Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

apple.news/Akr2FzQaGTwynyjvTFJbP-w

The GOP and their allies in the right-wing media outlets are trying to make the complicated school reopening question into a simple partisan issue and, fortunately, it looks like it’s backfiring. As CNN reports:

The debates over when and how and whether to put American kids back in is taking on a predictably partisan tinge in Washington, with Republicans targeting teachers’ unions and Democrats over perceived resistance to reopening.

But it’s more complicated than that. The fight over schools slices through red and blue America.

It’s complicated because, as noted in earlier posts, in some districts the unions have nothing to do with the reluctance to reopen: it’s the parents! And it’s also complicated because the POTUS’ decision made nearly a year ago left the decision on setting standards for reopening a STATE decision and not a FEDERAL one and most states, in turn, made it a LOCAL: one instead of a STATE one. And so in a border community like the one I live in commuters from VT to NH have different COVID guidelines and vice versa… and the reopening guidelines can vary from district to district as well. It’s also complicated because a majority of parents whose children are presumably suffering the most– low income and Bipoc children— do not want to send their kids to school because they are the groups suffering most from the pandemic. How can the GOP advocate parental choice for schools but then claim that parental choice about returning to schools is invalid? And even more hypocritical on the part of the GOP is one of the reasons parents in low income and racially diverse districts are loathe to have their children return to school is that the facilities themselves have inadequate ventilation because they’ve been starved of resources because of the GOP’s anti-tax position.

None of this matters to the GOP who have shown our country that their strategy is to win at all costs and to ignore the will of the public their “choice” language notwithstanding. The more the GOP makes the mandatory reopening of schools an issue they “own” the more the public will begin to appreciate that the GOP is not s party willing to listen to voters: it is a party that only cares about the bottom lines of business.