The center of the New York City MAGA universe is somewhere in Staten Island, and it's therefore not surprising at all to see this story coming from there. That's a public demonstration to fully open city public schools right there.
You can see that City Councilman Joe Borelli is out there riling up his half-dozen supporters. Of course there are good arguments for full time schooling. It's better for kids than what we're doing. I'd be 100% for it if it were, you know, safe. But those aren't the only arguments they're trotting out:
“Remote education, watching a YouTube video, is not meeting the constitutional requirement for a sound, basic education,” Borelli said. “Watching videos all day is not the same as being in school and socializing and interacting with your teachers and interacting with your peers and having the services in many cases that your child’s education plan guarantees.”
All due respect, Councilman, but you don't know what you're talking about. If I were so irresponsible that I just showed YouTube videos all the time there'd be nothing stopping me from doing it when I was face to face with full classes in the buildin. In fact you can't really run a class without the cooperation of the 34 kids in front of you, and if you're the kind of lazy slob the Councilman paints teachers as, you will be spectacularly unsuccessful.
He then argues that we don't need class size regulations for online instruction, which is beyond typical ignorance. It's late October and I'm still struggling to learn the names of my students. It has never taken me this long before. I'm trying to encourage student participation but it's very tough at this point. It's disappointing to see a public official with so little respect for educators, especially when he stands around trashing us baselessly.
And if the councilman's ignorance hasn't yet astounded you, take a gander at this:
Other large districts – including Dallas and Miami – are already moving towards a full reopening, he noted.
Dallas is moving toward its highest rate of COVID hospitalizations since August. Ask yourself whether that's a model you wish to emulate. Miami happens to be over the NY State threshold of 5%. Is that where most New Yorkers want to be, in terms of COVID? One of the reasons we're able to open schools to the small extent we have is that we are careful. I'm not sure why anyone would want to move backward.
I don't imagine this movement of idiots is going anywhere in NYC, but the fact is the Presidential election will be a referendum on whether or not we collectively believe in science. President Trump and the MAGA crowd clearly think science is for wimps.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be a live wimp than a dead flat earther any day. It's embarrassing that Borelli found even the half-dozen New Yorkers he did to stand up and protest sanity.
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