Two months ago, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement, “Schools have shown that they can – and should – be offering in-person learning opportunities five days a week to every student.” But yesterday while visiting a high school in the Bronx he was asked about rising COVID numbers and how this alarming trend would affect school openings, Cardona was equivocal: “School reopening will depend on community spread,” he replied. “Let’s be very clear. If the community spread is high, it is going to impact whether or not the schools can be open.”
The times are a’changing and so is COVID. There’s a swelling movement in New Jersey to have the state offer an option of remote instruction, especially after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that young children are at risk of becoming severely ill from the delta variant. Yet the NJ Education Department’s “Road Forward” document says all districts “must plan to provide full-day, full-time, in-person instruction and operations for the 2021-2022 school year.” (Some superintendents are reporting that DOE officials are saying if a student has to quarantine the district must provide virtual or remote instruction.) And Gov. Phil Murphy, even while COVID cases creep up, is still sticking by his May directive that “we know that we can get back fully in person, safely, with the right protocols in place.”
But can we? Wishing doesn’t make it so.
Some folks have asked whether other states or large cities are allowing virtual options and whether other families share the sentiments of a group called New Jersey Parent for Virtual Choice, which has 13,000 signatures on a petition pleading with Murphy for a virtual instruction option. Here are 3 data points on what other states are doing and 3 data points on how parents feel about sending their children back to classrooms.
What about parent sentiment outside the Garden State?
This is a statement by Paula White, Executive Director of JerseyCAN, on the New Jersey…
This is a press release. Earlier today, Gov. Phil Murphy signed a bill to eliminate…
Today Gov. Phil Murphy signed Senate Bill 896, which prohibits the New Jersey Department of…
The 74 conducted a study of the relative learning loss in Democratic (Blue) and Republican (Red) states and…
In October 2020 Newark Superintendent Roger Leon announced with great fanfare the opening of district’s…
This is a press release from the Governor's Office. In related news, one in five…