Given The Alternative

So, first of all, be content in the knowledge that you did not have to listen to me prattle on and on about having jury duty last week. I went into the experience with much the same anxiety and ambivalence that I have in the past, but with an eye toward just how unlikely it would be to herd hundreds of us into that room and sit us down to wait for our names to be called. Instead, I sat by the phone and checked in each day to see if my smaller group would be called. When Friday came and I was excused, I was relieved of that bit of angst for the year.
And all the while I was attending Zoom meetings in anticipation of the opening of a new school year. What will it be like? Everyone back? Half in, half out? Everybody looking in from their computers? How would we protect the kids? How would we protect the staff? Would there be enough room to do any of the suggested alternatives? Jury duty seemed like a much more certain process. Someone was telling me where to go and when to be there, even if it was simply, "Stay put." There was none of that kind of clarity available from the Oakland Unified School District.
It would be easy at this point to complain about how my school district struggles with making decisions. This may or may not be the case, but the current situation requires careful planning. Education is suddenly a life or death situation. A month ago, when curves were beginning to flatten and cases were dropping, some of the more creative ideas seemed possible. Children were seemingly invulnerable and they just needed some properly covered adults to herd them and teach them to read. Then spikes began to appear. Medical science has continued to be tested by a disease that no one seems to understand. The clearest path continues to be masks and isolation. Imagining a room with just ten five year olds in it seems an unlikely place to carry out this kind of experiment.
I attended a meeting of one thousand plus stakeholders, primarily parents, who were hoping for answers to the sixty-four thousand dollar question: What is going to happen on August tenth? While the district set out a series of different scenarios, they continued to insist that there would be no "final plan" until July tenth. That gives us all a month to scramble around in hopes of creating lesson plans and finding daycare and arranging for increased custodial service once that final plan drops.
The virus may have other ideas. Thus far each attempt at returning to whatever normal is has been met with a surge in cases. Parents at the meeting filled the chat with their fears and worry. One in particular stuck with me: "I don't care if my child does fall behind academically. At least he'll be alive." Hard to argue with that kind of fierce reality.
The clock continues to tick. School districts around the country are under pressure to give kids a place to go, not just to learn, but to allow their parents a moment's rest. Those two months of distance learning turned out to be as much a learning experience for teaches as it was for any of their students. Now we're potentially going to toss another level of difficulty by doing in-person social distancing mask wearing education.
Jury duty seems to have a certain appeal by contrast.
Stay tuned.