If Trump wants to reopen schools, here’s what his administration needs to do

[SocialCircle 570]

1 hour ago, Brad_ATX said:

This is a BS stance.  Of course in a normal world everyone wants kids in school.  No one is arguing that it's better socially and from a learning perspective for them to stay home.

It's a health issue.  While the kids may be less likely to become aversely ill if they contract COVID, what do you do about the teachers, cooks, administrators, janitors, etc?  My grandmother worked in schools well into her 60s and would have been considered high risk.  Should she have been asked to put her health in danger?  It's not like kids are bastions of practicing good hygiene or social distancing and all of those folks who make schools functional are being asked to put their health and subsequently their family's health at risk.

This is a false choice. We aren’t requiring high risk people to work in our school system. There are plenty of folks who aren’t high risk to do the jobs we need done. We are doing what is best for our children without putting any high risk person at risk. Those students who are cared for by high risk adults have the option of online schooling. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

3 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Both parties agree with having pre-existing conditions covered. It would be political suicide not to. 
 

I also think you are voting for the Democrat candidate and I don’t think you would vote for Trump even if tomorrow he signed a law that guaranteed pre-existing conditions were covered. 

I just told you that I'm voting for the Democratic candidate and why I'm doing so.  Trump's actions on this issue speak louder than his words.

But no, I wouldn't vote for Trump even if he signed said law tomorrow.  He's not my cup of tea.  I'm not anti-Republican.  I'm anti what the Republican party has become over the last 4-8 years.  Give me more candidates like McCain and Kasich and you've got my vote.

[wdefromtx 3,159]

2 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

I just told you that I'm voting for the Democratic candidate and why I'm doing so.  Trump's actions on this issue speak louder than his words.

But no, I wouldn't vote for Trump even if he signed said law tomorrow.  He's not my cup of tea.  I'm not anti-Republican.  I'm anti what the Republican party has become over the last 4-8 years.  Give me more candidates like McCain and Kasich and you've got my vote.

He was too nice.....the only one I wanted in the sea of nutjobs. He just got lost in the noise. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

1 minute ago, SocialCircle said:

This is a false choice. We aren’t requiring high risk people to work in our school system. There are plenty of folks who aren’t high risk to do the jobs we need done. We are doing what is best for our children without putting any high risk person at risk. Those students who are cared for by high risk adults have the option of online schooling. 

Show me where they are lining up to take jobs in the school system.  Schools are having major trouble recruiting teachers.  And even if the teacher, administrator, or other employee isn't at risk, you don't know what they have to deal with at home.  If I was a teacher, there's no way I could justify going back to school right now considering my wife being immuno-compromised.

And again, it's not someone's job to put their health or their loved ones at risk for your student.

[SocialCircle 570]

1 hour ago, aubiefifty said:

i have yet to meet anyone home schooled stupid or lacking for the record. if you want to play with lives play with your own. the bottom line is trump is trying to start early opening of schools against the advice of the cdc. but hell you guys do npot believe in climate change either. trump smart, scientists dumb.

Saying you don’t believe in climate change is a false narrative. Very few deny climate change. The climate in fact has been changing since the beginning of time. BTW, the people who are factually science deniers are the people who believe abortion is not killing an innocent life. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Just now, wdefromtx said:

He was too nice.....the only one I wanted in the sea of nutjobs. He just got lost in the noise. 

He 100% had my vote in 2016.  We didn't agree on everything, but I at least knew he would work with people.

[SocialCircle 570]

On 7/10/2020 at 12:18 PM, Brad_ATX said:

I just told you that I'm voting for the Democratic candidate and why I'm doing so.  Trump's actions on this issue speak louder than his words.

But no, I wouldn't vote for Trump even if he signed said law tomorrow.  He's not my cup of tea.  I'm not anti-Republican.  I'm anti what the Republican party has become over the last 4-8 years.  Give me more candidates like McCain and Kasich and you've got my vote.

I voted Kasich in the primary and my daughter worked for him. He became somewhat of a mentor to her. Trump in my opinion was the best of two poor choices last time and that still stands for me today. What has severely turned me completely against the Democrat party was the attempted destruction of the life of a man I know to be a good man: Kavanaugh. 

[aubiefifty 16,761]

5 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Saying you don’t believe in climate change is a false narrative. Very few deny climate change. The climate in fact has been changing since the beginning of time. BTW, the people who are factually science deniers are the people who believe abortion is not killing an innocent life. 

you have a ton of folks on here that do not believe climate change or that it is a problem. you are new or you would already know that. i am not getting into abortion with you. if you want to discuss this start a thread..........

[SocialCircle 570]

1 hour ago, McLoofus said:

I have numerous friends who are teachers. Many of them are terrified. Especially the one with an immunocompromised daughter. 

You folks citing anti-Trump sentiment as the rationale behind positions you don't like are telling on yourselves. How simple-minded and childish.

 

 

 

 

Of course it is just like you to ignore those who don’t want schools to open just because they know Trump wants them open.

In our district those teachers aren’t being forced to teach in school and those students aren’t being forced to come to the school building either. It is the same for all of our surrounding districts too. Do you have evidence of any public school forcing a teacher who is at high risk to enter a classroom full of students? If so, then shame on that district. It is as if people like you are inventing things that don’t or very rarely exist and then say how bad it is. 

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

5 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

I supported Kasich and my daughter worked for him. He became somewhat of a mentor to her. Trump in my opinion was the best of two poor choices last time and that still stands for me today. What has severely turned me completely against the Democrat party was the attempted destruction of the life of a man I know to be a good man: Kavanaugh. 

You're relatively new so you probably haven't seen this from me.  Trump lost me the moment he couldn't put a coherent answer together about the simple concept of the nuclear triad.  He was asking for the launch codes but didn't understand the basics.  I had no interest and still have no interest in voting for that level of incompetence.  I wouldn't hire someone for a job at my office who couldn't answer basic stuff and the same applies to my vote.

[aubiefifty 16,761]

3 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

I supported Kasich and my daughter worked for him. He became somewhat of a mentor to her. Trump in my opinion was the best of two poor choices last time and that still stands for me today. What has severely turned me completely against the Democrat party was the attempted destruction of the life of a man I know to be a good man: Kavanaugh. 

and how would you know kav is a good man? you grew up with him? funny you turn against the dems and support a piece of grabage named trump. How you can like Kasich......who i would have voted for and turn around baffles me completely. are you aware the trump foundation was shut down for screwing over charities? you like kav but side with a man who makes fun of wounded warriors and pows and like their hero's that were not prisoners of war? and who dodged the draft four or was it five times? you are a hypocrite. and you are dishonest.

[SocialCircle 570]

31 minutes ago, Brad_ATX said:

Show me where they are lining up to take jobs in the school system.  Schools are having major trouble recruiting teachers.  And even if the teacher, administrator, or other employee isn't at risk, you don't know what they have to deal with at home.  If I was a teacher, there's no way I could justify going back to school right now considering my wife being immuno-compromised.

And again, it's not someone's job to put their health or their loved ones at risk for your student.

The school system where I am chairman of the BOE has multiple capable people applying for every job we post. Again you are pushing a false narrative and are inventing things that don’t exist here to attack. We are not requiring any high risk person to teach in any classroom and we are not requiring anyone to send their student to the school building. And we are opening our school on August 5th. Based on our recent survey we expect 80% in class and 20% online schooling for the first semester and/or 9 weeks.

[SocialCircle 570]

1 hour ago, aubiefifty said:

you have a ton of folks on here that do not believe climate change or that it is a problem. you are new or you would already know that. i am not getting into abortion with you. if you want to discuss this start a thread..........

There is a big difference in not believing in climate change vs. not agreeing on how big of a problem it is or what if anything we should or could effectively do about it. 

[SocialCircle 570]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

and how would you know kav is a good man? you grew up with him? funny you turn against the dems and support a piece of grabage named trump. How you can like Kasich......who i would have voted for and turn around baffles me completely. are you aware the trump foundation was shut down for screwing over charities? you like kav but side with a man who makes fun of wounded warriors and pows and like their hero's that were not prisoners of war? and who dodged the draft four or was it five times? you are a hypocrite. and you are dishonest.

I didn’t support Trump. I voted against Hillary. I still believe Trump was the better of two poor choices. This time I also believe Trump is the better of 2 poor choices. I don’t like many things Trump says. I do, however, like most of his actions. I have noticed Trump doesn’t start most fights, but he is an overly aggressive counter-puncher. I do wish he were a better role model for our youth. 
 

Another thing about me you should know is a don’t really support any human being. I do my best to support what I think is right and the truth. It infuriates some of my close friends from time to time. One of my best friends recently told me he always has my back. I told him if he wants to be a true friend let me know when he thinks I am right or wrong about something and provide me information showing me why. 
 

On the other hand you strike me as someone who might be against something or lean against something just because Trump is for it. Your hate for him seems to be strong and some of it seems to be emotionally driven. My own oldest daughter is this way. 

[aubiefifty 16,761]

5 hours ago, SocialCircle said:

I didn’t support Trump. I voted against Hillary. I still believe Trump was the better of two poor choices. This time I also believe Trump is the better of 2 poor choices. I don’t like many things Trump says. I do, however, like most of his actions. I have noticed Trump doesn’t start most fights, but he is an overly aggressive counter-puncher. I do wish he were a better role model for our youth. 
 

Another thing about me you should know is a don’t really support any human being. I do my best to support what I think is right and the truth. It infuriates some of my close friends from time to time. One of my best friends recently told me he always has my back. I told him if he wants to be a true friend let me know when he thinks I am right or wrong about something and provide me information showing me why. 
 

On the other hand you strike me as someone who might be against something or lean against something just because Trump is for it. Your hate for him seems to be strong and some of it seems to be emotionally driven. My own oldest daughter is this way. 

you need to sit down one day and google trump and all the stuff he has done. i mean really. jesus the trump foundation got shut down because he was stealing money from charities. if you do an honest search you will find out a ton of things that are fact and cannot be disputed. you  can dress a turd up but they still stink. and i would take hill over trump anyday and i do not care for her. he steals. he lies. he is a fornicator. he blames everyone and everything but himself. you say you do not like trump but you sure take up for him. this has been pointed out to you before by at least one person or maybe more. trump wants her locked up for using personal phones and computers but guess what. ivanka does too. that is ok tho right? love her or hate her this country would be in a better place if she had been elected. but like i said go google trump. 42 complaints against sexual assault and every single one of them are lying? screwing local companies  so bad over money they lost their business? trump uni where he bilked thousands out of millions had to be shut down. and you prove or tell me how hillary would be worse than trump? you know people voted for trump because they wanted him to tear down our government right? as far as trump goes he let some non violent pot smoker out of prison. he gave covid relief money to people even tho most went to the wrong people. he wants to end some of our never ending wars. and i have given him credit for that on these very boards. i would love for you to google him and come back and tell me what you found but you will not and i have no faith you will not make excuses if you did. even some of his followere on fam have admitted he is a piece of crap. but if you cannot make an honest attempt to look up the truth just quit engaging me ok? i did my homework. there is very little anyone can claim i am wrong or lying about.

[SocialCircle 570]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

you need to sit down one day and google trump and all the stuff he has done. i mean really. jesus the trump foundation got shut down because he was stealing money from charities. if you do an honest search you will find out a ton of things that are fact and cannot be disputed. you  can dress a turd up but they still stink. and i would take hill over trump anyday and i do not care for her. he steals. he lies. he is a fornicator. he blames everyone and everything but himself. you say you do not like trump but you sure take up for him. this has been pointed out to you before by at least one person or maybe more. trump wants her locked up for using personal phones and computers but guess what. ivanka does too. that is ok tho right? love her or hate her this country would be in a better place if she had been elected. but like i said go google trump. 42 complaints against sexual assault and every single one of them are lying? screwing local companies  so bad over money they lost their business? trump uni where he bilked thousands out of millions had to be shut down. and you prove or tell me how hillary would be worse than trump? you know people voted for trump because they wanted him to tear down our government right? as far as trump goes he let some non violent pot smoker out of prison. he gave covid relief money to people even tho most went to the wrong people. he wants to end some of our never ending wars. and i have given him credit for that on these very boards. i would love for you to google him and come back and tell me what you found but you will not and i have no faith you will not make excuses if you did. even some of his followere on fam have admitted he is a piece of crap. but if you cannot make an honest attempt to look up the truth just quit engaging me ok? i did my homework. there is very little anyone can claim i am wrong or lying about.

I agree Trump is a despicable human being. I don’t support people. I support good policy and don’t support bad policy no matter who the person trying to execute said policy. I don’t take up for Trump at all. I do take up for some of his policies though and I’m also against some of them as well. Most everything you listed is before he was elected President BTW.  It is clear your hate for him personally is driving you emotionally. I don’t think Trump has handled our response to this virus very well overall and I don’t think he handled the rioting and looting strong enough either. However, I do believe he has gotten 2 very good Supreme Court justices on the court. I believe he has a great deal to do with our economy pre-Covid too. For example, at the end of the Obama tenure our school system was receiving about $85,000 per month from a special local option sales tax (SPLOST). The last 6 months up until March  of this year we were averaging $130,000. In our downtown area buildings that had been vacant for years were getting rented over these last 12 months because of people making and spending more money and because of less regulations. 

[Mikey 16,577]

13 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

i have yet to meet anyone home schooled stupid or lacking for the record.

That's because up until now most home schooled kids had parents that were willing and able to provide a quality education. Closing the schools forces home schooling on millions of parents that are ill equipped and may well be unwilling to do home schooling in a manner that will get good results.

[SLAG-91 1,483]

I'll add this:

(A) home schooling by parents who consciously made that choice and put in the time, energy and resources into doing it well 

(B) what we had in the spring (rushed online school by teachers who were by and large not trained to deliver online curriculum...we were "teachers trying to do distance learning on the fly, and parents were thrust into trying to help their kids learn online when they themselves likely had no experience with it, either")

Comparing these two things would be a fool's errand...apples to bowling balls.

[aubiefifty 16,761]

20 hours ago, SLAG-91 said:

I'll add this:

(A) home schooling by parents who consciously made that choice and put in the time, energy and resources into doing it well 

(B) what we had in the spring (rushed online school by teachers who were by and large not trained to deliver online curriculum...we were "teachers trying to do distance learning on the fly, and parents were thrust into trying to help their kids learn online when they themselves likely had no experience with it, either")

Comparing these two things would be a fool's errand...apples to bowling balls.

i bet it would be better excepted than a bunch of folks having their kids sick or dying. we are not ready for this and THAT is the real fools errand.

[SLAG-91 1,483]

4 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

i bet it would be better excepted than a bunch of folks having their kids sick or dying. we are not ready for this and THAT is the real fools errand.

I said not one word or made one value judgment about whether or not schools should open in-person. My comment was in regard to the implied equivalence between homeschooling and online public education...they aren't even in the same area code.  

There are online schools (not affiliated with a public school district) that have a canned curriculum with built-in assignments, and the teacher does the grading and monitoring. Teachers for those schools know exactly what they are signing up for, as do the students.

That is not the case with public schools who are scrambling to be able to offer both in-person and online options. We didn't become experts in virtual education in two months' time, and our district hasn't announced any specifics for what is happening this year.

I want to see workable, enforceable and safe options for returning to in-person school. I want to know what the ground rules are so that I can make an informed decision if I am asked to teach online or in-person, and parents should also know what the particulars are before being asked to make a decision one way or the other.

If we spend the year hopscotching back and forth, it's going to be a train wreck, imo. Kind of a "doer of many things, master of none" scenario.

 I've said before, there are no good options...just varying degrees of crappy ones.

[homersapien 11,366]

Our pandemic response is already a train wreck and getting worse. 

The irony of this is that Trump's slogan is"Make America Great Again.  He's turned us into a laughing stock.

[aubiefifty 16,761]

 

On 7/9/2020 at 2:40 PM, SocialCircle said:

It is so ironic that you are the one making this political because of your hate for Trump.  I have zero interest in what any politician thinks about reopening schools.  We are also receiving more guidance everyday from the Georgia Dept. of Education and the Dept. of Public Health. 

not if your glorious president withholds funding like he keeps threatening to.you can bang me all day long and twice on sunday for my strong dislike of trump but at the end of the day i will have no blood on my hands for enabling that piece of crap. so let me get this correct. you do not like i am making this out to be a political issue when trump has? say what you want but i do not lie on here. sure i have messed up but i am a big enough man to apologize if i do so.and saying i hate trump is wrong. i cannot stand him for a fact but hate? nope. that is something you said and came up with................

 

[SaltyTiger 7,790]

10 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

i bet it would be better excepted than a bunch of folks having their kids sick or dying. we are not ready for this and THAT is the real fools errand.

Doctors disagree. Just on NBC " top pediatricians across the nation" say get the little buggers back in school. No problem sending their on kids. Safely of course and school systems are working hard to do that. Of course most of your blabber is about hating Trump rather than the issue.

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/29/884638999/u-s-pediatricians-call-for-in-person-school-this-fall

The AAP cites "mounting evidence" that transmission of the coronavirus by young children is uncommon, partly because they are less likely to contract it in the first place.

On the other hand, the AAP argues that based on the nation's experience this spring, remote learning is likely to result in severe learning loss and increased social isolation. Social isolation, in turn, can breed serious social, emotional and health issues: "child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation." Furthermore, these impacts will be visited more severely on Black and brown children, as well as low-income children and those with learning disabilities.

[SocialCircle 570]

2 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

 

not if your glorious president withholds funding like he keeps threatening to.you can bang me all day long and twice on sunday for my strong dislike of trump but at the end of the day i will have no blood on my hands for enabling that piece of crap. so let me get this correct. you do not like i am making this out to be a political issue when trump has? say what you want but i do not lie on here. sure i have messed up but i am a big enough man to apologize if i do so.and saying i hate trump is wrong. i cannot stand him for a fact but hate? nope. that is something you said and came up with................

 

Again I don’t care what any politician on either side says about opening or closing schools. My focus is about what the right thing is for students and staff, etc... We’ve got it figured out here. 

[SLAG-91 1,483]

33 minutes ago, SocialCircle said:

Again I don’t care what any politician on either side says about opening or closing schools. My focus is about what the right thing is for students and staff, etc... We’ve got it figured out here. 

If you don't mind me asking, how large is your district? Ours is one of the 10 largest in Texas (11 high schools, #12 opening in 2022), and I think smaller districts are going to be much more agile with contingency plans than the larger ones...guess we'll see soon enough.