Steel Valley Schools Will Reopen Fully Remote Rather Than Compromise on Safety

September 5, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Child Safety, computers, Data, edtech, Education, home school, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, school closings, School Funding, Schools, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Technology, Tom Wolf, Uncategorized child safety, coronavirus, COVID-19, education, Homestead, Munhall, pandemic, Pennsylvania, safe schools, Steel Valley Schools, virtual learning, West Homestead

Thursday would have been the first day of in-person classes for hundreds of students at Steel Valley Schools.

But instead, district buildings will be closed and classes will be 100% virtual for all students.

The Western Pennsylvania district just south of Pittsburgh had planned to reopen with a hybrid model during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, as the start date rapidly approached, it became clear that the district would not have the safety supplies necessary to protect students and staff. So administrators and school directors agreed to start the year with fully remote classes for at least the first month.

According to a letter sent home to parents written by Substitute Superintendent Bryan Macuga:

“…due to factors beyond the district’s control, efforts to upgrade systems at our buildings are not yet complete. In an effort to ensure we are proving the safest possible learning environment for students and staff, the administration – in consultation with the district’s board of directors – has decided to begin the school year with four full weeks of remote synchronous instruction. Students will still begin on schedule, but all classes for students will be held virtually for the first four weeks of the school year until October 5th.”

The original plan had students attending classes in one of three ways: enrolled in the district’s existent cyber program, doing 100% virtual assignments from the regular classroom teacher or a mixture of both virtual and in-person instruction.

Those who would have attended in-person were further divided into two groups – one of which would have attended in-person on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the other on Thursdays and Fridays. Students would have done virtual lessons when not in the classroom and on Wednesdays while buildings were being deep cleaned.

And this is the plan administrators hope to return to in October if they can install plexiglass barriers, fine tune a new HVAC system to better circulate airflow and other safety measures.

“The choice to move all classes fully online was a very difficult decision to make, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause,” Macuga wrote in his letter to parents.

“The safety of our students and staff is our highest priority, and we make this decision out of an abundance of caution.”

As a district teacher, I – for one – am thankful for this sound, rational decision.

COVID-19 is no joke, especially in a community with relatively few cases but a higher than average rate of infection.

Of the three municipalities that make up the district, West Homestead has a case rate of 150.5 per 10K, Homestead has a case rate of 123.2 per 10K and Munhall has a case rate of 84.2 per 10K.

**Source**: Allegheny County Health Department

Moreover, an outbreak of COVID-19 was reported at St. Therese Plaza, a senior living apartment in very close proximity to the Steel Valley High School-Middle School complex.

WTAE News reported in August at least three confirmed cases at the facility including a caregiver and two patients.

But it’s not just the elderly who are at risk.

According to a new forecast from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the death toll from COVID-19 is likely to more than double to 410,000 by the end of the year.

The institute, whose previous forecasts have been cited by the White House and state officials, estimates the best case death toll with universal masking and tight safety precautions at more than 288,000, and a worst case death toll throwing care to the wind at more than 620,000.

People of color are most at risk of becoming part of that statistic.

According to the Center for Disease Control, minorities are much more likely to get sick and experience complications from the disease.

This is especially relevant in a district like ours where minority enrollment is 47% of the student body (majority Black). This is more than the state public school average of 34% (majority Black and Hispanic).

At a meeting of the Allegheny County Health Department on Wednesday, board member Joylette Portlock noted this susceptibility gap between Black and White residents throughout the Pittsburgh region. During the last two major spikes in COVID-19 cases, Black residents were much more susceptible than White residents. In April, local Black residents tested positive for the virus twice as often as White residents. But the July outbreak was even worse. Black residents tested positive three times more for the disease than White residents.

It should not be surprising then that Homestead – the district municipality with the highest population of people of color (more than 70%) – has such a high percentage of cases.

West Homestead is populated by mostly white people, but the neighborhood has a high incidence of poverty – another factor linked to susceptibility. Munhall has the highest socioeconomic status and lowest minority population, thus the lowest infection rate.

Opening schools when safety measures are not adequate to protect students and staff would be a recipe for disaster.

County Health Department Director Dr. Debra Bogen cautioned how quickly the virus can be spread – especially by children. The health department had been tracking an infection from a teenager who spread COVID-19 to family members, who subsequently spread it to coworkers, who spread it to other teens, etc.

“It spread to over 40 people from this one outbreak in just two weeks,” Dr. Bogen said.

Some try to downplay the danger, likening it to the flu.

But there have been 22 times as many COVID-19 deaths this year in Allegheny County, compared to the flu.

Dr. Bogen broke it down like this: There were 330 deaths in Allegheny County from COVID-19 compared to about 15 typically experienced because of influenza. Statewide, there were 7,673 deaths from COVID compared to 102 typical from the flu. Nationwide, there were 183,563 COVID deaths, and between 24,000 – 62,000 from the flu.

We have to take this virus seriously.

And unfortunately many of us are not doing so.

The health department inspected more than 2,000 restaurants for suspected health infractions. Inspectors found more than 200 restaurants weren’t in compliance with the county’s mask and occupancy guidelines.

And it’s not just restaurants. Several board members complained that they had seen mask infractions at healthcare organizations, salons and other retail establishments.

Schools may be more susceptible than most places.

I am so thankful the community leaders where I work have refused to go ahead with a safety plan that could not be completed in time to reopen.

I’m sure it was difficult to decide at the last minute to pull the plug on the plan, but it shows real concern for students and staff.

Frankly, I don’t t hink we should open to in-person classes even if we can achieve the level of safety the district has proposed.

The county still has a moderate level of infection according to Gov. Tom Wolf’s guidelines.

Though Wolf does not exclude a hybrid model as possible with this level of infection, it seems to me that “an effort to ensure we are proving the safest possible learning environment for students and staff” would be to go with the more cautious approach prescribed by Wolf – to remain in fully remote instruction until county infections decrease to a low level for at least two consecutive weeks.

However, I am thankful that district administrators and school directors have remained consistent in their plans and seem to be doing what they believe is in the best interests of everyone involved.

Hopefully when safety measures are ready to be implemented district wide, the level of infection throughout the county will have decreased as well.

I’m not a fan of virtual instruction. I’d rather teach students in-person.

But I’d rather none of us get sick or die even more.

Macuga will be conducting a community Zoom meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 9, at 6 pm to answer questions about the change from hybrid to full remote learning.

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School Officials Should Pass Safer Reopening Plans, Not Beg For Protection From Liability

August 22, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Child Safety, Democrat, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, principals, Republican, School Choice, school closings, Schools, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf child safety, coronavirus, courts, COVID-19, education, law, liability, litigation, Politics, reopening schools, safe schools, school board, Students

Don’t tell me what to do.

But don’t hold me accountable for what I do, either.

That seems to be the position of school officials on reopening classes during the Coronavirus pandemic.

On the one hand, school boards don’t want a state or federal mandate about how to reopen schools in the fall.

On the other hand, they don’t want to be sued by children, families or staff who get sick or die as a result of reckless reopening plans.

The National School Boards Association (NSBA) is behind a push at both the state and federal level for temporary, limited liability protections in case students or staff become infected with Covid-19.

The organization is asking state legislatures and US Congress to pass bills including such protections.

At the same time, the organization is pushing state governors and the President to pass the plan through executive orders.

None of which should fill residents with confidence.

After all, would you want to eat at a restaurant where the chef refuses responsibility if diners get sick?

Would you want to fly on an airline that doesn’t guarantee you’ll make it to your destination in one piece?

If school officials are worried that students and staff may catch Covid-19, they should pass reopening plans that greatly reduce the likelihood of that happening.

But many of them aren’t doing that.

When hundreds of new cases are being reported in your county every week, you shouldn’t be opening the school buildings even with a hybrid model balancing both in-person and distance learning.

You should keep students learning online.

Safety should be the first concern of every school board member making these decisions.

Even one new case of Coronavirus is too much.

The fact that so many school directors are afraid of being sued means they are afraid their plans will not stop people from contracting the disease.

And that’s a real problem.

In states where schools have resumed in-person learning, large groups of students have been forced to quarantine.

So far, children have been hospitalized at a lower rate than adults when infected. However, until recently children have been kept mostly isolated. As they have been further exposed to the virus, some have developed complications. Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine said there are 43 confirmed cases of a serious inflammatory syndrome in young people throughout the Commonwealth. Nineteen additional cases are under investigation.

We need to take this issue seriously.

If schools were reopening safely, why would they need protection from lawsuits?

Frivolous litigation is always an issue, but there is nothing to suggest that living through a global pandemic makes it more of a problem.

If school directors can prove they took every precaution to guard against people getting sick, their districts should be fine.

But they haven’t done that. And school directors know they haven’t done it.

In Pennsylvania, this has lead to discussions of the reopening guidelines issued by Gov. Wolf.

“I keep hearing the expression, ‘We are simply giving guidance or recommendations,” state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-Chester, said. “In the end, is it not true that what you say is a recommendation, ends up being a mandate because school districts are afraid of being sued and taxpayers losing millions of dollars?”

Dinniman – who I often agree with – seems to be saying that districts should be free to ignore safety guidelines. And they are.

But doing so should come with a price.

The guidelines – which are too lenient in my opinion – at least set up some benchmarks.

They designate a county as low, medium or high risk depending on cases per 100,000 residents and percentage of positive tests in the last seven days.

However, these guidelines miss a vital component of epidemiology. One week’s worth of data is insufficient to get an accurate picture of viral spread. Covid-19 symptoms take up to two weeks to show up.

You could have low numbers this week and decide to reopen school buildings to a hybrid model, but then next week have a surge. And those people would have been sick when you reopened – you just didn’t know because it took another week for their symptoms to develop.

Moreover, I think it is ludicrous that the state is stopping at mere guidelines.

This is a public health issue. It is not open to debate. At least, not debate by politicians and functionaries.

Follow the scientific consensus.

When disaster strikes, you don’t dither. You don’t give people options when there’s a killer shark in the water. You close the beaches.

But the very question of whether it is government’s responsibility to keep people safe has been called into question here.

It is yet another example of the social fabric of our nation coming apart at the seams.

We are continually ignoring the dangers of the moment in which we live to secure a false sense of normalcy.

We refuse to take the proposer precautions to lower the infection and instead try to live with it.

Take yesterday’s decisions by The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) to beginning the fall sports season on Monday.

Fall sports like football, soccer, tennis, field hockey, girls volleyball, etc. can start up if school boards decide to do so.

However, two weeks ago Gov. Wolf recommended that sports be postponed unit January 2021.

Though the PIAA originally voted to postpone the start of the season by two weeks, yesterday’s 25-5 vote put the season back on track.

This despite student athletes from the area already catching Covid-19 after practices.

We do not live in a healthy society.

We are acting like spoiled children who want to do what they want and refuse to be held accountable for their actions.

Sadly it is our children who will most often pay the price for adult recklessness.

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McKeesport School Board Recklessly Votes to Reopen to Half Day In-Person Classes During a Global Pandemic

August 13, 2020August 13, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, bloggers, Budget, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Credibility, Data, edtech, Education, Healthcare, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, protest, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Social Justice, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Technology, Unions, voting child safety, coronavirus, COVID-19, education, hybrid model, McKeesport, McKeesport Area School District, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, reopening schools, safe schools, school board

For a moment there, I thought things might go differently.

With Covid-19 cases exponentially more numerous today than they were when schools closed in March, last night McKeesport Area School Directors voted whether to reopen buildings to half day in-person classes.

And it really looked like they might decide against it.

For about 10 seconds.

The first vote was from Jim Brown, and it was a “No.”

Then came Dave Donato.

He has made no secret that he champions in-person reopening. Since no residents came before the board to praise the plan – either at tonight’s meeting or last week’s work session – he read aloud a letter he said he received from someone advocating for it.

But when the time came to vote, Donato stopped. He paused.

And for a moment things looked like they might come out right.

Then he voted in favor of the reopening plan.

The final vote was 7-2 in favor with Brown and Mindy Sturgess voting against.
Donato, Joseph Lopretto, Tom Filotei, Ivan Hampton, Steven Kondrosky, Jim Poston and Diane Elias voted in favor of it.

I was there at the meeting in my hometown western Pennsylvania district, one of four people who signed up to speak.

No one else was allowed in the meeting, but it was streamed live online.

The tone directors took with the public was markedly different.

Last week, no one was turned away even if they weren’t signed up to speak. But tonight, they actually sent two people home.

Also last week school directors didn’t enforce any time limit on public comments. This week, Donato started the meeting with a warning that anyone who spoke for more than 3 minutes would be stopped.

In both cases, there were only a handful of people who signed up to speak. And no one spoke at great length.

The first speaker tonight went over her time but was allowed to finish. The next was brief.

Then it came to me.

I knew my comments asking to start the school year remotely wouldn’t fit in a 3 minute time frame, but I was not about to be silenced.

I made my comments (which I reproduce in full below) and when the timer went off, I kept going.

Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman said, “Mr. Singer, your time is up.”

I responded, “I’m sorry. I thought my duly elected representatives would want to hear what I had to say. I’ll continue…”

When I was again challenged, it was Sturgess who came to my defense.

She was fearless the entire meeting with questions and comments about the reopening plan and how she thought it was ill considered.

When she spoke up asking for me to be allowed to finish, Lopretto became visibly upset.

“Mindy, why don’t you just take the president’s seat!?” he said.

Lopretto got into an argument with her about it, which ended when he gave up and allowed me to finish.

It’s surprising that even after such antagonism, board members like Donato later seemed to almost reconsider their votes when the time came.

If anything I said seemed to get through to them, it may have been how I concluded:

“If I’m wrong about this, maybe kids will get a slightly less effective academic experience than they would otherwise. But if you vote for in-person classes and you’re wrong, kids will get sick, teachers will get sick, family members will get sick and many will die.

I can live with the consequences of my decision.

Please consider all these things carefully before casting your vote. There are many lives depending on it.”

In the end, we lost.

The district will reopen to in-person classes.

Frankly, before the meeting I had thought it a lost cause.

But now that it’s over, I think if just a few more parents had come to the meeting and spoken against the plan, we might have won.

If the teachers union had been clearer about educators’ concerns and not allowed the superintendent to rhapsodize on the bravery of district employees putting their lives on the line for students, we might have won.

However, the parents I talked to were too frightened of speaking out, too scared of reprisals against their children, and too certain that they wouldn’t be heard anyway.

The teachers I talked to complained about their comments to administration being gas lit and pushed aside. Fear or reprisal, silencing and the good ol’ boys network.

To be honest, it was not easy to sign up to speak at all.

There was a link online to sign up last week, but I had great difficulty finding it, myself, just seven days later. And if you didn’t have your name down by 3 pm on the day before the meeting, you were told sign ups were closed.

These are not the actions of a school board that welcomes public comment.

If just a few more of us could have persevered, I think we could have changed directors’ minds.

But it was not to be.

All that’s left is to see after you and yours – and remember.

Remember the names of those who voted in favor of reopening. Write them down.

If the epidemic brings a tragedy down on McKeesport, we know who to blame.

MY COMMENTS:

“Thank you for allowing me to address this board for the second week in a row.

I am here again to ask you to reconsider administration’s school reopening plan. I think it is imperative physical classrooms remain closed and students begin the year with distance learning.

South Allegheny and Duquesne City Schools just passed resolutions this week to do exactly that for their students. They join surrounding districts East Allegheny, Woodland Hills, Wilkinsburg and Pittsburgh Public Schools putting the safety of students, staff and families first.

Even the Superintendent of Mt. Lebanon School District has requested his school board reconsider its reopening plan and instead move to remote learning.

If it’s good enough for the rich kids in Mt. Lebanon, I think it’s good enough for McKeesport kids, too.

You have to face the facts.

In the last seven days, 311 new cases of COVID-19 were identified in Allegheny County. In the previous week it was 890 new cases.

That may fall under the bar of Gov. Wolf’s new guidelines for districts to mandate remote learning, but it comes awfully close to hopping over it. And it certainly puts online learning as a viable option for county districts.

Moreover, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Robert Redfield has said the number of cases in the US could be 10 times higher based on antibody tests.

McKeesport Area School District has been hit harder than most. According to the county Website, there have been 189 cases in McKeesport for a case rate of 95.8 per 10,000. There have been an additional 31 cases in White Oak for a case rate of 39.4 per 10,000.

But the death rate in McKeesport is one of the highest in our part of the county. Seven people have died from McKeesport due to this virus.

That’s more than White Oak (0), North Versailles (2), Duquesne (2), West Mifflin (1), Glassport (0), Port Vue (0), Liberty (0), or Elizabeth Township (0).

Jefferson Hills and Baldwin come close with 5 deaths a piece. And Monroeville – which is much more populous than McKeesport – matches us with 7.

Last week, Dr. Mark Holtzman said “We’re very comfortable with the proposal that we’re making.” I don’t see how you can be comfortable with that kind of data.

A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics found more than 97,000 children tested positive for Covid-19 just in the last two weeks of July.

To put that in context, out of more than 5 million people diagnosed with the virus in the US, approximately 338,000 are children.

And nearly a third of those cases have come as we’ve reopened schools and summer camps, as we’ve increasingly exposed kids to the virus.
Children typically had low infection rates because schools were closed in March and kids were quarantined before the virus had spread through most of the country.

Since June, there have been numerous outbreaks at summer schools. And with some schools now starting their academic year, outbreaks have been even more numerous.

The fact is – if we reopen schools to in-person classes, chances are good that kids will get sick. Staff will get sick. And they’ll bring it home to their families.

Last week, Dr. Holtzman told me I was welcome to utilize a virtual option for my daughter and that this personal parental choice is all that should matter.

I disagree for several reasons.

First, the virtual option on offer for parents at this time is not as effective as the online learning the district could provide if all classes were meeting remotely. As Dr. Holtzman outlined, if the buildings were closed, classroom teachers could conduct synchronous lessons online for all students. This would increase social interaction with real, live people and increase learning outcomes.

By contrast, the existent cyber program is asynchronous, do-at-your-own-pace and less socially interactive.

Obviously, in-person classes would be better academically. But (1) they put children at undue risk of death or permanent health problems as a result of complications from the virus, and (2) what is on offer is not traditional in-person schooling but rushed 20 minute classes behind face masks, plexiglass barriers and a cloud of well-earned fear and anxiety.

So if you insist on reopening the school buildings at this time, I will have to enroll my daughter in the cyber program.

However, a decision to have in-person classes will still affect me and my family.

There is Coronavirus in our community. If you have in-person classes – even on a half day basis – you would be inviting it into our schools where it could infect others and be brought back to their homes. You would effectively be increasing the amount of infection in our community – both in and out of the schools.

When I go to the local Giant Eagle to do my shopping, I would be more likely to become infected because of what you decide here tonight.

When I go to gas up my car, if I pick up take out, if I even go for a walk in my own neighborhood, I would be more likely to be exposed to a person infected with the Coronavirus and thus get sick, myself, because of your decision tonight.

So don’t tell me that my choice as a parent in this matter is all that should concern me.

Finally, let me speak for the staff because few others seem willing to do so.

The teachers, custodians, bus drivers, secretaries, support staff and others do not get to make a choice. They have to either accept the plan you’re voting on tonight or look for employment elsewhere. They have to decide whether to put – not just themselves – but their own children and families at risk just to continue receiving a paycheck.

They have done so much for us. They are the lifeblood of this district. Don’t they deserve more consideration than this?

Please. Do not start the school year with this hybrid plan.

I know administration has worked tirelessly on it. And that effort has not been wasted.

There will come a time to go to a hybrid reopening plan. But that time is not now.

When the spread has been contained, when everyone who wants to be tested can do so in a timely manner, when we can adequately contract trace infections, hopefully there will be a vaccine but even if not when Allegheny County has had close to zero new cases for two full weeks, then it will be time to start reopening buildings.

But let’s not jump the gun now. Let’s wait and see how things go. Wait until the new year and see what happens at other districts that are not so safety minded. At least wait 9-weeks.

If I’m wrong about this, maybe kids will get a slightly less effective academic experience than they would otherwise. But if you vote for in-person classes and you’re wrong, kids will get sick, teachers will get sick, family members will get sick and many will die.

I can live with the consequences of my decision.

Please consider all these things carefully before casting your vote. There are many lives depending on it.”

DR. HOLTZMAN’S RESPONSE:

“Mr. Singer, I’d like to address you with a few of my own statistics. Allegheny County at this particular point anyone under the age of 40 the mortality rate is zero. Anyone under the age of 50 there’s been two fatalities due to Covid. Currently reference to CDC. There’s a current study on the CDC Website right now that clearly states that children or young adults under the age of 19 are five times more likely to die from the flu than Covid-19. These are statistics that go along with the statistics you’re sharing that are often one-sided when you think about those processes.

I think when you talk about coming to a meeting tonight, going to the grocery store, getting take out, we’re putting ourselves at risk every day. It’s an unfortunate scenario. It’s an unfortunate situation. Many people are having people at their homes, they’re going to Kennywood, they’re playing sports out in the community, and that risk of spread is just as big of a risk without a reward. So I think in our case we’re looking for an opportunity to educate children that need desperately positive adults in their life and the opportunity to be educated. We’re not taking a risk for no reward as many do as they go on vacation this summer and consider the spread differently.

So I would take those as part of your comments about some of the things you shared with us so that we’re both on the same page. There’s no easy answers to this solution. And many districts are doing different things based on their community and their community needs. We’re just trying to do what’s best for children.

I appreciate your comment. I appreciate your continuing to blog about me on social media. I’m not a social media person, but it’s something that you do regularly, and we’re here to do what’s best for your children, my children and all the children in the school district. So thank you.”

FACT CHECK:

–Dr. Holtzman’s statistics clash with other sources. For instance, the Allegheny County Health Department reports the death of a 23-year-old county resident in April.

Moreover, his assertion that “children or young adults under the age of 19 are five times more likely to die from the flu than Covid-19” is misleading because children have been mostly quarantined since March and many who do get infected with Coronavirus are asymptomatic. That’s why there have been fewer reported cases until recently. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said, “The reality is that flu last year infected 11.8 million kids. We have not infected anywhere near that number of kids with Covid, and we don’t want to find out what it might look like if we did… We really do want to prevent outbreaks in the school setting.”

(My comments are at 29 minutes left in the video.

Holtzman’s response comes at 20 minutes left.

The vote takes place at 10 minutes left.)

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Parental Choice Won’t Save Us From Unsafe School Reopening Plans

August 10, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, computers, edtech, Education, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, protest, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Student Mobility, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, Tom Wolf, Unions coronavirus, COVID-19, education, pandemic, parental rights, parents, reopening schools, school board, Students, teachers, technology, virtual learning

I am the parent of a public school student.

And I have a choice.

I get to decide whether my daughter will go back to school in-person or online.

That’s the only thing that should matter to me.

At least, that’s what the superintendent of my home district told me when I went before school directors last week asking them to reconsider administration’s unsafe reopening plan.

At McKeesport Area School District (MASD), Dr. Mark Holtzman and administration propose unlocking the doors for half day in-person classes Mondays through Fridays.

Kids would be split into two groups – one attending in the mornings, the other in the afternoons. That way, with buildings at half capacity, there would be enough physical space for social distancing. The remainder of the time, kids would be learning online.

However, if you don’t approve, you can opt out.

Any parent who is uncomfortable with this plan could keep his or her children home and have them participate in the district’s existent cyber program.

The board hasn’t voted on the proposal yet. It won’t do so until Wednesday.

But as I stood up there at the podium last week outlining all the ways this scheme was unsafe and asking my duly-elected representatives to instead consider distance learning for all children, Holtzman told me to be happy I could choose whatever I wanted for my own child and sit back down.

Which brings up the question – is parental choice enough?

Is the fact that I can choose for my daughter the only concern I should have?

Thankfully, no one is forcing me to subject my child to in-person classes. If I don’t think they’re safe, I can keep her away and still have access to an education for her through the Internet.

What else do I want?

Plenty.

First of all, the quality of education offered by the district cyber program is not the same as the district could provide if all students were enrolled in virtual classes.

Dr. Holtzman has outlined what that would look like if school buildings were shut down by the governor or the district were overcome with sick students, teachers and/or family.

Teachers would provide synchronous classes online through video platforms like Zoom. Students would get to interact virtually with each other and their teachers.

By contrast, the existent cyber program is asychronous. Students watch videos and do assignments at their own pace, but human contact and social interaction – even via the Internet – is much harder to come by.

Let’s be honest – both options pale in comparison to face-to-face instruction. But the kind of instruction students will receive in-person during this global pandemic will not be face-to-face. Students will interact behind masks and plexiglass barriers under an ever present shadow of fear and menace. Under the proposed MASD plan, teachers would have a mere 20 minutes a period to try to get something done other than just taking role, attempting to get students to comply with safety precautions and calming their fears.

Both cyber options are preferable because they avoid these problems. But one of them – the synchronous option with a dedicated class and a teacher behind the curriculum – is superior to the one being offered.

Is it selfish to want the better plan for my daughter?

Should I just be glad I have a choice at all? Should I put the individual good of my child aside for the good of others?

No. Because administration’s plan is not in the best interests of other children, either.

If we reopen schools to in-person classes, chances are good that kids will get sick.

A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics found more than 97,000 children tested positive for Covid-19 just in the last two weeks of July.

To put that in context, out of more than 5 million people diagnosed with the virus in the US, approximately 338,00 are children.

And nearly a third of those cases have come as we’ve reopened schools and summer camps, as we’ve increasingly exposed kids to the virus.

Children typically had low infection rates because schools were closed in March and kids were quarantined before the virus had spread through most of the country.

Since June, there have been numerous outbreaks at summer schools in Massachusett s, Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, New York, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan, and Hawaii, among others. And with some schools now starting their academic year, outbreaks have been even more numerous.

I live in Allegheny County – the western Pennsylvania region around Pittsburgh – where Covid cases have spiked.

Many local school districts like East Allegheny, Woodland Hills and Wilkinsburg have passed plans to start the year with classes being conducted 100% online. South Allegheny and Duquesne City Schools just passed such plans in the last few days. And the biggest district in this part of the state – Pittsburgh Public Schools – has done the same.

If the virus is present in the community – as county health department data shows – opening the schools to students also opens them to Coronavirus.

But with the schools open, the virus will no longer be confined to just a few homes. It will come with kids to class and spread among students and staff before it’s brought to their homes as well.

That’s how epidemics work. Opening the schools will spread the virus throughout the entire community.

And that will affect me, too, regardless of whether I choose a cyber option for my daughter or not.

When I go to the local grocery store, gas up my car, even go for a walk – I will be more likely to come into contact with someone infected with the virus and get sick.

I can make the safe decision for my family but still suffer the consequences of the irresponsible decisions of others – especially school directors.
In fact, it doesn’t even have to be my own local school board. The decisions of school directors in neighboring districts affects me, too.

After all, in my part of the state, school districts are pretty small geographically – not nearly as large as most counties. There are 42 public districts in Allegheny County, alone. So it should be no surprise that I routinely travel through several different districts just running day-to-day errands.

MASD school directors can decide to keep buildings closed (and I hope they will) but if a district just one township or borough over decides differently, we will suffer the consequences in McKeesport, too.

This is why issues of public safety are usually decided at the county, state or federal level. These decisions affect all of us, but these days no one wants to take the responsibility.

It doesn’t even make sense democratically.

Since I don’t live in more than one district, I don’t get a say in what school directors at neighboring districts decide. I just have a say in what happens in my tiny portion of the world. But the consequences are not nearly as respectful of our man-made borders.

For instance, I work as a teacher at a neighboring district. But since I do not live there, I am barred from speaking at the board meetings unless I am invited to speak as an employee of the district.

I can give a report as part of the safety commission if invited by administrators, but I can’t otherwise sign up to speak as an employee concerned about how district policies affects me, my students or their families.

I’m a believer in local control, but sometimes control can be too localized.

This is why you haven’t heard much from many educators. If they’re allowed to speak, they’re often afraid of how doing so will make them a target for reprisals. If they can get their union to back them, they can speak collectively that way, but otherwise, they have no pathway to being heard at all.

As a parent, I get a choice for my child in my district.

But what choice do teachers have – especially if they don’t live where they teach?

If school directors decide to reopen to in-person classes, they’re forcing educators to decide between their employment and their own families. If teachers return to the classroom with their students in a physical setting, they risk not only their own lives but that of their friends and families.

That concerns me even with my choices as a parent.

I’ve had some outstanding teachers. My daughter loves her teachers. Is it okay if I don’t want to see them get sick and their lives cut short? If I worry about my own chances of surviving the pandemic and the demands of my employer?

Finally, what about people of color? The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says African Americans and other minorities are hospitalized from the virus four to five times more often than white people.

I think their lives matter. But as minorities and people subjected to systemic inequalities, they get less of a say in policy. Should decisions that disproportionately impact their health really be up to a committee? Doesn’t their right to life surpass the decisions making abilities of a handful of elected officials or even middle and upper class parents?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m thankful I have choices as a parent for how my daughter is educated.

But that doesn’t overcome my concerns about a bad school reopening strategy.

School directors need to make reopening decisions that are in the best interests of everyone because we’re all in this together.

That’s what so many folks seem to be forgetting.

Yes, even from a completely selfish point of view, unsafe school reopening will affect each of us.

But epidemics spread through communities. Only communities can effectively combat them.

Dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller fiefdoms only empowers the virus. If we all try to fight Covid-19 individually, we will lose.

We have to understand that what’s good for our friends and neighbors is in our individual interest, too.

We have to care about our fellow human beings.

That’s why I will continue to fight these unsafe plans and ask school directors to reopen schools virtually.

That’s the path I’ve chosen.

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What I Told McKeesport Area School Directors About the Unsafe Reopening Plan Proposed by Administrators

August 6, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Compassion, Data, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Prejudice, protest, School Choice, school closings, Schools, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Technology child safety, coronavirus, COVID-19, education, Mark Holtzman, McKeesport, McKeesport Area School District, Politics, reopening schools, safe schools, school board, Students, teachers

This evening I went back to my high school to tell school board members what I thought of administration’s reopening plan during the global pandemic.

McKeesport Area School Directors have not voted on the proposal yet.

So I gathered my thoughts, put on my mask and went to the work session meeting.

This is what I said:

“Thank you for allowing me to address you this evening. I appreciate all the time and effort you put forward to lead the McKeesport Area School District and do what’s best for students, staff, and families.

I am a life-long resident of this community. Most of my family graduated from this school as did my brother and I. Before I got a job as a teacher at a neighboring district, I subbed here in the high school for years. My daughter has attended the district for the past 6 years and has received a first rate education so far.

However, I am very concerned with Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman’s proposed plan to reopen schools. He would have students attend school buildings in-person for half days and do virtual instruction for the other half.

This is not a safe plan for students, staff and families. I ask you to reconsider and move to a reopening plan that begins with all students engaged in distance learning.

The reason is simple. New cases of COVID-19 are spiking throughout Allegheny County. Along with Philadelphia – where students will be getting 100% virtual instruction – we have some of the highest numbers of new cases in the state.

The largest district in Allegheny County – Pittsburgh Public Schools – has already decided to start with all virtual classes as have nearby East Allegheny, Woodland Hills and Wilkinsburg districts. We should do the same.

Safety has to be the primary consideration in reopening plans during a global pandemic. Maslow tells us kids cannot learn effectively unless their bedrock needs such as safety are met.

I appreciate Dr. Holtzman’s concerns about academic loss from distance learning – and under normal circumstances I would agree with him. However, these are not normal circumstances. The kind of academics he is proposing will not be as effective as he seems to believe.

Kids would have roughly 20 minute classes. As a classroom teacher, I know that little more will get done than taking role and getting kids ready to start. I am glad Dr. Holtzman reconsidered his original plan. which would have allowed students to forgo masks in the classroom and congregate only 3 feet apart. He is right to increase precautions with mandatory masks and 6 feet social distancing. But let’s be honest. If you think students will abide by them, you are engaged in magical thinking. Moreover, these precautions will inevitably have a negative effect on learning. Screen-to-screen instruction is less effective than face-to-face instruction, yes. But Mask-to-mask is NOT face-to-face. We may achieve more academically keeping kids online than trying to instruct through plague conditions.

But even if I’m wrong about that, it’s simply not worth it.

No academics is worth the death or debilitating illness of a child, family member or teacher.

Kids don’t learn well when their teachers are in quarantine. There are few accommodations made for special needs students on a ventilator. Childcare is the least of your worries if you survive the virus but are left with a lifelong disability as a result.

If we invite kids back into the classroom, we invite COVID-19 as well. If the virus is present in the community – as county data indicates – it will get into our schools where even the best precautions will not stop it from spreading and being brought home to families.

There is significant evidence that even the youngest kids can and do get sick. And those 10 or older are just as susceptible and can spread the disease at least as easily as adults.

Moreover, the CDC reports that African Americans and other people of color are hospitalized from COVID-19 four to five times more often than white people. What are we saying to our black and brown brothers and sisters if we value their health so cheaply. Don’t their lives matter?

Spreading this disease throughout the community will not help anyone.

And for those who respond that only a certain percentage of children and adults will die, which members of your family are you willing to sacrifice?

Whose lives are you willing to bet and do you really have the authority to play God?

We’re talking about human life here.

Speaking of which, let’s not forget our teachers and school staff.

Parents at least get a choice whether to send their kids to school in-person or opt for a cyber option. Dr. Holzman’s plan gives no such choice to staff. It does little to protect them from exposure to the virus. If you approve it, you are demanding staff decide between their employment and the possibility that they may take the Coronavirus home to their own children and families.

I have had some amazing teachers in this district who changed my life and made me the person I am today. My daughter loves her teachers. Approving this plan would be a slap in their faces.

Look, I know this is a tough decision. You are being asked to shoulder an incredible burden, but we are relying on you to make the best decision for all of us.

Please do not approve Dr. Holtzman’s reopening plan. Instead have all remote instruction until there have been no new cases in the county for a full two weeks.

Only then will it be safe to reopen school buildings.

Thank you.”

Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman responded:

“I’d like to respond to a couple of those statements if you wouldn’t mind.

First of all, it’s not Mark Holtzman’s plan. It’s the McKeesport Area School District’s plan. I worked with my administration tirelessly to make those efforts happen. I’m very proud of the efforts that we made. The time and effort that our administration put in.

I think moving forward looking at the big picture there is a virtual option for families so you are welcome to utilize or exercise that opportunity.

Unfortunately we are commissioned to make a very difficult decision for what’s the betterment of all children and providing options for those families that choose to use virtual learning as a platform is available to yourself, your family and anybody else’s family that is interested.

To say that it’s not fair for one person such as yourself or myself to make a decision to totally not have school in-person, I don’t know is the right decision as well. So I think we’re in the middle of this discussion where I think the best decision is not always the easiest decision.

We’re very comfortable with the proposal that we’re making and we hope that you can find the decision that is within those couple options that is in the best interest of your family.”

(My comments begin at 16:27. The audio is a bit muffled because I kept my mask on while speaking.)

(Dr. Holtzman’s response begins at 23:13)

The school board is set to vote on the reopening plan next week at its meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 7:30 pm at the high school.

I still hope school directors vote to begin the year with virtual classes.

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Gov. Wolf, You Can’t Shirk Your Duty to Close PA Schools During the Pandemic

July 31, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Data, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Harrisburg, Healthcare, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Republican, school closings, Schools, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Technology, Tom Wolf coronavirus, COVID-19, education, Governor Tom Wolf, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, reopening schools, school board, schools

“The Buck Stops Here!”

President Harry S. Truman famously displayed a sign on his desk saying exactly that.

It indicated that he didn’t pass the buck but accepted responsibility for the way the country was run.

What does it say on your desk, Gov. Tom Wolf?

Your latest Tweets don’t fill Pennsylvania residents with confidence:

“There are widespread rumors that I will soon be announcing a statewide school building closure or cancelling classes this fall. I want to be clear: I am not closing school buildings or cancelling classes.”

“School governing boards and administrators will determine if school buildings reopen and if classes resume in person, remotely, or a combination of the two. The best way to find out about these local decisions is to contact your school’s governing board or administration.”

Well, that’s two things you now have in common with President Donald Trump.

First, you’re making policy by Tweet.

Second, you are side stepping your obligations.

“I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said when asked about his administration’s inability to test Americans for the Coronavirus during the outbreak.

That’s what you sound like today.

COVID-19 cases have been spiking throughout the Commonwealth since early June – especially in Allegheny, Philadelphia, Delaware and Montgomery counties.

Today in Allegheny County, where I live, the Health Department reported the second highest increase in new cases – 244.

That is the most new cases in the state. Philadelphia comes next with 130 new cases. Together, these two counties make up more than 38% of the state’s new COVID-19 cases.

And yet we have school directors looking at this same data and making different decisions.

In the Pittsburgh region, school boards at East Allegheny, Woodland Hills and Wilkinsburg districts have all decided to reopen schools with classes completely on-line – at least to start. Meanwhile, in neighboring districts like McKeesport Area School District and Steel Valley School District, they are moving forward with hybrid plans that incorporate on-line and in-person classes in the physical school buildings.

And those are the outliers.

The majority haven’t made decisions yet complaining of a lack of safety guidelines from the county and a lack of direction from you, the governor.

You don’t get to decide what schools teach or how local communities make educational decisions.

But whether school buildings physically reopen or not during a pandemic is not an educational decision. It is a public safety decision.

Back in March when the virus started spreading throughout the state, you choose to close down businesses and schools.

As chief executive of the state, you had an obligation to do that.

It’s a crying shame that many in government have politicized every aspect of this disaster and the response to it.

I know you have taken a lot of criticism from Republicans trying to score points off your quick and sound judgement in this matter. They call you a tyrant because you did what every previous governor has done during a statewide disaster – you made decisions to safeguard lives.

Nothing has changed. If anything, there are significantly more cases reported every day now than in March.

If schools needed to be closed to in-person classes and education needed to be conducted on-line back then, that is still true today.

Perhaps this doesn’t have to be statewide. Perhaps it can be decided county-by-county. But you need to work collaboratively with county officials and school boards to coordinate the response to the virus.

Otherwise, there inevitably will be outbreaks at schools that reopen to in-person schooling. And since most districts are not separated by wide open spaces and residents frequently travel between them to buy groceries or other necessities, those outbreaks will spread.

A district that wisely decides to keep children 100% online will be susceptible to infections from residents in neighboring districts and bring those infections home.

This is not the responsibility of local school directors. It requires an authority that goes beyond the neighborhood and provincial decision making.

This is YOUR responsibility.

Frankly, the federal government, too, should be playing a larger role to help coordinate state responses. After all, the virus is not limited by state lines either.

But just because this President has neglected his duties, that does not give you the right to do the same.

If you refuse to make this decision, many more people will get sick from COVID-19 than would otherwise. Many more people will eventually die.

These are teachers, mothers, fathers, grandparents, and – yes – even children.

You can do something about that.

You have a responsibility to do something about it.

Do your duty.

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The Hybrid Model of School Reopening is Not Safe Either

July 25, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Data, Donald Trump, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, Racism, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, standards, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Technology coronavirus, COVID-19, death, disease, distance learning, education, hybrid model, in-person classes, Internet, life, Local Control, online, Pennsylvania, Politics, reopening schools, risk, risk management, school board, school directors, sickness, Students, teachers, virtual learning

Safety is in the eye of the beholder.

No matter what you do, life involves some risk.

The question is whether certain actions or courses of action involve acceptable risk and exactly what you consider to be acceptable.

These issues are not academic. School directors across the country are juggling such questions in their reopening plans.

With federal and state officials largely leaving the decision up to local elected school boards of how to hold classes in August and September, people used to choosing between bids for text books and whether to renovate the gymnasium are forced to make life and death decisions for hundreds or thousands of students, staff and their families.

There are three main options:

(1) Open schools completely to in-person learning with safety precautions
(2) Keep classes entirely on-line as they were in April and May
(3) Offer some kind of hybrid of the two

Many schools are opting for this hybrid model.

This means reopening to in-person classes part of the time and on-line learning for the rest.

There are many ways to do this.

In my home district of McKeesport, this means having half of the students attend in the morning and the other half in the afternoon with the balance of their class work being done via the Internet.

In Steel Valley, the district where I work as a middle school teacher, this means half of the students attending full days on Mondays and Tuesdays, half on Thursdays and Fridays and the building is deep cleaned while students are taught completely on-line on Wednesdays.

In either case, parents can opt-in to an entirely virtual plan, but it’s expected that most adults would choose the hybrid model with its partial in-person classes for their children.

Let me be clear – the hybrid plan is preferable to the completely in-person proposal.

It reduces exposure to other people and environments compared to the entirely in-person program.

For instance, being in class half the day reduces student exposure by half. Being in class two out of five days reduces it by 60%.

However, let’s be real.

Any in-person instruction during a global pandemic incurs some risk. And that risk is far from negligible.

Moreover, the amount of risk is greater for adults than it is for children – both because adults would experience much higher exposure under such systems and because COVID-19 seems to affect adults more severely than children.

The hybrid model, then, is tantamount to putting children, teachers and families at risk for a reduced amount of time.

Why take the risk? On the premise that in-person instruction is more robust than on-line learning. Students learn more in the classroom from educators who are physically present than they do on the Internet.

There is significant evidence to back that up. However, this premise ignores the fact that invasive but necessary safety measures like wearing masks and practicing social distancing throughout the day will inevitably have negative effects on learning.

In short, mask-to-mask learning will not be as productive as face-to-face learning. We are in uncharted territory. It is entirely up in the air whether the necessary safety precautions of in-person learning – even during a hybrid model – will be better or worse than distance learning.

So the hybrid model tries to balance the unproven and questionable promise of increased academics against the threat of increased danger of disease.

How much danger? Well that depends to a large degree on where you live and the rate of infection present there.

I live in western Pennsylvania just south of Pittsburgh.

When schools closed in Allegheny County last academic year, a handful of people got sick each day, a hundred or more a week. For instance, 23 new COVID-19 cases were reported on March 19, and 133 for the week.

Now there are hundreds of new cases in the county every day and a thousand a week – 198 on July 24, alone, and 1,363 for the week.

Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 11.34.44 AM — Source: PA Department of Health

Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 11.34.56 AM — Source: PA Department of Health

That is not an insignificant risk. We have an infection rate of nearly 10%. We have some of the highest numbers in the state.

I don’t know how anyone can look at those numbers and conclude anything except that the risk of infection is GREATER today than it was when we took more precautions against it.

Moreover, the situation is little better nationwide.

Not a single state has met guidelines for reopening schools issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in May.

Moving into Phase 1 would require a “Downward trajectory or near-zero incidence of documented cases over a 14-day period.” Moving to Phase 2 would require a “Downward trajectory or near-zero incidence of documented cases for at least 14 days after entering Phase 1.”

No state has experienced a “downward trajectory” for COVID-19 cases for 28 straight days. In most states, cases are increasing.

Nor does any reopening plan that I have seen – including McKeesport’s and Steel Valley’s – follow the 69-page CDC guidelines published by The New York Times earlier this month, marked “For Internal Use Only,” which was intended for federal public health response teams as they are deployed to hot spots around the country.

That document suggested several expensive and difficult safety measures such as broad testing of students and faculty and contact tracing to find people exposed to an infected student or teacher – none of which is being done locally.

The issue gets complicated though because this month the CDC bowed to pressure from the Trump administration and publicly softened its tone about reopening.

However, no matter how you look at it, reopening school buildings – even with a hybrid approach – increases risk significantly.

If school buildings are reopened with students and staff coming and going – even at a reduced rate through a hybrid plan – one would expect the virus already present in the community to gain access to our schools where it would be further spread to different segments of the community.

Schools are great meeting points. They are where local neighborhoods connect, learn, grow and share. Reopening them in a physical fashion allows for greater sharing of any easily communicable diseases in the area.

So exactly how communicable is COVID-19?

It’s often compared to influenza which infects millions of people every year yet these outbreaks rarely close schools.

Unfortunately, the consequences of getting COVID-19 are much more severe. So far the Coronavirus has shown itself to be 52 times as deadly as the flu.

Only about 0.1 percent of the people who got the flu in the US last year died of it, according to the CDC. Yet about 5.2 percent of those who came down with COVID-19 have died, based on the reported totals of cases and deaths.

During the 2018-19 flu season, about 34,000 people in the US died, according to the CDC. So far, 143,193 people have died of COVID-19 in the US, as of July 23.

And keep in mind there is a vaccine for the flu. There is nothing as yet that fights COVID-19.

Some say that even given such statistics, children are less susceptible than adults.

However, the virus was only discovered in 2019. So little is known about it – for instance, the low percentage of cases in children may be because schools were closed in April and May before many kids were exposed to it.

A recent South Korean study – the most in depth of its kind to examine how the virus affects children – found that it is especially active in older kids.

“For people who lived with parents between the ages of 10 and 19, 18.6% tested positive for the virus within about 10 days after the initial case was detected — the highest rate of transmission among the groups studied. Children younger than 10 spread the virus at the lowest rate, though researchers warned that could change when schools reopen,” wrote Stephen Stapczynski for Bloomberg News.

Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University agreed.

“So long as children are not just a complete dead end – incapable of passing the virus on, which does not seem to be the case – putting them together in schools, having them mix with teachers and other students will provide additional opportunities for the virus to move from person to person,” he said.

Do such facts represent an acceptable risk for opening schools – even with a hybrid model?

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says it does.

She said, “there’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous.”

However, if even .02% of public school students were likely to die if school buildings were reopened, that’s 11,320 children!

Are we willing to risk the lives of tens of thousands – perhaps more – children on the unproven promise of a slight improvement in academics?

And keep in mind that doesn’t even take into account the cost to adults.

According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), 1 in 4 teachers in the U.S. – roughly 1.5 million people – are at increased risk for complications if they become infected with the Coronavirus. This includes educators over the age of 65 and those – like myself – with a pre-existing health condition that makes them more vulnerable.

According to the CDC, death from COVID-19 is significantly more common in older adults. Though the median age of U.S. teachers is 42.4 years, nearly 19 percent of teachers are 55 and older, reports the National Center for Education Statistics.

Health conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease also increase one’s risk for serious illness from the virus. The CDC warns that roughly 60 percent of American adults have at least one chronic medical condition, and about 40 percent have two or more.

The situation is even more dire when we look at parents and grandparents in students’ homes. The KFF issued a report in July concluding that 3.3 million adults 65 or older live in a household with school-age children.

And let’s not forget the racial component.

Most minorities are more susceptible to COVID-19 because of the higher rates of social inequality they are forced to live under.

According to the CDC, Native Americans and Black people are hospitalized from the Coronavirus five times more often than White people. Hispanic and Latino people are hospitalized four times more often than White people.

Physically reopening school buildings in communities that serve large populations of people of color, then, invites greater risk than in predominantly white communities.

Screen Shot 2020-07-25 at 1.24.46 PM — SOURCE: the CDC

In any case, though, reopening school buildings – even under a hybrid model – significantly increases the risk for all the people living there.

So in summary, it is clear that the three basic options for reopening schools each offer different levels of risk.

A full reopening of schools even with safety precautions brings the highest risk. However, the hybrid model also brings significant danger to students, teachers and families – even if somewhat less than full reopening.

Distance learning has the lowest risk of all. It keeps most children physically separate from each other and thus limits exposure to the virus to the greatest extent. Likewise, it limits jeopardy for educators and other adults because teachers would mostly come into contact with children through the internet and parents would not be further complicated through potential viral contacts of their children.

From an academic standpoint, distance learning certainly has its drawbacks compared with face-to-face learning. But compared with mask-to-mask learning, virtual instruction may actually be preferable.

In any case, increased risk of death or debilitating disease has a chilling effect on learning for all involved.

In most communities – perhaps all – a decision on school reopening that balances safety with academics would lean toward distance learning above anything else.

Even if on-line learning turns out to be less effective than that provided in the hybrid model, any deficiencies can be targeted and ameliorated once the pandemic ends.

As yet, death admits of no such remedies.

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McKeesport Area School District’s Reopening Plan is Based on Dubious Facts, Bad Reasoning & Takes Unnecessary Risks: An Open Letter to the Superintendent

July 16, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, computers, Credibility, Data, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, protest, school closings, Schools, Student Mobility, Students, Teachers, Technology Allegheny County, Bucks County, child safety, coronavirus, COVID-19, distance learning, education, Mark Holtzman, McKeesport, McKeesport Area School District, Pennsylvania, Politics, public schools, reopening plan, risk, safe schools, superintendent

Dr. Mark Holtzman:

I am extremely concerned about the reopening plan for the McKeesport Area School District you offered on video Tuesday.

As a parent of a child in the district and a teacher in a neighboring district, I find the plan you put forward to be absolutely terrifying. It is badly reasoned, based on unproven facts, and takes unnecessary risks with students and staff.

In short, you propose reducing social distancing by half, requiring students to wear masks only occasionally, having zero temperature screenings and keeping schools open when students, staff and/or family get sick.

This is unacceptable.

And given that you said all superintendents in Allegheny County are meeting weekly to discuss reopening, my concern about McKeesport’s plan extends to all other local districts working under similar miscalculations.

Be assured I will send my concerns to the email hotline you provided because it was impossible to have public meetings to discuss this matter. Which brings me to my first concern – how can it be unsafe to meet in-person with the public to discuss reopening schools yet still be safe to open them for our kids?

I am an alumni of McKeesport. So is my wife, my brother and most of the people in my family. I’ve lived here my whole life.

My daughter is set to enter 6th grade this year. Up to this point I have been extremely happy with the education she has received in the district.

I am thankful that you’ve decided to give parents the option of virtual learning for their kids if they do not feel it is safe for them to return to school buildings, but your reopening plan will have impacts far beyond our individual households. A spike in COVID-19 throughout the community due to a bad school reopening plan will not be in anyone’s interests.

I know you are an educator and want to do what is best for the students in your care. However, in this case you have let your drive to ensure the best academics overshadow what is in the best interests of the safety and well being of the children, families and staff in the district.

You say you’re relying on facts as provided by the the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and health departments of Allegheny, Chester and Bucks County. However, almost everything you cite on the video is from one source – Bucks County.

Bucks County is very different from where we live in Western Pennsylvania. It encompasses a smaller area north of Philadelphia and has a reduced population – about 628,000 people.

Allegheny County includes the City of Pittsburgh, is geographically larger and has a more numerous population – about 1.216 million people.

Looking at the numbers, Bucks County has not handled the pandemic as well as Allegheny County. Though it has fewer people, they have more cases of COVID-19 – 5,841 compared to our 5,610. What’s worse, their death rate is substantially higher than ours – 511 to our 204.

Frankly, I do not feel comfortable basing almost our entire reopening plan on data provided by one county in the Commonwealth that may or may not have done a good job handling this pandemic.

We need to base our plan on county specific data from Western Pennsylvania and guidelines for the entire state.

In short, the plans provided by Bucks County are reckless and based on sketchy facts.

For instance, in the video you said people only get COVID-19 if they have been within 6 feet of someone not wearing a mask for 15 minutes consecutively. That or there has to be an exchange of fluid – someone sneezing, spraying spittle, etc.

It is true that the CDC has cautioned against being in such close proximity to someone else for such a prolonged period of time – within 6 feet for 15 minutes. However, the organization does NOT claim that this is the only way you can get the virus. They claim that being in this situation with someone who has tested positive for the virus (with or without a mask) means you should quarantine yourself for two weeks.

I am extremely upset that you plan to reduce social distancing in district schools from 6 feet to between 3 and 4 feet.

You again cite Bucks County to justify the position.

“…SARS-CoV-2 is spread most commonly through large respiratory droplets when someone coughs or sneezes. A minimum three-foot distance is clearly associated with significant reductions in infection via respiratory droplets, as most droplets do not travel more than 3 feet due to gravity. This is the current standard used by the World Health Organization (WHO) successfully in many countries throughout the world today.”

Once again this is not true. The WHO says people should keep at least 3 feet apart but doing so puts you at higher risk than 6 feet.

While it is nice to be assured that respiratory droplets don’t travel beyond three feet, experience tells us otherwise. It shouldn’t take much imagination or memory to recall a time when one of your own droplets traveled further in a moment of excitement. As a classroom teacher, I can tell you this happens often. When kids get excited, teachers better back up.

Be honest. This has nothing to do with  Bucks County. You let slip the real reason here:

“Our classrooms are not very large – to put children 6 feet apart in school buses, classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, will be next to impossible with the overall square footage of those particular areas.”

I get it. You’re probably right. But that’s not a reason to skimp on safety. There are other alternatives to in-person classes.

If we cannot do it safely, we shouldn’t do it at all. Let’s not pretend it’s safe because of something Bucks County officials pulled out of their butts.

Then we get to temperature screenings – a precaution you say will not be taken when students enter our buildings at the beginning of the day.

This is highly imprudent.

It takes seconds to gauge someone’s temperature with an infrared thermometer – significantly less than getting through a metal detector – something we do routinely everyday at all district schools.

Yes, there is the problem of kids getting backed up in long lines, but that is not insurmountable. Staff can at least try to keep kids separated – perhaps having a staggered start for each grade would help.

Yes, I know the absence of a temperature does not guarantee someone is not infected. But any sense of safety is good. You know the metal detectors are not 100% accurate either.

You say it is up to the parents to make sure their kids don’t come to school with a raised temperature. Now that IS unreasonable. It is unfair to put the health concerns of an entire population on one or two parents who may not comply with the expectation.

I think the bigger concern is something you didn’t mention. What do you do with a child who has a temperature? How will you send him home? Who will see to him until a parent can come and get him? And will that person be at risk of getting sick?

These are hard questions to answer, but going in ignorance of a symptomatic student is worse.

Your position on masks is one of the most problematic in your entire reopening plan.

You propose to have children wear masks on buses but not in their classes. And the reason – because it’s just too hard to make kids wear them.

Wearing masks has been a universal precaution when going out in public. It is one of the best things we can do to reduce the risk of getting the Coronavirus. Respiratory droplets here, there and everywhere, and you are just going to let them fly.

This is unfair to district children and the staff who serve them.

Look. I understand it would be incredibly difficult to get kids to wear masks. But if you cannot do it, pursue a different kind of schooling. Do not have in-person classes if you cannot do so safely.

Then we come to your position on what to do if someone gets sick.

First, it is telling that both you and your advisors in Bucks County are pretty sure this WILL eventually happen.

You do not think the precautions you’re taking will stop people from getting sick. You simply find it acceptable if the number of sick people is low.

“As COVID-19 will likely be with us for an extended period of time, and given that all school districts will almost certainly have cases, we want school districts to begin treating it similarly to the way we have successfully handled other communicable diseases in our schools, including pertussis (whooping cough), measles, strep throat, mumps, influenza, and meningitis. It is our strong intention to keep all classrooms, schools, and districts open, in the event of confirmed cases of COVID-19. One closure decision can lead to a potential crippling, and precedent setting domino effect of closures…”

COVID-19 is not any of the diseases mentioned above. It can be more infectious and the consequences of getting it can be much more severe.

Moreover, we cannot prioritize keeping schools open over public health and safety concerns. But that is what you are proposing here.

You said:

“We won’t close schools if someone gets infected. It takes 6-8 days to get an accurate result from a COVID test. So that disease will have passed through and will no longer exist on any surfaces, classroom areas, people, etc. in the school by the time the COVID is confirmed. Therefore, there’s no reason to close schools. We’ll clean every inch of our classrooms on a daily basis.”

This does not mean that the danger is any less. It means that the danger may have passed by the time we know about it. How many people may be sick by then?

Mark, this is a bad plan. Let me give you a better one.

Start school this year with universal distance learning.

You already mentioned how the district will make sure all students have a one-to-one iPad initiative. You mentioned how virtual learning will be revamped to include face-to-face instruction.

Take it a step further.

Have all teachers develop their own unique distance learning initiatives.

And keep with such a plan until Allegheny County reports zero new cases for at least two weeks.

Then and only then – move forward with in-person schooling that includes as many social distancing protocols as possible.

It’s not perfect, but that would be the safest plan.

I’ll admit it would not be as academically effective as in-person learning.

But be honest. No matter what you do, in-person learning will be less effective this year due to the pandemic.

Kids will not learn to the best of their ability under the shadow of COVID-19. They will be scared and on edge – if they even show up.

We can go back and fix any academic deficits in the years to come. But no one can bring the dead back to life.

It’s much better to err on the side of safety.

I hope you’ll do that.

Our families deserve to be healthy. Your staff deserves to work without having to risk their lives. Our children deserve the chance at a future.

Yours,

Steven Singer

Dr. Holtzman’s full video:

Dr. Holtzman’s Slides on Reopening:

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Pittsburgh Charter Schools Take Federal Bailout Money Meant for Small Businesses

July 15, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, California, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Diane Ravitch, Education, Local Control, Network for Public Education, Parents, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Taxation, Teachers Bailout, business, CARES Act, charter schools, coronavirus, COVID-19, economics, education, Paycheck Protection Program, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Politics, public schools

Are charter schools small businesses or public schools?

They can’t be both.

Several Pittsburgh area charter schools took a bailout meant for small businesses after already getting monetary relief meant for public schools.

Environmental Charter School at Frick Park, Hill House Passport Academy Charter School, Manchester Academic Charter School and Penn Hills Charter School of Entrepreneurship all applied for and received substantial low-interest loans from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

The $660 billion federal initiative was intended to help businesses keep employees on the payroll and off unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The loans will be forgiven if businesses meet certain conditions such as retaining or rehiring employees.

However, charter schools – including those in the Pittsburgh region – already should have received financial relief through the federal CARES Act.

Pennsylvania got $523 million to distribute to both authentic public schools and charters. However, of the two, only charters were eligible for additional PPP funds.

So these ‘Burgh charters are double dipping. They’re receiving aid from two different federal sources while authentic public schools only can get aid from one.

The Environmental Charter School at Frick Park got a $2 million – $5 million cash infusion from PPP.

The Environmental Charter calls itself a nonprofit organization but there are many reasons to be dubious.

First, nonprofits usually are dedicated to furthering some social cause like helping the poor and minorities.

However, The Environmental Charter actually caters to upper socioeconomic and white students.

It serves wealthier children than surrounding schools. Just one-third of Environmental Charter students are eligible for free or reduced lunches compared to 71% at Pittsburgh Public schools.

Moreover, only 30% of the charter’s students are minorities. Pittsburgh Public serves a student body of which nearly half are African American.

Next, there’s the issue of who runs the institution.

All charter schools in the Commonwealth have to be designated as nonprofits. However, many like the Environmental Charter School hire for-profit companies to actually operate their day-to-day functions and make almost all of their major administrative decisions.

The Environmental Charter is run by Virginia-based Imagine School s, one of the nation’s largest charter-management companies with more than 71 charters nationwide.

Since Imagine writes the Environmental Charter’s operating budget, the management company ends up paying itself for a number of services.

After the school gets funding from state, federal and community taxes (this year including bailouts from PPP and the CARES act), it pays 12 percent back to Imagine. This came to $406,000 in 2009, according to an independent financial audit.

The school also pays Imagine on a $250,000 loan that the charter operating company took out to launch the program. Payments come out to about $2,500 per month over 20 years with an interest rate of 10.524 percent.

The charter also pays Imagine rent on its building which was purchased in 2006 by Schoolhouse Finance – Imagine’s real estate arm – for $3 million.

The lease costs $526,000 annually and is binding until 2032 unless the school loses its charter.

Given such facts, it’s hard to imagine why we’ve allowed our tax dollars to prop up a business venture that could certainly afford to reduce its profit margins rather than rely on public support.

Hill House Passport Academy Charter School got a $150,000 – $350,000 bailout from PPP.

Unlike the Environmental Charter, Hill House does actually cater to low income and minority children. In fact, it was founded to help Pittsburgh students who are failing in another district and in danger of dropping out unless they receive some kind of academic intervention.

However, the results haven’t been stellar. Where the Environmental Charter was too white, Hill House serves almost exclusively black students. It is exponentially more segregated than neighboring authentic public schools (96% minority) and its students still have extremely poor academic performance.

The question remains whether these results are better than they would be at an authentic public school. Does the charter provide any value for these students or is it just a holding area?

Like the Environmental Charter, this so-called nonprofit hires a management company. In this case, it’s the infamous K12 Incorporated – a nationwide cyber charter network with a record of academic failure and financial shenanigans.

In 2016, the company reached a $168.5 million settlement with the state of California. The state claimed K12 had reported incorrect student attendance records and otherwise lied about its academic programs. The company ended up settling with the state for $2.5 million with an additional $6 million to cover the state’s investigation and K12 voided $160 million in credits it had given to the affiliated schools to cover the cost of their contracts.

Hill House offers a blended model with in-person teachers and virtual classes somewhat different than most K12 schools.

However, why the state should bailout such a dubious endeavor is beyond me.

Manchester Academic Charter School got a $350,000 – $1 million loan from PPP.

It is one of the oldest charter schools in the city, having started as a tutoring program in 1968 and becoming a full fledged charter school in 1998.

However, like Hill House, it is infamous for racial segregation and low academic performance. Approximately 99% of students are minorities.

In 2016-17,only 12% of the school’s students were proficient in math (state average is 46%) and 37% were proficient in language arts (state average is 63%).

Where Manchester fails at academics, it excels at administrative salaries. The school’s administrators take home beaucoup bucks while being responsible for fewer students than those at authentic public schools.

For example, Vasilios Scoumis, Manchester CEO for more than two decades, is given a $146,000 salary not counting a potential $15,000 yearly bonus though he is only responsible for 340 students.

Compare that with Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Anthony Hamlet. He earns a $210,000 salary for managing a district of about 24,000 students.

But such high salaries for relatively little work aren’t only a hallmark at Manchester.
Environmental Charter School CEO John McCann earned $120,000 with a school enrollment of 630 students.

Nice work if you can get it!

Speaking of which, Penn Hills Charter School of Entrepreneurship got $350,000 – $1 million from PPP.

This is another so-called non-profit school run by the Imagine Schools company. It is highly segregated with 82% minority children.

Only 32% of students are proficient in math and 57% in reading – again below state averages.

The school suffered a scandal in 2015 when the state Charter Review Board overruled Penn Hills School Directors decision to deny allowing the charter to expand into a second building.

But given that the Charter Review Board is made up of six members – charter school advocates chosen by former Republican Governor Tom Corbett – any pretense to impartiality is laughable.

Penn Hills School Board – a duly elected body, not government appointees – outlined criticisms of the charter that do not put the entrepreneurial venture in a positive light.

Penn Hills School Board said the charter had failed to produce current student rosters, failed in record management, failed to accurately maintain student tuition payments, improperly billed the school district for special education students, failed to maintain and develop Individual Education Plans (IEPs), had poor academic growth and is under a Department of Education Corrective Action Plan setting forth 31 areas of needed improvement.

Directors were also leery of the venture because the charter planned to use half of the new building for students and to lease the remainder as office space.

Finally, the charter school sucks away necessary funding from the authentic public school. The Penn Hills School District paid Imagine about $3 million in 2014-15. Costs increased to $12 million a year and continue to rise.

So one wonders why we’re throwing more money at these charter schools.

Nina Rees, executive director of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) has spoken out of both sides of her mouth on the issue. She has insisted that charter schools be regarded as public schools and eligible for emergency aid – all the while advising charter schools also to apply for federal rescue funds for small businesses devastated by the pandemic.

Carol Burris, Executive Director of the Network for Public Education, did not mince words.

“Once again, the charter sector, through the lobbying efforts of Nina Rees…worked behind the scenes to gain fiscal advantage for the privately operated schools they claim are public schools.”

Education historian Diane Ravitch agreed.

“Charters claim to be ‘public schools’ when that’s where the money is,” she said. “But when the money is available for small businesses, they claim to be small businesses.”

Charters go where the money is.

We get the privilege of paying the tab.

If it were up to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, we wouldn’t even know about it.

Mnuchin only released the information to the public after 11 news organizations sued the Small Business Administration .

Even now, not all of it is available.

Moreover, the deadline to apply for a PPP loan has been extended to Aug. 8.

So if you haven’t seen some of the most infamous neighborhood charter schools taking advantage of the program, it may only be a matter of time.

ProPublica has put all the information into an easy to use search engine. Just enter a zip code and it will display all the businesses located there that received PPP loans.

This includes high tuition private prep schools like Sewickley Academy and Shady Side Academy both of which got $2 – $5 million, Winchester Thurston School which got $1 million – $2 million, and the charter schools listed above.

You can check it out here: https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/

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Do NOT Play Russian Roulette with Our Lives – No In-Person Schooling During a Pandemic

July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Donald Trump, Education, Guns, Healthcare, history, Labor, Learning, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Prejudice, protest, Republican, school closings, School Funding, school violence, Schools, Students, Teachers, Technology, Unions, Violence Against Children Accountability, child safety, Commonwealth v. Malone, coronavirus, COVID-19, distance learning, education, in-person classes, liability, Pennsylvania, Politics, reopening, responsability, risk, Russian Roulette, safe schools, schools, Supreme Court, teachers

Are you responsible for gambling with another person’s life?

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court says “yes.”

Back in 1947, James Malone, 17, and William Long, 13, played a version of Russian Roulette during a sleepover.

Malone stole a revolver from his uncle and Long sneaked into his father’s room and got a bullet.

They put the cartridge in a chamber, spun the cylinder and then took turns pointing the gun at each other and pulling the trigger. On the third try, Malone put the gun to Long’s head, pulled the trigger and the gun fired, killing Long.

Malone was convicted of second degree murder even though he said he hadn’t intended to kill his friend.

The case, Commonwealth v. Malone, eventually went to the state Supreme Court where justices upheld the conviction.

They ruled:

“When an individual commits an act of gross recklessness without regard to the probability that death to another is likely to result, that individual exhibits the state of mind required to uphold a conviction of manslaughter even if the individual did not intend for death to ensue.”

Lawmakers and school administrators better pay heed to this and similar nationwide decisions.

Reopening schools to in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic is tantamount to Russian Roulette with the lives of students, teachers and families.

Every day with this virus in the physical classroom is like spinning the cylinder and pulling the trigger.

You might survive, but every time you enter the building your chances of getting sick increase until the law of averages will come for someone… perhaps many someones.

The safest course is to continue with distance learning in the fall despite the numerous academic problems with that method of instruction.

With Coronavirus cases rising by about 50,000 a day in the United States, there is simply too much virus out there to ensure anyone’s safety in the physical classroom.

Students inevitably will get sick and spread the disease to adults – teachers and their own families.

We can’t take such chances with people’s lives.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Decisions makers are taking the possibility seriously enough to try to change the laws to reduce their liability.

They want to ensure they won’t end up in court if they reopen schools and people get sick.

In May,Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called for schools to be legally protected from lawsuits that could arise due to resuming classes.

Along with fellow Republican Senator John Cornyn, McConnell proposed new liability laws protecting schools and businesses from Coronavirus-related lawsuits.

McConnell told reporters:

“Can you image the nightmare that could unfold this fall when K-12 kids are still at home, when colleges and universities are still not open? That is a scenario that would only be further aggravated in the absence of some kind of liability protection that reassures school administrators that they can actually open up again… Without it, frankly that’s just not going to happen as soon as it should have.”

The Kentucky Senator went on Fox News in late April saying that such legal protections would be necessary for Republicans to even consider any new Coronavirus relief bills.

And it’s not just lawmakers. In May, 14 college presidents from around the country teleconferenced with Vice President Mike Pence and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos asking for the same thing.

According to those who were either on the call or were knowledgeable about the conversation, the college presidents said they needed to know their institutions would not get sued if people got sick – which they thought was almost a certainty.

One way the federal government can help “is to have some kind of liability protection,” said University of Texas at El Paso president Heather Wilson, who was on the call. Wilson is a former Republican congresswoman from New Mexico.

Big business is also calling for liability protection. Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been asking to be freed during the pandemic from being held liable if workers, customers or others get sick on their property. Notably, a lawyer for Texas Christian University told senators such a situation is “foreseeable, perhaps inevitable.”

All of which begs the question of what we mean by safety.

Is it our responsibility to make sure customers, workers, students and teachers are safe from the virus? Or is it our responsibility to make sure businesses and schools aren’t sued for taking chances with our lives?

There are things we can do to increase safety.

We should not reopen schools until the county where it is located reports zero new Coronavirus cases for two weeks. That would be taking safety seriously.

And it shouldn’t be too much to ask because other countries have been able to do such things.

Other nations have been able to test for the virus and identify those who have the disease. They have been able to trace these people’s contacts and isolate them from the rest of the population.

But that requires a vast expansion of our testing ability through coordinated federal action.

The problem is our lawmakers don’t care enough to do this.

Nor are they willing to provide us with federal relief checks, personal protective equipment (PPE), protection from evictions, and universal healthcare so that were can weather the storm.

It’s much easier to protect business from consumers and protect schools from the kids, teachers and families who make up the community.

Some will say the danger is overblown.

Children, in particular, are less susceptible to COVID-19 than older people.

And while it’s true that young people have shown fewer symptoms and include the lowest numbers of deaths, this virus has been around barely more than a year. We simply don’t know much about it and its long term effects.

A recent study from the journal the Lancet found that teenagers are just as susceptible to the disease as older people.

Researchers found few children 5-9 (the youngest included in the study) who had contracted the disease but those ages 10-19 were as likely to contract it as people ages 20-49 – and more likely than adults older than that.

So even if young people remain mostly asymptomatic, it is entirely possible they can spread the disease to older people who have a more difficult time fighting it off.

The only consensus about children and COVID-19 is that we don’t know enough about how it affects young people.

We certainly don’t want to end up like countries that have opened schools too quickly with too high infection rates.

In May, two weeks after Israel fully reopened schools, there was a COVID-19 outbreak. There were at least 130 cases at a single school. Students and staff were infected at dozens of schools causing a rash of renewed closings.

We should not be taking chances with schools.

Any action comes with some level of risk, but we should err on the side of caution.

 Our government needs to serve us.

Representatives who do not serve our interests need to be sent packing.

And anyone who gambles with our lives needs to be held liable.

Anyone who demands we place our heads against the barrel of a loaded gun as a prerequisite to jump start the economy, needs to be held responsible for that decision.

The chances of dying during the first round of a game of Russian Roulette using a standard six-shot revolver is 1/6. With each pull, the chances increase – 1/5, 1/4, etc.
The average number of consecutive pulls before the gun fires is 3.5.

We know more about that than the Coronavirus.

In effect, we don’t know how many chambers are loaded, but we know there are bullets in the gun.

There are too many hidden factors to be able to say for sure what our chances are exactly. And in the presence of such ignorance, we should assume the worst.

That’s exactly what decision makers are doing by trying to protect themselves from responsibility.

We should take that as seriously as a loaded gun put to our temples.

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gadflyonthewallblog

"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

Pennsylvania

Steel Valley Schools Will Reopen Fully Remote Rather Than Compromise on Safety

School Officials Should Pass Safer Reopening Plans, Not Beg For Protection From Liability

Parental Choice Won’t Save Us From Unsafe School Reopening Plans

What I Told McKeesport Area School Directors About the Unsafe Reopening Plan Proposed by Administrators

Gov. Wolf, You Can’t Shirk Your Duty to Close PA Schools During the Pandemic

McKeesport Area School District’s Reopening Plan is Based on Dubious Facts, Bad Reasoning & Takes Unnecessary Risks: An Open Letter to the Superintendent

Dr. Holtzman’s full video:

Dr. Holtzman’s Slides on Reopening:

Do NOT Play Russian Roulette with Our Lives – No In-Person Schooling During a Pandemic