n New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and other cities and towns across the country where public schools have remained closed for a year, parents gathered this past weekend to demand change.
In D.C., parents held a rally outside Mayor Muriel Bowser’s offices demanding that DCPS offer students the option of some in-person learning with a teacher for the last term of the school year. Those same parents also insisted that D.C.’s teachers should continue to be given priority for vaccination and that schools must keep “sensible” safety precautions in place. These demands are hardly radical; many public schools in states like Florida and private schools (including ones in D.C.) have been safely open since the fall with precautions—even before vaccinations were available.
I’m not a neutral observer of these events; both of my children attend D.C. public high schools, and both have not set foot inside a classroom for in-person learning in a year. Last week, one of their schools notified parents via email that teachers wouldn’t be returning to the classroom for the rest of the year. Instead, the school announced that it would continue to offer a handful of spots in “CARES” classrooms—wherein temporary workers hired as “proctors” sit in a room with masked students who do their virtual learning while teachers “teach” from home. It is, as it sounds, the DCPS version of a Potemkin village.
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