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There's a lot of talk about this in parent's groups on FB. Basically, parents all want their kids in school as daycare. Schools have logistics problems due to s

by runako 5y ago

There's a lot of talk about this in parent's groups on FB. Basically, parents all want their kids in school as daycare. Schools have logistics problems due to students/teachers/support staff/bus drivers/etc. being sick. I think if some parents could enlist the police to drag sick teachers to school, they would do that. In my area, schools are combining classes across grade levels because teachers are sick but parents are demanding that schools be open. This accomplishes the daycare aspect of school, but to pretend it's about enhancing learning is fanciful.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
The person you’re responding to asked only about teachers though.
- runako 5y ago
  Teachers and administrators participate in some of those groups. Some people even manage to be teachers and parents simultaneously. School board members sometimes have kids in their districts. The discussions tend to cover a lot of bases.
giraffe_lady 5y ago
The parents don't create that pressure though. Americans use school as childcare because we don't have adequate childcare. People don't have leave, paid or otherwise, to take care of their children at home, but they must go to work anyway. This is a labor issue, not an "individuals are mean" problem.
- runako 5y ago
  Granted, but it’s not a “schools run poorly” issue as it is frequently positioned in the Covid era.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Yeah it is. Schools are run poorly because they fail to acknowledge that they are child care and as such it needs to be consistent and reliable. If school closes for 6 months where is childcare plan b going to come from. How do you replace a skilled teacher that can handle 20-30 kids with one that does 2-3 and not cause huge pain for a family’s finances?
    - p_j_w 5y ago
      I'm only 40, but for my entire life school systems have been told that their number 1 job is education. Every time they're given performance metrics to hit, they're in regards to education. We as a society are telling our school system that they're an educational institution, not a child care one, and if the school system started to behave like a child care institution, we'd collectively be pissed off at them. Sorry, but you're dead wrong. It is a larger society problem, not the school system being poorly run. They're being run with the goals that we give them in mind.
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        The performance metric always includes number of open days. That’s why they add days if you get too many snow days. Those extra days have no impact on education. The goal is set with the legacy expectation that women will stay home and do childcare but that isn’t a reality for many folks. So schools have an equally important child care role. For many folks the problem of unreliable child care can be worse than no child care. If i knew there wasn’t going to be school for 3 months I can plan for that business can open that provider the service. If schools randomly open and close for 3 months nobody knows what to do and few new business will risk start up costs too fill the gap.
        runako 5y ago
        Here's the situation on Day 1 return from vacation in my district: - ~20% of the teachers at one school out sick - classrooms being combined due to low staff. Some classrooms combined across grade levels. - Substitutes in many classrooms. Administration staff being used as substitutes. This is all before we are passed the median incubation period for New Year's Eve infections, so I would expect staffing levels to continue to deteriorate. (Also keep in mind that some teachers will be out because their children are sick, so kids being infected this week will lead to future staffing pressures.) In that context, I'm glad you mentioned snow days. Our district is really small; many kids walk to school. However, many teachers & other staff live in other districts and so do not walk to work. When it snows here, the schools generally close on the basis of teachers & staff not being able to make it to school. Parents do not usually throw tantrums on those snow days. This week/month is going to be like snow days in that school staff will not be able to make it to work. Parents are trying to ignore that reality and not being realistic about making alternate plans.
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  > Americans use school as childcare because we don't have adequate childcare This doesn't make any sense. What would it look like to have "adequate childcare" for third graders? You wake up and decide whether your kid was going to school or child care that day?
  - bena 5y ago
    This one is complicated. Until relatively recently, married women didn't really work, not at the rate they do now. So, if the child was home, there'd be a parent, typically the mother. But the public school system isn't all that old either. From about the early 1900s. Before that, there was no compulsory schooling. Kids would be home. Once again, typically with family as life itself was very different. Children living on a farm did not have daily interaction with large groups of children. You'd have your siblings and that's it for the most part. And none of these changes happened in a vacuum. So the school thing and the work thing and the child care thing, they all happen because of each other and around each other. And now we've put ourselves in a situation where we use school as child care. And we realize that we've painted ourselves in a corner.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
rdtwo 5y ago
Schools are child care… but you can’t just remove it and leave folks with nothing. There isn’t enough private capacity if you zero out schools

by runako 5y ago

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

The person you’re responding to asked only about teachers though.

runako 5y ago
Teachers and administrators participate in some of those groups. Some people even manage to be teachers and parents simultaneously. School board members sometimes have kids in their districts. The discussions tend to cover a lot of bases.

giraffe_lady 5y ago

The parents don't create that pressure though. Americans use school as childcare because we don't have adequate childcare. People don't have leave, paid or otherwise, to take care of their children at home, but they must go to work anyway. This is a labor issue, not an "individuals are mean" problem.

runako 5y ago
Granted, but it’s not a “schools run poorly” issue as it is frequently positioned in the Covid era.
- rdtwo 5y ago
  Yeah it is. Schools are run poorly because they fail to acknowledge that they are child care and as such it needs to be consistent and reliable. If school closes for 6 months where is childcare plan b going to come from. How do you replace a skilled teacher that can handle 20-30 kids with one that does 2-3 and not cause huge pain for a family’s finances?
  - p_j_w 5y ago
    I'm only 40, but for my entire life school systems have been told that their number 1 job is education. Every time they're given performance metrics to hit, they're in regards to education. We as a society are telling our school system that they're an educational institution, not a child care one, and if the school system started to behave like a child care institution, we'd collectively be pissed off at them. Sorry, but you're dead wrong. It is a larger society problem, not the school system being poorly run. They're being run with the goals that we give them in mind.
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      The performance metric always includes number of open days. That’s why they add days if you get too many snow days. Those extra days have no impact on education. The goal is set with the legacy expectation that women will stay home and do childcare but that isn’t a reality for many folks. So schools have an equally important child care role. For many folks the problem of unreliable child care can be worse than no child care. If i knew there wasn’t going to be school for 3 months I can plan for that business can open that provider the service. If schools randomly open and close for 3 months nobody knows what to do and few new business will risk start up costs too fill the gap.
      - runako 5y ago
        Here's the situation on Day 1 return from vacation in my district: - ~20% of the teachers at one school out sick - classrooms being combined due to low staff. Some classrooms combined across grade levels. - Substitutes in many classrooms. Administration staff being used as substitutes. This is all before we are passed the median incubation period for New Year's Eve infections, so I would expect staffing levels to continue to deteriorate. (Also keep in mind that some teachers will be out because their children are sick, so kids being infected this week will lead to future staffing pressures.) In that context, I'm glad you mentioned snow days. Our district is really small; many kids walk to school. However, many teachers & other staff live in other districts and so do not walk to work. When it snows here, the schools generally close on the basis of teachers & staff not being able to make it to school. Parents do not usually throw tantrums on those snow days. This week/month is going to be like snow days in that school staff will not be able to make it to work. Parents are trying to ignore that reality and not being realistic about making alternate plans.
jdminhbg 5y ago
> Americans use school as childcare because we don't have adequate childcare This doesn't make any sense. What would it look like to have "adequate childcare" for third graders? You wake up and decide whether your kid was going to school or child care that day?
- bena 5y ago
  This one is complicated. Until relatively recently, married women didn't really work, not at the rate they do now. So, if the child was home, there'd be a parent, typically the mother. But the public school system isn't all that old either. From about the early 1900s. Before that, there was no compulsory schooling. Kids would be home. Once again, typically with family as life itself was very different. Children living on a farm did not have daily interaction with large groups of children. You'd have your siblings and that's it for the most part. And none of these changes happened in a vacuum. So the school thing and the work thing and the child care thing, they all happen because of each other and around each other. And now we've put ourselves in a situation where we use school as child care. And we realize that we've painted ourselves in a corner.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

rdtwo 5y ago

Schools are child care… but you can’t just remove it and leave folks with nothing. There isn’t enough private capacity if you zero out schools