It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in Howard County. I’m starting to think I need to get a special pillow just for screaming. Does anyone else find themselves doing a lot of that lately?
We had County Council Chair Deb Jung muting Councilman Opel Jones in a council Zoom meeting, the technological equivalent of walking over and putting her hand over his mouth. I can’t say I’ve ever seen Board of Education Chair Mavis Ellis ever do that for one of Christina “DeVos” Small’s lengthy sighing diatribes. Next up, we had Councilwoman Liz Walsh discussing a pending zoning board case on Facebook, which constitutes illegal ex parte communication per county ordinance 2.115, just to poke at County Executive Calvin Ball. Interesting that Ms. Walsh and Ms. Jung felt that Dr. Jones was not qualified to chair the zoning board because he’s not an attorney like they are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This week in particular was lit up with controversy due to the BOE’s decisions regarding the 2020-2021 school year. The options under consideration for the fall semester were in-person, all virtual, and a hybrid model. HCPSS surveys showed that in-person was less desired overall than either hybrid or all-virtual, though it was more popular with students than any other group, which is not surprising. The Howard County Education Association was clear in its desire for all-virtual. Hybrid was most popular with parents and students.
Full disclosure before I share my thoughts: my family is dual-income, and we have no extended family in the area. My children do not receive special education services. They are not quite old enough to manage virtual learning without adult assistance, especially with one starting middle school. It is very likely that my husband and I will be back to in-office, full-time work this fall, so we expect some difficult months ahead. For us, in-person would be easiest from a work perspective – but also the most anxiety-ridden, as we have zero confidence in young kids’ attention to social distancing and proper mask-wearing. All-virtual would make us feel safest, but it would be very difficult to implement due to our jobs. A hybrid model would be worst of all, because it would not soothe our anxiety nor solve our work schedule issues. Lose-lose all around. So it goes when there is a pandemic.
The BOE has faced agonizing decisions since COVID-19 came to Maryland. There are no perfect or even good solutions. Every family’s needs and circumstances are different, and all of the options available present some level of medical and/or economic risk. Additionally, educators are the heart of our school system, and each of them has their own family to consider. The BOE clearly felt that the risk, expense, unknowns, and sheer complexity of any degree of in-person learning was not acceptable, especially given the timeframe, and they had to make a difficult decision. Sadly, the BOE was bound to get roasted by someone regardless of what decision they made.
And boy, did they get roasted.
Reopen Howard County, led by Christina “DeVos” Small’s campaign manager, has been pushing to reopen businesses and schools, and they have been raking the BOE over the coals for their decision to go all-virtual for the fall semester. Going so far as to describe BOE member Jen Mallo as “Public Enemy #1” (sounding ominously like Trump’s “enemy of the people”), they have been quite vocal in celebrating Ms. “DeVos” Small and District 4 BOE candidate Sezin Palmer for their criticism of the BOE’s decision not to give parents a choice of in-person school. Many parents have joined this outcry, foot-stomping about demanding property tax refunds and speaking of teachers like second-class citizens. It’d be nice if they’d look past the ends of their noses and recognize that “choice” in a situation like this has far-reaching ramifications for other people. That’s why Governor Hogan closed the schools and businesses in the first place.
It might seem like common sense to say that the BOE should have offered parents choices. Those who want in-person can have it, and same for all-virtual, based on needs and comfort level. The problem is that this approach would give no choice to our educators, who are the ones most at risk of COVID-19 from in-person environments and who will be on the hook to enforce social distancing and sanitization efforts in the classrooms and hallways in addition to the normal everyday challenges of teaching. This approach would also double the administrator workload by forcing them to manage two different delivery models. With our school system’s nonexistent money.
This situation is entirely too complicated to climb up on the simplistic “choice” high horse. If five 2nd graders opt for in-person at a school, and none of the 2nd-grade teachers are willing to teach in-person, what then? Teachers are not interchangeable. If we want to prioritize more vulnerable students for in-person, who decides who gets priority, and how? Can you imagine the angst and lawsuits from something like that? Running parallel delivery models is twice the expense, and the necessary PPE and disinfecting supplies are an added expense. The what-ifs are endless… what if your school’s nurse doesn’t want to be there? What if some parents send their kids to school sick (which someone inevitably will)? What if a teacher falls ill with COVID-19 and we can’t find a substitute? What if a big outbreak occurs? If anyone – student, staff, or teacher – becomes ill with COVID-19, can you imagine the liability issues? Aside from the obvious fact that one child, teacher, or staff member sick or dead from COVID-19 is one too many?
The BOE was put in an impossible position. Make their decisions too early, and the pandemic circumstances in Maryland might change and render them moot; make their decisions too late, and they have insufficient time to plan. It is absolutely true that all-virtual school will have devastating consequences for some. And it is absolutely true that COVID-19 itself will have devastating consequences for some.
“Choice,” however Pollyanna it sounds, is not realistic – and it throws our teachers under the school bus. COVID-19 is still spreading. It’s worse than it was when Governor Hogan closed the schools. Why would we open schools now?