There will be school in Iowa this year, and all the talk about it now is a semester behind.
Every public school district in the state of Iowa was required to present three detailed plans for 2020-21 to the state board of education by July 1. As far as I know, every district has done so, including yours.
Plan 1 is how to have students return to school for full-time in-person learning while still keeping teachers and students as safe as possible, following protocols of hygiene and social distancing. etc.
Plan 2 is how to provide 100 percent online, remote learning for all students, from home, allowing for those students who are still on the wrong side of the digital divide and don’t have necessary access to wi-fi and cellular technology.
Plan 3 is a hybrid of the previous two — where there would be some remote learning and some in-person learning, perhaps staggered, where students and teachers will only be required to come to the buildings at certain times.
School districts have been working on this since April, with state and local health officials, teachers unions, parent and student groups, community stakeholders, etc., and most will be ready to implement one of these three plans — or perhaps all three incrementally — at the start of the school year.
In other words, all the people currently arguing about it, demanding that districts return to in-person learning or insisting that in-person learning must not happen, are about three months behind the teachers and school districts, as usual. They don’t know what the hell they are talking about, and they would do the world a favor if they just shut the hell up.
Accept that professional educators are smarter, better prepared and more responsible that you are. Did you really think that teachers would wait until mid-July before they started to discuss and get ready for something like this?
The plans have been made, the only decision left is which plan each school district will go with. They’ve got this, they’ve been in front of this for months. All the political talk is just jibba-jabba, and I ain’t got no time for jibba-jabba.