Schools

 It's the beginning of August and alas, the pandemic is in not much better shape than it was back in March/April. Over 160,000 people have died from Covid-19. 

Our society, so quickly to value money over life, decided to open up the economy faster than recommended. Well, you know what happened. Cases rose, death rose and here we are...deciding what to do with our children for fall. 

Luckily, in Dane County, where we live, we've had a mask mandate in place since early July. This has help our numbers way down. In fact, I think we are doing a pretty stellar job. Bars are not allowed to have people sit inside them anymore and restaurants are down to 25% capacity indoors. Outdoor dining and drinking still allowed as long as distanced. 

So, the ultimate conundrum that we never thought in a million years....what to do with the kids? Certainly throwing them in a room with 25 kids unmasked and a teacher is a bad idea. But what is the best idea? We shouldn't be having to make this decision as a district. Our government should have gotten the cases pulled down to such a LOW level that it wasn't even a decision we would have to make. But, the bars were prioritized over the kids...again. So now everyone suffers. Parents trying to figure out how to educate their child while working a job (those are the lucky ones), to kids literally being left alone all day on a screen to fend for themselves. Yup, USA, we really screwed this up, royally. 

Our decision as a family, you ask? Well, Carrie and Colin were given the option to go to school for 4 consecutive half days-masked and distanced. I opted for this for them. I've been allowing them to go to playground group and extra-curricular, so this would be hypocritical of me to not allow them to go to school. It should be under 10 kids per section for their 3 hours. And Charlie, poor guy, will have to stay home and do all his work virtually. 

I don't know what my assignment will be yet, but at this point, I am still music---virtually. 

And when I think about this, it breaks my heart. So many kids are going to be hurt--we may never know the true extent of our poor choices as a country. On a good and normal year, as educators we see abuse, hunger, depression, and anxiety...imagine what we will see this year. 

Here we go. As I figure out the future and help in any way that I can, I need to also focus on educating my children to the best extent possible and still work. If anything, this is going to be my "war" that my generation has yet to face. We need to be resilient, compassionate, and forever self-less. 

Here goes to a wacky 2020-2021 school year.