Forum Comments

City and state leaders are in a hurry to get students back in school, to show that they have COVID, and the students' academic progress under control. But doing so without considering families' needs isn't helping those who need more time, more resources, or just cannot or should not go back right now.

Also, the Education Secretary doesn't have standing to make this kind of broad claim. The financial, health, and related factors of every student and their families is different. They each have different considerations, so going back to in-person schooling may not be best for all of them.

For the schools, adding some after school tutoring sessions would help as well. I can't say how likely/possible that is though.

With another year of primarily, if not completly virtual learning ahead this Fall, private tutors should be seeing more students, among parents who can afford them.

School districts where the ethnic achievement gap is already wide tend to have families from ethnic minorities who cannot afford a computer. It is a similar case on the part of underfunded schools, in that they tend to not be able to afford laptops like Chromebooks for students who can't come to school.

As we've heard from several racial and financial advocacy groups in the last few months, virtual learning has not been easy, and in some cases not accessible for students from ethnic minorities and low-income communities. This underscores one of the more perverse aspects of this pandemic: showing the differences between groups of Americans in terms of their ability to gain basic necessities, in this case education.

As for whether or not to allow some students to continue learning virtually or not, I don't think the school districts legally have a choice but to continue allowing it, especially private schools and colleges who are accepting tuition. They can't very well tell parents that their children aren't not welcome at their school unless they're willing to take the risks of having them attend in-person, which may pretain to a few classes or all of them for the year. While a large amount of both educators and students may loathe the idea of another partial/full vurtual year, that's just how it's going to have to be.

If their emotional/psychological wellbeing suffers, then their physical health oftentimes follows due to a lack of personal care. At the same time, if their physical wellbeing is compromised, then their emotional/psychological wellbeing is sure to follow. While the city of Chicago seems to have done less than they could have for solving the COVID-schools problem by now, I have to think that they, like the rest of the country, genuinly doesn't have all the answers right now. As long as COVID stays (which unfortunatly it seems it will due to these variants and anti-maskers/vaccine people), school districts, cities, and states will continue to have these dilemmas.

It appears to be a conflict of students' emotional/psychological wellbeing vs. their physical wellbeing, and between requiring most students to return vs. allowing some to continue learning virtually.

Here are some of the major considerations on both sides of the COVID-school reopening debate, as I currently understand them: Open Schools * Students need direct, student-teacher interation in the classroom. * Students (particularly young ones), need to interact with one another as part of their social development, and emotional wellbeing. I can certainly vouch for this one for myself. * Parents need to be able to work without having to look after their kids at the same time (referring to those with young children without someone else to look after them). Keep Schools Limites/Closed * Not every student is/is allowed to be vaccinated (referring to those less than 10 in some states). * The new variants are still treatening students, and in some cases bypassing the vaccine. ** Some students may not be able to return this year, because they relocated back to their home countries last year and cannot afford to come back right now.

Deciding whether or not to go back to campus has been a great source of stress for my parents and I, since we don't know how much the delta and other variants are likely to spread. But it's hard to imagine spending another year away from campus life, and from my friends, old and new. I'm sure you all are considering the same things.

I really don't know. I suppose for students who can attend clases in person, whether or not they will be sent home again sometime in the year, that could be better than not having any in-person instruction. But we still need to be cautious, from a personal hygine perspective.

Discusting and disheartening. Think about how women in New York who voted for him are feeling right now, since he really took the lead on COVID crackdowns there, and now has been proven to be this. We don't need any more of our advocates going down like this. My heart goes out to his victims.

Great. No reason why they can’t.

It’s a sorry sight. One of the two major political parties is scrambling to place restrictions that would make it harder for voters from the other major party to vote.

Take the Jews during WWII. They were escaping persecution and imprisonment, and tried to come here to safety and security. However, the US turned away a significant proportion of them for this reason or that. Whether or not some of those reasons had some merit to them, turning them away without any guidance or support simply was not acceptable. We need to be better than that, because if we can’t take care of our current migrant residence, how can we pass judgement on whether or not we should accept new ones?

In terms of the immigrants themselves, part of that increase in our standards need to be figuring out why they are leaving their own countries in the first place. Fear of violence, pressure from poverty and persecution, and other factors can be involved. If we determine these factors, and intervene to some degree to help resolve some of them, the likely result will be less people leaving to come here. They do have the right to try to come here of course, but hopefully they won’t feel like they NEED to to take care of themselves.

Truthfully, the US can’t accept literally every individual and family into its borders, even if it wanted to, since it doesn’t have the resources or capacity. These truths are part of what make up many Americans’ misgivings about accepting more immigrants. If we are going to increase our quotas at some point, than we need to proportionally increase our standards for giving them the chance for upward mobility, not just for the economy but more importantly for them.

Immigration quotas have existed in the US since 1921, exactly 100 years. We know it sets limits on the number of people allowed to migrate here, but there are also a host of other legal qualifications which are factored in when deciding who can stay, including whether one is seeking asylum, as well as their health status, job skills, education, and the presence or absence of a criminal record. The country needs to do what it can to accommodate as many people as possible, and be as judicious about deciding the people that it decides to turn away.

One could say that America shouldn’t accept more people into the country when it fails to adequatly support, and provide opportunity for some many of its current residents. Another could point to the country’s well-known promise to welcome, and care for all people, and that immigration is even more reason for the nation to improve itself.