Economic recession and geopolitical tensions not to mention the small matter of a looming election join me Steve Clemons in conversation with leading voices on the bottom line your weekly take on u. S. Politics and society on aljazeera. Day welcome to the stream im josh rushing sitting in for me ok today from my home here in Fairfax Virginia think you for joining me now right off the bat if youre watching on you tube you see that chad over there the box those are those are live get your questions in there will try to get him to me and well try to get him in the show as were going i want to be a part of this with me now today were talking about. A chick kids return to school in the u. S. Now im coming to you from Fairfax Virginia this is one of the 10 Largest School districts in the country all around 190000 students here and i had to make a decision as appeared this week do i want my children or the entire school year either to return to school in person or to do it online and what you made that choice you were pretty much committed to it i have 4 kids in School System here that meant it so were going to can do guard so were going to high school so were going to miss school on one going into 5th grade and we had to make the choice for all of them remind me of them to show someone and ill tell you what choice we made but it was not an easy choice to make as a parent because the virus in the u. S. Unlike most parts of the world is actually searching for over 3000000 cases over 138000 dead in the present in the United States has come out last week and said he wants schools to fully reopen and what he means by full reopen he means students present in the classroom ill show you a tweet here will quick this is a tweet from the white house statement on this their statement was the science should not get in the way of this. They want kids back in the classroom now that is as all decisions all the white house out of any white house are that is a political decision a Political Choice but as a pair we want to we want the science so we know whats happening with the kids now join with me today i have an exciting panel have a 2 educators from across the country and i have a education reporter from National Public radio and ask them to introduce themselves somebody again with anya i q tell us who you are today good morning many of us on your cabinets im an education correspondent for National Public radio and i cover every opening schools across the country. Thank you julia i am actually a tourist and i am a librarian and Language Arts educator in Denver Public schools and i know. Many well. You know many as many well rustin im a High School History teacher out here in the Los Angeles Area and i also cohost a show about education called all of the above all of the above very cool at the park yes right well working people find that yes its a parka were going to find well and its one where its and its a you tube channel a o t a show dot com will take into whatever platform they want to see a nice night ok on it so we have a Large International audience can you explain to them how the School System is set up a little differently here i think if youre outside the u. S. And you see trump you know tweeting and going on about schools need to go back fully reopen they may not understand the term doesnt actually control schools in the u. S. Whats it like the situation. Thats a very good point so we have almost 14000. 00 separate School Districts here in the United States and each one of them has some level of local governance and thats why the decision is really devolving to a very large distributed network of authorities when the president eases treys use the bully pulpit to say school should open we should keep in mind he only controls less than 10 percent of the budget for Public Schools in america and most of that money is already allocated to low income schools so you know the only way that the federal government could have really important influence on reopening schools is something they have not done and that is to pass significant. Funding to make up for budget shortfalls that have already happened because of code 1000. 00 plus all the extra costs to reopen which has been estimated at upwards of 2020250 1000000000 dollars none of that has been allocated so far so want to bring in. A sound bite from someone in our community this is dr Nicole Turner levy and she just referred to what happen here in the u. S. Is to get stuck go to school in about march and only school year in 0 may or june so they all stayed home because of the lockdown and they went to Online Learning and i dont know anyone in the u. S. That says that that experiment went very well heres what dr turner lisas about moving forward here. Weve found 12 to 15000000 School Age Children out of 53000000 that were without Broadband Access and about 9000000 of them did not even have Home Broadband nor a device according to some recent research by Common Sense Media so what does that mean Going Forward as schools try to consider the best ways to mitigate the spread of the virus while ensuring that theres no disconnect when it comes to learning they need to reevaluate what went wrong in the last few months when it came to Distance Learning im advocating that schools need a 21st century Remote Access plan if theyre going to safety reopen it and ensure there are no disconnects Going Forward as we try to figure out how to slow down the spread of this deadly disease. So may well whats it like at your School District what was it like for the Online Learning that happened in the spring and then what decision have they made moving forward. Sure so the Online Learning that happened in the spring obviously everyone was caught off guard so we were all scrambling to try to make the best city make the best of the situations possible and what we found was even though our students in our district i teach and passed in a unified School District every student has had a school issue chromebook for quite a while but what we found was that in households where there were multiple districts students living in that household in a kind of connectivity was a rule challenge and were here in los angeles so if the los angeles metropolitan area has any kind of corner where wife eye is a very strong where multiple people in one household where that becomes a challenge for y. 5 then you can imagine what its like in communities and in other cities out there so that was really the biggest challenge that even with the technology in their hands since had it really hard time connecting in then of course you had the challenge of students having to also watch their younger siblings because i teach mostly High School Students and many of them became sudden babysitters and many of them were essential workers too so in some cases even with the Technology Strong and intact there was still the challenge of getting students to engage in the learners because of the reality of trying to survive in a pandemic so its a plan for the fall so for the fall we initially had a hybrid plan that was proposed and then we heard back from a lot of teachers and parents saying that they want an online only option and then as cases began to rise across california the decision was made to go fully on line in fact our governor declared that any county that doesnt have a decrease in case this is going to have to start off the school year fully online so were starting off fully online august 17th and havent you do it what do you what your School District in the fall. So we were told that we needed to come back in person on august 10th and that the 1st day for students was going to be late august so i think its going to be august 24th. My understanding and i also have children in the School District and theyre in a different School District still in colorado and what we see is that the School Districts tend to band together and do the same thing when theyre centered around the same metropolitan area even though the circumstances that students are facing can be drastically different for example i live in the suburbs and life in the suburbs is very different from play for people in denver proper so what it looks like right now for my own children at home is that we have the option to do completely online or we can come back in person and theres a date by which you have to notify the district which you would like to do for your students similar to what similarly to what we experienced in the spring if its changing weekly if not david so i know that theyre sending out notifications saying that they want to keep up with the science and that theyd like to keep up with recommendations from state Health Officials and Government Health official and just let us know kind of what the research is saying but for me had it been set in stone so right now it seems like enormous to have an online only track and person track and thats what im noticing in my own district as well lets go to ruth bader shes a ph d. With an m p a which is a masters in Public Health and she said Johns Hopkins children who are already disadvantaged prior to the pandemic have suffered the most and these kids dont even living in poverty have children in remote rural areas children colors children differential learning styles costs children these children. Desperately need allocation of resources to them to meet shore or at least to try to keep the cattle existed before that risk widened by the pandemic not whitening further. So on your president europe is tweeted about cutting the funding to schools if students dont return in full you mention before that thats not a total retirement like 9 percent of funding comes from the federal government but that planning to still go to the poorer schools right schools that are ready would be the most economically challenged dear in these times might be looking at less funds coming from the federal government wont that just go to widen the gap that ruth was talking about in that bite there you know i do think that that particular threat is probably going to turn out to be empty but what we are seeing right now is that states because of their balanced budget amendments are being forced to cut education budgets and thats happening all across the country and so even as districts are heading into these unprecedented semesters where they have to both plan and execute remote teaching as well as hybrid teaching and do all this overhauled other infrastructure teachers are getting laid off at the same time and schools are having to be asked to do basically twice as much with fewer resources because of the hurt in revenue at the state level and i just have to mention once again that the house passed a bill with billions of dollars in additional funding for schools that bill was passed in may and the senate has yet to act so theres a very very large gulf here between the kinds of statements that are coming from leaders in government about what they would like to see happen 1st is the money to pay for it. I want to get some you tube comments here we got one from it looks like its this ray ray this is a this is what happens when you elect a Game Show Host as president were now living on survivor island from bluejay Quebec Canada tried and after 23. 00 students the staff got the virus they shut the stupid idea down. And name marina a question for the panel as the Us Government laid down a plan to prevent a coronavirus surge in schools they if they reopen controlling children is pretty difficult thats a good question for the pain almost set that up here with what the c. D. C. Is saying so we can go to my computer im going to show you this kind of chart that the c. D. C. Has it says should you consider opening and it says you know will it be consistent with state and local waters is a school ready to protect the children in them ploys i want to talk about that a lot here in a 2nd are you able to screen students and employees if any of these are now do not open you move to the next set are their recommended health and safety actions in place were talking about the hand washing the wearing the p. P. E intensify cleanings are you able to keep social distancing with the kids if any of those are nodes you need to meet those safeguards 1st of all those are yes then you go on to is their ongoing monitoring place now how schools are going to do that it all comes down to money at the end of the day. And here is what is what will it cost to reopen schools when you look at how much were talking and p. P. And Hand Sanitizer in the the cleaning and the additional staff were looking at about wellness one point 8000000. 00 per School District this is at a time when School Districts are facing cuts this is a time where teachers spend their own money on their pockets bringing in the pencils for the classroom and some School Districts and now are saying that you need 1800000. 00 per average School District i know my School District that number will be much much higher because of the size so it will do you feel like your school is doing enough to keep well your going online let me switch this to julia because theyre asking you guys to come back into the buildings do you feel like theyre doing enough to keep you safe. Well i will say that i dont have all of the information that id like to have before i go back in person id mention to you that im a Language Arts teacher and a librarian my responsibility my primary responsibilities for the library and i dont have any kind of chair educator as distance i dont have any other librarians working with me the population the student population in the building is to around 2000 students so even if half of them came back that would be a 1000 students in the building my library is right in the middle. I am not really sure what circulation would look like ive been encouraged to circulate the books circulation of titles which have over 18000 titles so we have a gigantic ebook circulation. Process and whats wonderful is that our students do feel comfortable checking books out audio books and ebooks but as far as Classroom Teachers go i dont have a classroom a classroom is the library so typically at any point during the day there are lots of people in there either Holding Classes meeting with students one hour winds i dont know that that is possible or even a good idea i dont think its a good idea even if just half the student population opted to come back i also are very concerned about the student population that is in holmes where the primary languages are not english and im not just talking about spanish and english we have many students who are from the Marshall Islands we have many students who are from west african nations and the predominant language spoken at home a spanish weve got some who speak im hard and arabic at home so communicating it in english with me rapid changes has been a challenge i cannot imagine communicating rapid changes in other languages with families in a timely efficient manner thats going to make conditions equitable for all so my concerns right now are about just that we. Just sticks of how we are going to make school work and then it so its as far as to i feel safe no absolutely not but i also dont go save going to the Grocery Store even though they told us that they need to wear masks because theres so many people still Milling Around and many people still choose not to wear masks and then just deal with the consequences of somebody tells them that they need to and then as a black woman im aware that Health Care Disparities would make it so that if i were to contract the virus im not even guaranteed that i would achieve health care that would save my legs and i know that there are some places where people are all of lore unable to get hospital beds so all these things are kind of Milling Around in my mind and the general attitude toward teachers is that we need to make sure that we put students 1st and i need people with think about what that really needs what does it really mean to put students 1st because i think the assumption is that that means that only down my life for that but i have serious concerns if i were to be asymptomatic at school as a librarian pass it to somebody adult come to the school all the time give it to somebody whos then going to take it home i mean just because children as far as some people say are not the primary contractors or disseminators of the barrister which we dont even know for a fact. We dont even know that for a facts joe you bring up a good point they just did a study in florida that one in 3 children tested here i had this headline pulled up if we want to go to my computer it a 2nd one in 3 tested in florida the children came back positive with cove it there seems to be this argument that look the kids dont get it when they do its not serious men will do to you what do you think about that argument and i want to add to this that when we say that kids dont get it thats not true for 175000 children under 17 years old in the us who have gotten covert and its probably cold comfort to the families of the 228 children who have died from it already this year and well what do you think when its well the kids really dont get it so its safe for them to return it back and i said the summer i want to give you this a bite from a meet us today hes at the university of virginia and lets hear what she has to say that were going to come to you right after were going to all the imperial data suggests that schools can reopen safely without significant risk to teachers or students master in schools just like in hospitals could significantly eliminate the rest that schools could be a source of caney outbreaks schools need to reopen not in spite of kogan but because of that code it is a disaster like none other most of us had seen in our lifetimes and schools play a Critical Role in Disaster Recovery especially for the most vulnerable among us who need not just the education that teachers provide but the Services Provided by schools so that they and their families can weather the sentiment and overcome the disadvantages that they eased before even picking at. It well what do you think. The key word in that was significantly which means yes maybe all those protections can decrease the number but they cant get rid of the number in significantly isnt enough i dont think theres any number of students that anybody is out there ready to lose or to risk for me myself im most concerned with my the fact that my students live in extended households i mean they have a lot of them have grandparents in the home uncles aunts and i dont want my kids. Just even take the risk of going home and spending it there and also even with all those protections if you think masks possible face shields physical distance seeing if im a teacher in the classroom that means im not having group work im not circulating materials a kid needs a pencil i guess i cant just give them a pencil and when you take all those factors but them all into place then youve got to ask yourself the question is that condition of learning that much better then Distance Learning a course as a teacher i dont like the Distance Learning model i sign up for this profession to be in my classroom with my students loving and learning and going through the content but when you put all those protections in place its not that anymore so then i got to ask the question is it worth the risk to put them all in the classroom or even have the students in the classroom with all those protections and that some sort of model that does even mimic really our true learning model is that much better than Distance Learning i i would venture to guess that its not especially if students are in class worried about what might be spreading and then also going to want to salute kimberly subs. Lopez bird she was one of 3 arizona teachers who are assigned to one room for summer Online Learning and they followed all the protections just 3 adults in a room no kids masks sent izing all that stuff and kimberly lost her life after 38 years of service in Public Education if its not safe for 3 adults in one room following all the guidelines i dont know what its going to look like when you add students to the mix and of course even if students arent spreading it if if thats true and we dont know if thats true. You have all the other dogs you have your library and you have your ministers you have the counselors its just not worth the risk there is not one student that we should be willing to sacrifice in the name of getting back in the School Building in if that learning in the School Building with all those protections isnt optimal then really were talking about school just being there for the babysitting not for the learning in a school is there for the babysitting i would argue that we should have stronger social safety net so that we dont need our schools to be babysitters. You yeah i really want to get in here and just and just speak a little bit to these concerns are extremely legitimate and every educator has a right to be very concerned about their own health in this situation when we talk about not one childs life you mentioned 228 children who are victims of current virus and thats too many in this country over a 1000 children every year are murdered by their families and when we have children that are at home socially isolated sometimes think left to their parents or going out to work in essential jobs theyre not under the eyes of teachers that are mandatory reporters theyre not getting access to meals to health care to potentially to housing to jobs there are very legitimate Health Concerns on the other side of the ledger that we really need to be considering also Students Mental Health ive talked to psychiatrists for teenagers who are saying theyre going to see a Mental Health crisis in the fall as it sinks in for these teens and weve already had a suicide crisis in this Country Building for several years among our youngest children especially girls from 10 years old and up so there are no good answers here theres no easy answers but when we say wrists the reason that the National Academy of sciences and the American Academy of pediatrics have come down her pee diddly on the side of holding in Person School when and where it is safe is because there are legitimate serious life and health risks to keeping kids at home as well. With such a population of students it often doesnt get brought up in this conversation and thus those with additional challenges remembering him. As a disability rights advocate check this out its especially frustrating as a disability rights advocate because students with disabilities are being left behind and its not always because people arent trying its just so complicated to teach them through Distance Learning but also if we were to send them back. You cant have no students with disabilities distancing from people many of them you know one on one support with handover hand interaction many of them dont understand or cannot physically keep a mask on for extended periods of time many of them just need that intervention and they need that up close and personal. About a minute or half left here what he would do you say about some on his concerns about some areas concerns pepto population of students there is talk about there and then i see that you know theres a smaller side of schools kind of a social safety net but what do we do with that so i was recently on n. P. R. And i did speak a little bit about this because in the in the spring that was the group that i was the most concerned about if there are students who never reported in for Virtual Learning at all they didnt come and there are many students who moved or relocated because their parents lost their jobs so we need to be thinking about housing insecurity we need to be thinking about our people i think for us in special education students if there is in Person Learning i think those are the students that should be pay overtime because those are the ones who im most concerned about why dont i believe that a lot of them did not get the benefit of the last quarter we did bite splint porters a lot so quarter 4 they basically just missed that learning and so before we move on to move ahead with educating everyone else we need to figure out where folks are. You know i think you are going and on that note moving on to moving ahead this is a tough decision i can tell you for my wife and i as i brought up in the beginning as you know we had to make the choice this week we chose to give up in the garden near her son and keep our 4 kids at home this year because we just dont know the facts of this are some kids in the long term i dont think were worried about that are going to call my guest today for really credible informative conversation with a really tough issue is here next to. The latest news government says its working with local authorities and Community Volunteers to meet the needs of bringing a refugee with detailed coverage. Didnt many countries hope. For my kids and consequently the remittances from around the wilds it isnt the 1st time that. Was forced off the air in 1972 it was also shot down. What is the relationship between culture religion and a deeply divided city everything here is overshadowed by politics even the most basic of things food and 2008 aljazeera traveled to jerusalem to see a food could cross deep lines of division jewish history to be sure it to do theyll be cool to give them the cashel the people go through all of this we can. Rewind street through jerusalem on aljazeera. What is the price of luxury. An Undercover Team travels deep into the illegal cocoa plantations of the ivory coast Simple Solutions are very hard to find for something as complicated as the child labor chocolates heart of darkness and count as unpaid child labor as working in a 100000000000 dollar industry well over half of the countrys cocoa produces live below the poverty line on aljazeera. The health of humanity is its stake a Global Pandemic requires a global response. W. H. O. Is the guardian of Global Health delivering lifesaving to lose supplies and training to help the worlds most Vulnerable People uniting across borders to speed up the development of test treatments and of that. Keeping you up to date with whats happening on the ground in the ward and in the land now more than ever the world needs w. H. O. Making healthy a world for you. To everyone. This is aljazeera. Alarms the whole rom and youre watching the aljazeera news our laws my headquarters here in doha coming up in the next 60 minutes the u. K. Government under fire for not doing enough to stop russian interference in its democratic institutions. Also u. S. Secretary of state mark pompei or meets his british counterpart
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