Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk • Hacker News Board

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#271

Post by dragontamer » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

doopy-loopy2 wrote: post #231

dragontamer wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My niece was born with a defective kidney. Her chances of dialysis grows with every infection... and COVID19 has been shown to cause long-term damage to kidneys and livers. I'd expect my niece to survive COVID19 if she got it. But I'd also expect her to get significant kidney damage and possibly dialysis as a result. Every UTI she gets results in an emergency room visit under normal circumstances. We've been lucky en…

Then she can stay home - 99.99% of children wont have issues.

You're grossly underestimating the prevalence of birth defects that lead to health issues in children.

And adults for that matter. (Any teacher who has a similar immuno-comrpomised situation, or knows of someone similarly immuno-compromised is at risk).

------------

In any case, I "don't worry" about the potential death of my niece at all. What I care about are the long term health effects on her and her life. And for the long-term health effects of other children too.

This disease has been shown to ravage and disable athletes: destroying their lung function even when they survive. Deaths are hardly endgame: long-term chronic illnesses are still a problem to try to minimize.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#272

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

eaandkw wrote: post #150

I have pretty much given up on everybody at this point. I have already pulled my kid from school and will not send them back. I am in a single income family and I am now working from home. All actions and purchases at this point are to help us to become more independant from the system. Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable. I am also making longer term plans to move out o…

[deleted]

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#273

Post by creaghpatr » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #135

Teachers' unions are among the most powerful unions left in the country. If there ever was a time for them to flex that power, it's now: In the middle of a raging worldwide pandemic, they are actually being asked to risk dying for their jobs and risk having their classrooms turn into petri dishes sending infected children back to infect their families. If that's not enough to motivate collective action, what is?

What collective action are you talking about here?

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#274

Post by pantaloony » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #135

Teachers' unions are among the most powerful unions left in the country. If there ever was a time for them to flex that power, it's now: In the middle of a raging worldwide pandemic, they are actually being asked to risk dying for their jobs and risk having their classrooms turn into petri dishes sending infected children back to infect their families. If that's not enough to motivate collective action, what is?

The power of teacher’s unions varies a ton. Supposedly in some places they have so much power it’s impossible to fire teachers for pretty much any reason. I’ve never seen anything close to that, but I believe accounts that such districts exist. Meanwhile in others the best they can do, with great effort, is get districts to pinkie-promise not to abuse teachers (but then do it anyway, of course). That’s the only kind I’ve seen but I dunno how it works in New York or Chicago or wherever.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#275

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #200

enraged_camel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the federal government we have is the result of our outdated, quirky and flawed electoral system, where the votes of certain states are much more valuable than others.

The system you describe only applies to Presidential elections. The federal government is a lot more than just the President, and so are its problems.

No, the votes of people in certain states being more valuable than those in others is also true of the House and Senate.

In fact, the inequity in voting power produced by the Electoral College is a direct consequence of that in the structure of the House and Senate, since the latter is apportioned simply (except for DC) by adding the apportionment of House and Senate seats.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#276

Post by gruez » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #217

enraged_camel wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the federal government we have is the result of our outdated, quirky and flawed electoral system, where the votes of certain states are much more valuable than others.

Trump did not lose the popular vote. There is no contest for the popular vote. Perhaps one party should try moving a bit to campaign according to the actual contest at hand, rather than try to rewrite the rules. You assume the Democrats would win a popular vote easily. First, Republicans would actually campaign in California for a change. They might even move left a tad on some issues. Democrats might decide it's the…

>Trump did not lose the popular vote.

I seriously hope you're baiting and don't actually believe that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...

    Nominee  Donald Trump  Hillary Clinton  
    [...]
    Popular vote  62,984,828  65,853,514

secondary source: https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federale...

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#277

Post by non-entity » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #161

engineer_22 wrote: post #11

It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Whether we like it or not we're going with the Sweden Model. I've got school age kids myself, and I understand the risk. This is going to be a situation that could become hard to manage but our society's economy is constructed in such a way that relies on daytime programming for children and teens outside of their home. The teachers are going to have to help bear the…

You sound resigned to your fate. When did Americans become accustomed to accepting utter incompetence that costs hundreds of thousands of lives from their leadership? Is the political process down there completely broken?

Politics is a losing game, beneath it is a broken culture.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#278

Post by newspheasant » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:54 PM UTC

My wife is a teacher and starting school (in person) in a week and a half. There’s no answers to questions like:

- Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? - When a teacher gets sick, what substitute teacher is going to want to teach an exposed class (also, they’ll be making sub plans with covid?)? - When they’re sick are will they be getting additional sick leave? - Do they get worker’s compensation if they get sick, since they were knowingly sent into a dangerous environment?

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#279

Post by mikestew » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #228

DenisM wrote: post #219

The Los Angelos teachers added a few other requests [1]. The introduction starts with: [...] LAUSD educators clearly want to get back into schools with their students, but the underlying question at every step must be: Given broader societal conditions, how do we open physical schools in a way that ensures that the benefit outweigh the risks [...] And then proceeds to the following recommendations, among many others:…

I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the n…

I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters.

You'll probably understand better when you quit thinking that you can automatically identify the players involved. Perhaps simply ask why some folks oppose charter schools.

Others have responded with good answers, such as increased inequality and siphoning funds from public schools. If you take those to be left/right issues, well, there's your problem: does "the right" support increasing inequality and the draining money from public schools? That's kind of a rhetorical question (the assumed answer on my end is, "of course they don't"), but then again, maybe it's not.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#280

Post by DenisM » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #228

DenisM wrote: post #219

The Los Angelos teachers added a few other requests [1]. The introduction starts with: [...] LAUSD educators clearly want to get back into schools with their students, but the underlying question at every step must be: Given broader societal conditions, how do we open physical schools in a way that ensures that the benefit outweigh the risks [...] And then proceeds to the following recommendations, among many others:…

I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the n…

These seem to be the "real" reasons: 1) re-segregation 2) skimming[B] 3) de-unionization 4) benchmarking[A] 5) statism preference.

The other declared reasons seemed unconvincing to me.

[A] Benchmarking - competing schools provide parents with a direct comparison point, so it's much harder for a struggling public school to disclaim responsibility for some of their own problems.

[B] Skimming - picking out the best-performing and the least-demanding students.