Chicago have had schools closed for 18months due to covid.

[Iwanttobeapaperbackwriter]

Watching American news on YouTube as wanted to hear about Ida when this came on.

Closed to all children, for 18 months. Yet America is always shown by the UK media to be getting back to normal.

@longerevenings

Overall 18.4% of Chicago residents are identified as living in poverty but 63.8 % of public school pupils are.

This is so, so sad.

So the very children that need school the most have been left behind.

Other than obviously the two lockdowns I am so glad that my oldest has been in primary school with hardly anything different to normal. Obviously no mask around children that age etc. The only difference really was that I had to drop him outside and they walk in with their teacher rather than me getting to take him to his actual classroom. “Bubbles” too technically of course but ours never burst.

I’m on the East Coast and the state schools have just gone back in person after being virtual since March 2020. Tons of parents pulled their children out and either homeschooled them or transferred them to a religious or private school. Apparently enrollment at our local school is down and they have spaces, whereas normally it’s over-subscribed.

It’s ridiculous and I feel so sorry for the children who’ve missed out on so much education, because the online option wasn’t great, so I’ve heard.

Apart from the many other issues which people have mentioned how do you effectively teach practical subjects (pe, food technology, design, art, practical element of science remotely, drama) remotely. I can see that remote might work ok, at least academically, for children who are on route to Harvard to study English, history, maths etc but it’s not going to work at all for children whose strengths lie elsewhere particularly if their parents don’t have the resources to recreate the practical side at home or send them to classes outside school.

And if you take a child who is already struggling with the more academic subjects at school but who may have got a lot out of practical subjects, who lives in a deprived area, whose parent/s are struggling for money and have little time to support with schoolwork and may lack the skills to do so and who has no study space at home remote learning for a year could really damage their prospects in life.

That demographic may not be kicking off though or if they are they may not be listened to.

Parents were kicking off, @Chessie678, but the teacher’s unions were firmly against in-person learning in my state, even though the religious and private schools returned to in-person.

I appreciate that there are more challenges with larger classes, but so long out of the classroom seems unreasonable- especially when the COVID numbers went right down and teachers here were prioritized for vaccination. Now they’re rising again due to the Delta variant so who knows what’ll happen this year.

I certainly don’t want teachers to be unsafe, btw.

Agree entirely and am really surprised that areas where schools have remained closed the whole time, have not massively kicked off about the impact.
Perhaps in the UK we’re more “bothered”? Though I have to say my concern has definitely been around the social element not academic (primary age kids)

Yes I’m surprised to. Think about how angry people get over say masks in high schools (for what, the 5 months that was in place?) here.

I agree about the socialisation part completely. I wasn’t worried about my child’s academic progress and honestly I reckon I could catch him up fine myself.
I struggled massively trying to do everything in the time frame the school set - private school so we basically had a whole timetable of online learning - because some bits he’d breeze through and others would need twice as long as they were allocating. I always thought if it went in any longer I would just have opted out completely and started homeschooling properly and I think honestly that would have been fine. What I can’t do, and no amount of help or resource could do anything here, is help him learn to play and share with 20+ children and teach the discipline, the timekeeping, all of that that comes from the school environment.

It was definitely teacher's unions that meant that Chicago public schools didn't go back.
As I said the religious and private schools went back quite successfully months ago.

Mask wearing for all dc was standard and still is.

I personally felt if public schools served a broader population mix the situation would have been resolved earlier.

To put the teachers side, public schools are much more crowded, with no money for extra safety modifications, public school teachers are poorly paid and working in areas with low vaccination rates.

I lived in Chicago for several years.
The middle classes use private schools or catholic schools.
The public schools have majority poor children.

Chicago is currently an educational disaster with private schools and catholic schools open.
Public schools closed.

Basically, the middle class children are being education.
Working class children are not.

Basically, the middle class children are being education.
Working class children are not.

How awful

It is shocking.
Children in public schools are being given tech but their living situations and the fact their parents may be working is completely ignored.
Plus many of these kids rely solely on school for extra curricular activities.

@longerevenings. I absolutely agree that teachers need to be safe. Unfortunately, the provisions for online learning in our area weren’t great either so it was a disaster for many kids.

I work with dc in the care system who live on the south side, they are being totally screwed.
My own dc in their middle class bubble aren't.

But I wanted for fairness to highlight what public school teachers would say. I actually think that was has happened to kids on the south and west sides is a disgrace.

I know there’s been some hybrid learning for younger kids but the most part yes kids have been out of school for 18 months and it just makes me so sad. I know plenty of middle class Chicagoans with their kids in public school but they’re doing study bubbles with friends and hiring private teachers. My DD’s old daycare opened last year to kids up to 10 years old and for a significant amount of money they will do childcare, meals and supervise remote learning. The disparity between rich and poor there has always been a problem, it’s the worse in the entire country, but it’s getting so much worse because of covid/the teachers Union/Lori lightfoot. I left because I couldn’t in good conscience bring my kids up there.

I feel sorry for those kids. We went back September 2020 in hybrid form (daily, but a rota of just mornings or just afternoons, with lessons on Zoom when they were at home) and then we went back full-time February 2021. School returns in full for all grades tomorrow. Teachers and staff all need to be vaccinated and masked. This is suburban Connecticut.

@longerevenings

some kids have been off school for 18 months.

To be fair school has been open virtually. Kids are expected to log on for virtual live lessons.
They have homework and assignments.

It isn't the same as face to face but it hasn't been an 18 month holiday.

But school isn't just about academics!

It's about social stuff SO MUCH As well.

How did the working parents manage though for so long? 2 primary aged children and keeping them at their lessons/ explaining/ helping was a full time job! I think even live lessons wouldn't have helped motivate. Our school refused to do them.

I salute you not losing your marbles completely!

Have children been allowed to socialise whilst home educating? The UK home schooling terms were obviously combined with lockdowns where children weren’t allowed to see others and could just go for a daily walk. No other activities. I’m wondering how it compares? Any special dispensation for those who had no supervision at home?

Loads of kids have been home for the last 18 months. We go back in two weeks and this will be the first time half the school district will have been in in person learning since March 20. Ironically, the numbers of covid positive cases was highest in the remote students last year, especially at HS level, which suggested the kids weren't not partying. They just realized that staying remote meant they could stay in bed later and cheat at their tests!

Even more ironically legally a child has to be 14 before you can leave them home alone in Chicago.

Friends in LA have kids who have been off for most of the last 18 months. Not sure what the situation is now. I know I saw pictures of their son's 10th birthday party in the garden a few months ago and all the kids were in masks, even in the garden. That was the first time he'd seen his friends in months.

Yet America is always shown by the UK media to be getting back to normal.

Not sure what UK media you are referring to, but it isn’t the media I’ve seen. Some governors have opened up some states, but the numbers are rising rapidly in most places.

America does not have an "American" COVID policy. It's pretty much all state-based and it is very very regional.

The US is also riven by partisan politics, even more so than the UK.

Many Republicans have fallen down the "It's just flu/No masks ever/Ivermectin" rabbit hole. Hence many Southern states, where early abandonment of all mitigations has happened alongside very low vaccination rates (and high levels of obesity). Needless to say, it's a complete train wreck. Very bad situation for hospitals in many of these places.

And many Democrats meanwhile are trying to prove that they are good Democrats by adopting ever more extreme and hysterical anti-COVID policies, including increasingly heavy handed mask stuff, school closures/Zoom-in-a-room bullshit that is dragging on.. and on.. and on, and general insanity.

Sane and balanced approaches are falling down the chasm in the middle.

America's deep-blue metros like Chicago have really let kids down. It doesn't help that American teaching unions, in addition to being fairly histronic as a general rule anyway, are dealing with a heavily decentralized education system of localized school districts. American teachers unions do not have to argue with heavy central-government officials but instead with low-level "school district" politicians, which makes it easier for them to make wild demands.

But is it really the disaster people are trying to make it into ?
Most secondary aged kids are able to succesfully home school themselves,
which teaches them self disciplines and self reliance skills. and the younger ones will no doubt catch up. A school classroom in not the only place a student can learn, some of these posts have proved that.

Yes, it is a disaster. The data from America shows that learning loss has been appalling.
Teenagers left to their own devices and without supportive, involved parents, will mostly mess about, game, surf social media or watch porn. We know this.

This came about because teachers and their unions demanded it. Those of us who objected to it at the time were called mass murderers. Teachers demanded priority access to the vaccine early in the rollout, and they got it, because everyone wanted kids back in school. That was in December and January, and the teachers still refused to go back that year. Many teachers were rightly disgusted by that union decision, but they can't do anything about it as individuals.

What's even sadder is that because of union histrionics, many parents are unwilling to send their children to in-person classes even when schools open back up. The unions incessantly claimed that their refusal to teach classes in person was for the safety of the students, because covid was unacceptably dangerous to children. It was clear fairly early on that this wasn't true, but they stuck to that talking point because emphasizing the risks to teachers invites responses like "If you believe your job is unacceptably dangerous, you don't have to keep doing it, but we aren't going to keep paying you." Unions leaders knew all along that this was self-serving nonsense, but many parents believed them.

The problem here is that if there are 30 unvaccinated people in a room, one of them (the teacher) getting vaccinated doesn't do much to decrease the risk to the other 29, because they can all still catch it from each other (and probably still from the teacher, at the rate things are going, but that's a separate conversation). So someone who believed the teachers when they said in-person classes were too dangerous for students a year ago isn't going to send their child to in-person classes now, because in-person classes are no less dangerous now than they were then. And they're understandably confused that some of the same people are now saying it's safe for children, when the only that's changed is that teachers - not children under 12 - have been vaccinated. If the union mouthpieces had been honest about their rationale for refusing to teach in person, this problem wouldn't exist. But because they chose to mislead and sometimes outright lie to the public, huge numbers of children will needlessly miss out on in-person instruction because their well-intentioned parents believe it's too dangerous for even a perfectly healthy child.