I listened to some of President Joe Biden’s discussion on this issue this morning.
He noted that First Lady Jill Biden is a teacher and that kids have been out of school for nearly a year now, and that teachers like his wife want to go back to in-person school.
I’m not a teacher, but my two grandkids (age 16 & 7) and their mom (my oldest) live with me and for the past year, I’ve been up front and center to what it looks like for a single mom to work from home (mostly) and her kids to be Zooming School.
It’s tough, really tough on everyone involved.
My 7 yr old granddaughter desperately wants school to open back up so she can see her friends and her teachers, face to face. My 16 yr old desperately wants to spend time OFF the iPhone with her boyfriend of over a year.
I feel the deep need they have to interact with other people in a setting where body-language can be fully embraced.
I want that too, but not because we need women to get back out there in the workplace. Because RIGHT NOW that just isn’t safe and will only lead to more infections and more deaths from COVID-19.
Which leads me back to the point of the lede of this story.
UNTIL teachers and kids are all vaccinated, it just can’t be called “safe” to force them back to a face to face, in-person setting for teaching.
If it were? Then EVERYONE could be going back to work, now, before the vaccines are all distributed, before all people are vaccinated (or at least 90% of them, which should be enough to stop the spread of the virus).
They aren’t, and so our teachers and kids aren’t, either.
Please join me in demanding that we DO NOT re-open schools until the vaccine is fully rolled out. It’s the best possible choice right now. Our kids will be more than ready to return to school and immerse themselves in learning, once the danger to them is over; and that won’t happen until after the vaccine has been widely deployed.