cut programs. Raising taxes doesn't count, that would take a year to pass, a year to implement and collect and probably a few years in court litigating. So how do we pay for it? 3. How do you equitably select a parent to stay home? And how to do reimburse their employer for lost productivity? Do you guarantee their job upon the end of the pandemic?
- claudeganon 6y ago
  >1. What makes you think we _can_ get this under control without herd immunity or a vaccine? I am of the belief that there is a certain level of latent immunity via t-cells in a large portion of the population and thus effective herd immunity is around 25-30% infected. But for arguments sake, lets say it is around 70 based solely on Rt. New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and Germany have done it without herd immunity or a vaccine with a variety of strategies. We should follow their examples and stop using various forms of “American Exceptionalism” as an excuse to not learn from them. >2. Who would pay for the UBI? My state is already running low on money. We are already having to cut programs. Raising taxes doesn't count, that would take a year to pass, a year to implement and collect and probably a few years in court litigating. So how do we pay for it? Print the money. It’s short term and there’s already massive demand and supply shocks that will only get worse if the pandemic isn’t curbed. >3. How do you equitably select a parent to stay home? And how to do reimburse their employer for lost productivity? Do you guarantee their job upon the end of the pandemic? I believe Canada and some countries in Europe are doing this through an employer-based grants, where the government subsidizes wages to keep them on the payroll. Whether this is ultimately desirable is up for debate, but the companies are going to be screwed in terms of productivity (and everything else) if this ravages the US labor force. How to do it equitably? Just let the parents/caregivers decide for themselves.

09bjb 6y ago

> The workers are well represented by a strong union, have good healthcare and reasonable wages. My spouse and sister are both schoolteachers. Sister's situation: laid off from a private school where enrollment will drop significantly this year. Spouse's situation: works for a well-funded school in one of the most populous states in the U.S., where there is no strong union, the pay is below the poverty line after mandatory deductions, and the healthcare is so bad (no out-of-network benefits and in-network only applies within the county, basically) that most people have to expand their view of what "health insurance coverage" is in order to understand it. A number of the teachers in their network are considering teach 5 kids in a private daycare group (working 30 hours a week) instead of teaching 30+ kids working 50 hours a week under very constrained public school conditions. These are anecdotes, of course, but what we're seeing from over here is that teachers don't feel safe reopening schools, and aren't overly committed to their benefits since they're not particularly well taken care of by the standards of the average American worker. Just a different two cents.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
I appreciate your perspective and I am sorry that that is the situation in your state. I admit I can only speak for my state, and as such should limit my opinions to that context. Thank you!

duke_core 6y ago

Over here in Asia where we live in joint families or our parents/grandparents live in the same house as us for our entire lives this is a non-issue, I always found it weird how people in the west headed out to live independently as soon as they turn 18 or go to college. I knew a guy in Germany who was working a job and said he was peer pressured to leave his parents home because it was seen as something negative, that he was still "freeloading" by the time he was ~24.

salmon30salmon 6y ago
It could be argued that the multi-generational home is one of the cultural ingredients for such a bad outbreak in Italy. That is a lot more common in that country than in some other parts of Europe. It is also somewhat common in immigrant groups in western Europe and the US (though somewhat out of economic necessity rather than cultural norms) and those groups are also the hardest hit in the US (apart for retirement homes). Causality is hard to prove, but it is something worth looking at.

markvdb 6y ago

Non-US tenured teacher here. I'd have to do something very, very, very wrong before I'd ever have a snowball's chance in hell of getting fired. Most if not all of my colleagues and I have worked incredibly hard teaching remotely when that was the only option. We've been expected to use self purchased electronic equipment for that. When limited on-site teaching became possible again, we took the opportunity. Yes, older, overweight teachers most at risk also did. We saw our bosses cared. We saw a fairly competent chain of command up to the prime minister, very much guided by the scientific approach. My guess is that made a large difference. At least with me it did. Would we have done the same in the US? I don't think so. The scientific approach has been disregarded so badly, not to say ridiculed, at so many levels. Individual students, parents, school district leads, governors, the president. Don't expect me to voluntarily take the risk they've created. Here are some of the important questions that need to be answered before I'd consider going back to teach on site: - Will sufficient personal protective equipment be provided? - Will elementary technical precautions like distancing, natural ventilation etcetera be taken? - Will parents and students over 12 years old be required to use a facial mask in any physical proximity situation? - Will my obese colleague with a heart condition be shielded from teaching in direct physical contact with students? Also, it would be nice if government showed some appreciation for our hard remote work, by way of a budget for electronic equipment for remote teaching for example.

moeris 6y ago

> there are (in the US) government employees making sure they are safe. The workers are well represented by a strong union, have good healthcare and reasonable wages. What country do you live in? Most teachers are employees of the local school district, not directly of the government. (When I was a Title I teacher, I was a federal employee, but that's not very common). I was never in a union, because there weren't any in the Detroit charter schools I worked at. And I only made $27,000 a year. Does that sound well-paid to you? Even though we had decent health care, with student loans I couldn't afford the copay, so I forwent any health care unless it was an emergency.

tveita 6y ago

> We expect a girl making minimum wage at Kroger to accept that she is an essential worker. Why do we not expect the same from school staff? I wish that as a society we could decide that anyone we're going to call an "essential worker" and draft to the biohazardous front lines should bloody well be paid at least as much as the rest of us who can be gone for a week with little ill effect to society at large. Not just during an emergency either - they're essential the rest of the time too.

pizzazzaro 6y ago

Too often? Those "strong unions" for teachers are deeply, painfully localized. In fact, you saying that? Is specific enough to narrow down your siblings' workplaces to ~5 states in the US. Not exactly a dox, but certainly a good start. That's the reality in the rest of this country - we dont have these nice things. Our teachers are not paid like that. My high school physics teacher? Made more money delivering pizzas as his side-job. Two of my high-school math teachers had to live as roommates in a studio apartment - they didnt realize how much they talked about it in front of a small group of students. I've watched at some of my peers went to a leading state-school for Education degrees. Those had to have an entirely separate degree, on top of their teaching curriculum. Those who went for science or math degrees? Put in the work for a STEM degree, but got a piece of paper that said "education." (This alone is a partial dox I lectured you about... It doesnt offer direct info, but narrows it down. I guess meaningful communication sometimes requires giving up total anonymity!) More than half of those Stem-education graduates? Do not work as teachers anymore. The poverty wages, the lack of respect from management, the utterly degrading interactions with parents... Some became mechanical engineers. Most became quant/data science programmers. Others went into banking. People who had a passion for teaching children bailed, for their inability to do so as teachers. And that was before covid-19...