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

#351

Post by ciarannolan » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

QuercusMax wrote: post #311

In Santa Clara County, CA (Silicon Valley), a group of 40 principals got together in person a few weeks back to discuss reopening plans. And they got COVID. Is it any wonder that teachers don't trust that they will be kept safe?

These "it's a hoax until it happens to me" stories are super common in the US.

>Former game show host Chuck Woolery announced Wednesday his son has tested positive for COVID-19, just days after Woolery accused medical professionals and Democrats of lying about the virus in an effort to hurt the economy and President Trump's reelection chances.

>Woolery, who hosted several popular game shows including "Love Connection" and "Wheel of Fortune" and who is a staunch supporter of the president's, has since deleted his Twitter account following the announcement about his son.

>"To further clarify and add perspective, Covid-19 is real and it is here. My son tested positive for the virus, and I feel for of those suffering and especially for those who have lost loved ones," Woolery tweeted before his account disappeared.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/507663-chuck-woolery-dele...

Another one from today:

>An Ohio man who died due to complications from COVID-19 has drawn criticism for his staunch refusal to wear a mask earlier in the pandemic.

>Richard Rose III, an Army veteran who spent nine years in the United States Army according to his obituary, died on July 4. He was 37.

>Rose’s death gained notoriety on social media after expressing that he was “not buying a (expletive) mask” less than three months before his death.

>“I’ve made it this far by not buying into that damn hype,” he said in a post published April 28.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/17/covid-...

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

#352

Post by Zpalmtree » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #276

LanceH wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think you misinterpreted what he was suggesting - it is meaningless to say that Hillary won the popular vote because neither party were trying to win the popular vote - you win the presidency by winning the electoral college.

If instead the president was chosen by popular vote, both parties likely would have campaigned differently.

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

#353

Post by dvdhnt » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #302

dvdhnt wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that is a cause, so? But the real issues revolve around a lack of oversight, small budgets, corruption, and exclusionary practices that hurt already marginalized groups. Edit: "your mask is slipping" isn't a productive characterization. What I meant was, your statement comes off as bias - "tribes", "the left", "protecting itself against competition" all scream pro-capitalist propaganda on a topic that, frankl…

>Also, your mask is slipping What are you insinuating?

That was a poor choice of words; I amended my comment.

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

#354

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:20 PM UTC

jude- wrote: post #300

DenisM wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-perf…

Charter schools in many jurisdictions can also expel underperforming or struggling kids, while public schools are obligated to enroll everyone regardless. I would be very skeptical of any charter school benchmarks.

Also the Supreme Court just said that states that give money to secular schools must also give money to religious schools.

And religious schools can discriminate in a separate decision.

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

#355

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:21 PM UTC

morelisp wrote: post #328

chrisseaton wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it the same funding per student? The money is diverted from the public schools to the charter schools... because the student has moved from a public school to a charter school. Or is that wrong?

First, it is wrong. There's no requirement that charter schools get paid the same per student as public schools. Even when they do, charter schools also often lean heavily on public school resources (e.g. charter schools where I grew up used our public gymnasium, theater, and library regularly). But second, even if the funding is exactly the same, the result is that all the "cheap" i.e. wealthy students (books and te…

> the result is that all the "cheap" i.e. wealthy students (books and technology readily available at home, familial support for their studies, financially able to engage in more expensive educational opportunities outside the classroom) end up in one school while those without these privileges, or with disabilities, end up in the other

I don't understand - are charter schools allowed to refuse to admit disabled students?

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

#356

Post by ironmagma » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:22 PM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #294

newspheasant wrote: post #278

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 wo…

It's amazing to see how differently we treat the low probability, high impact events like active shooters and terrorism, but we completely fail to do the far easier task of dealing with the high probability, unknown impact events.

Well, that’s true, except that it’s not easy. Easy to talk about, sure, but not easy to implement without backlash from the moneyed interests that exist.

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

#357

Post by pdonis » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

dllthomas wrote: post #347

pdonis wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Senate is also broken (Wyoming with 500k == California with 39M people). That's because States are political units, not just arbitrary boundaries. So they also have a voice in the federal government as States. To me, Wyoming being able to not be run roughshod over by California just because California has a lot more people is a feature, not a bug.

If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles? What they were describing applies to every federally elected position, in different amounts. Whether it's a bug or a feature (as a whole or for each position) is very much up for discussion, but it's orthogonal.

> If that's true, why does it not also apply to the weighting of the Presidency between those two poles?

It does. I didn't mean to imply that what I said didn't also apply to the Electoral College. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

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

#358

Post by oramit » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:23 PM UTC

What we currently have going on right now is a complete collapse in confidence. So many commenters are debating the death rate, case counts, hospitalizations, etc, which is all besides the point.

Heres the thing: even if you believe people are being irrationally afraid, telling people they are stupid and should just suck it up isn't going to get people to cooperate. Do you want to be smugly right, or do you want things to actually get better? People are scared, that's just a fact, and they need to feel confident that action is being taken in their best interest. Telling people that only 1% of them will die so it's all okay is telling people you don't care about them - they notice, they're not dumb.

We all know that this is an exceptional event and that there will be missteps. People will forgive mistakes and setbacks and take on more risk if they are confident that there is a plan - but so far there isn't one. We're almost six months into this and the messaging is still chaos. The lack of a national strategy is what is causing this pandemic to worsen. The rot really does start at the top.

The United States is currently choosing the worst possible combination of options. We locked down - causing enormous financial damage, but we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus. So we get to have the deaths and have the financial damage as well. Yay us!

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

#359

Post by Someone1234 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:24 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…

Charter schools compete for the same low funding pool, while only accepting well performing non-SPED students, leaving public schools with less money and a harder (& more expensive) student body.

This artificially increases Charter School's performance, and artificially lowers Public School's performance.

But this isn't an accident, Charter Schools are designed to de-fund public education for political reasons, and while discriminating against SPED kids is illegal, the % of SPED kids at charters is disproportionately low[0].

> Charter schools are significantly less likely to reply to students to the IEP message than to the baseline message, while traditional public schools are not. There is also some evidence that schools are less likely to respond to families with Hispanic-sounding names.

[0] http://www.columbia.edu/~psb2101/BergmanMcFarlin_school_choi...

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

#360

Post by mikeg8 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #315

newspheasant wrote: post #278

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 wo…

> Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? It pains me to admit that this didn't even occur to me as part of the topic of teachers being sent back. The human aspects of students-teacher relationships. I feel I've been desensitized to this after exposing myself to a constant stream of news, and now I'm thinking further about what other aspects lie behind other headlines. Thank you f…

I agree - this never really occurred to me either. My girlfriend's mother is a preschool teacher who just had to go back to in-person sessions and she believes some of these kids will have trauma's from being young and terrified. One little girl is afraid to touch anything and constantly asks if objects have been cleaned/safe to touch? it's heartbreaking to her.