If I Had A Bell, I'd Ring out a Warning
It is time to ask ourselves some tough questions at the Intersection of GenEd, SPED, America's Public Education System and the Now Endemic, Ubiquitous family of Novel Coronaviruses.
There are many reasons why I am eternally grateful for COVID 19 and the Never-Ever-Nationwide Lockdown and Universal Health Protocols that at least 71 million of my fellow Americans NEVER FOLLOWED, ARE NOT CURRENTLY FOLLOWING, AND HAVE NO INTENTION OF EVER FOLLOWING. "THEY!" will get with the program once the world's total population reaches 7 million to 10 million (maximum).
Those world population numbers are what some white majority members of the Science guild of gatekeepers have determined optimal for sustainable human life on earth given the current size of the resource rich third planet from the sun can sustain and thrive.
This is, I confess, why I have lost sleep for the past 7 consecutive days. Each of those mornings, much like today, ( 4:10 am Pacific Standard Time, Tuesday, January 11, 2022) I cannot stop wanting to tell all my FB peeps who are employed by LAUSD, members of UTLA and or CTA, and members of all the Unions who collectively bargain with LAUSD and know they are "High Risk for COVID19 and all of its Variants" to not go back inside buildings were everyone knows unvaccinated asymptomatic individuals granted vaccination accomodations will be working side by side with vulnerable populations. I say this not because COVID19 is 100% fatal to everyone with active virus, which btw has probably never been true. No gentle reader, I am saying this because the current healthcare system you have been paying into for years will likely not be able to take proper care of you if, LOVE forbid, you need hospitalization and or intensive care unit treatment. AND, I say it because when you contract the virus and survive, "long COVID" virtually guarantees you will require the care of your POP and specialty docs on an ascending curve for every post-COVID year of life you will have, with fewer and fewer licensed and monitored healthcare professionals available to meet your chronic treatment and recovery needs as you age gracefully. Is all of this the best we can do under unprecedented circumstances? Does all of this now fall under the rubric of "Acceptable Risk"? Whatever happened to "erring on the side of an abundance of caution"?
All this being said, why not err out of an ABUNDANCE OF CAUTION? Don't your families of birth and or your families of choice deserve your very best? Do they not depend on you ( as a opposed to paid surrogate caregivers)? Is it better to develop better/ state-of-the-art virtual pedagogy for our most vulnerable populations, spending whatever is nececessary, than to daily risk unecessary and possibly life-threatening and or chronic illness in a population with too many other challenges on their collective plates? What does it profit society if school funding is retained and or gained and the student population it is intended to serve is decimated in the bargain?
BTW, the fact that most So Cal colleges and universities are returning to virtual instruction until further notice strongly suggests even larger places where COVID19 carriers congregate should follow their lead.
IJS.
Vernon NickersonSchoolcoach G.Hicks, P.Cropp, R.Baroma, T. N. Smith, J.Cuevas, M.Hill, T.Hill, M. A.Gardner, D.Nickerson, J.Jones, H.Hazelwood, J.Sterling, E. Munro,C. Goldbin, P. A.Walker
Agree? Agree with caveats? Completely disagree? Too exhausted to care? Have anything to share in response? Great! You have at least 4 options:
Option 1.) Reply/ Comment to this post/article
Option 2.) Share your viable alternatives to
a journalist at WIRED who is trying to get a sense of whether schools are going back online/how families are thinking through back-to-school 2022: pia_ceres@wired.com
Option 3.) Silence = complicit with the status quo
Option 4.) Silence = agreement with nothing to add to the conversation
(C) VernonNickersonSchoolcoach 2022. All Rights Reserved.
