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School Choice and Enrollment Leverage in the Pandemic

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Leverage is designed to provide advantage.  Leverage when using a pry bar allows one to lift or move something that is otherwise unmovable.  Understanding the mechanical advantage of a lever helped early mankind build with stone and open the doors of later industry.  Not every lever is mechanical.  School choice uses the lever of money to influence decisions.  Choice is the fulcrum and enrollment and school money are the objects being moved by a parent looking for educational advantage.   

School choices offer parents a personal tool for addressing pandemic education.  It allows parents to examine available options and select the where and how their child will be educated.  Parental choice of schooling is without prejudice; it is a personal decision that is freely made and without subsequent repercussion.  Choice allows a parent to match their understandings and beliefs about the pandemic with an educational option and to re-choose as understandings and beliefs change.  And, re-choose again.

School choice was initially designed to allow parents in schools with chronically poor educational opportunity and achievement to enroll in schools that demonstrably provided better opportunities and achievement.  The idea of choice was to lever a child’s enrollment for improved educational equity and equality.

Like so many things in life, the use of the tool changed.  Choice has become a socio-economic- and political lever.  In some communities, choice re-established segregation from cultural and economic diversity.  In some schools, choice elaborated elitism.  In some schools, choice allowed those who could to leave and left a school community of those who could not leave depleted.  The tool no longer was a lever for educational equity and equality but for personal advantage.

Choice in the pandemic is a political and economic lever.  The power and threat are displayed in the following fashion by a parent addressing school administration or the school board.  “If I do not like your school policies, rules and decisions, I will take my child from your school and enroll in a school where I agree with their policies, rules and decisions.”  Most frequently, the parent is speaking about policies, rules and decisions related to in-person versus remote education and masking versus no-masking. On the face of this scenario, this is school choice.  In the reality of this scenario, this is economic leverage.  My child represents school funding and a parent controls where her child’s funding will be schooled.  A small school with a small economy may not be able to survive many losses of enrollment.  Or, may not be able to withstand the threat of “… there are a lot of families who feel the same way I do and they also will leave this school if you don’t change your policies, rules and decisions”.  A school may fear a significant run of disenrollments, like a run on a bank during a financial panic, that drains the school district. 

As with most things, one action begets another.  The loss of enrollment can diminish school pay roll.  Fewer children can diminish school  jobs.  Fewer children can diminish programs – not enough children for a football team or a school play.  The threat of disenrollment causes leadership to consider these “next” problems and that consideration can temper how leadership responds to the lever of threatened disenrollment.

Whoa!  At this point, the nature of school governance is completely distorted.  No school policy, rule, or decision can be made without the implied threat of disenrollment choices by those who disagree.  And, if the threat of disenrollment choices become the “decider” for future policies, rules, and decisions, governance for the good of the school community will be governance for the happiness of a few.  When the threat of the disenrollment lever works to change school policies, rules, and decisions, fear of disenrollment choice becomes the modus operandi – anything and everything done in the school may elicit the disenrollment threat.

The best response to such attempted leverage is this – and, make the best educational decisions and life goes on.  A school that is consistently focused on the equity and equality of educational opportunity and achievement, including the health and safety of all within the school, needs to stay the course of its policies, rules, and decisions.  These high ground qualities will sustain a school through the turmoil of both the pandemic and pandemic behavior.  Parents who persist in using school disenrollment as a lever for personal advantage or preference are not seeking the enduring qualities of opportunity and achievement inherent in public education.  They are into the self-serving politics of “I want what I want and if I cannot have what I want I will leave”. 

Wish them well, as life in the school goes on.

Perspectives – Seeing Micro-Differences Blinds Us To Our Macro-Agreements

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Look at an object through a windowpane.  Now, close your right eye and look at the object.  Then, close your left eye look out the same windowpane.  I just did and the object, a car down the street, appeared when looking with my right eye but disappeared when looking with my left eye – blocked by the side of the windowpane.  The object moved to the left or right depending on the eye I used.  If asked whether there was a car on the street, my answer of “yes” and “no” would have been equally correct.  Perspective matters and there are many of those differing perspectives in our world today.

Thomas Paine wrote, “To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead”.  Mr, Paine, I beg to differ.  We each are able to use the power of reasoning and because your fellow man does not reach the same conclusion as you does not mean that he is not using his reasoning.  He may have a different perspective or lens through which he understands the same facts you understand.  You might has well have written, “Any person who does not agree with my reasoning must be dead”.

Perhaps Mr. Paine meant, “It is easier to give medicine to a dead man than to change the conclusions of a man who sees the world differently than I see the world”.  In his day, a person who was loyal to the Crown was just as righteous as a person who was a patriot of the revolution given their different perspectives and reasoning.  Righteousness depended upon how you viewed a revolution.  They each saw the events of their times from a different perspective.

Today, we see differences of perspective in how people consider our local, state, nation, and world issues.  We tend to apply labels, like Paine’s Patriot or Tory, to people depending on their perspective.  Some labels are partisan, republican or democrat.  Some labels are ideological, liberal or conservative.  Some are issue-based life, pro-life or pro-choice.  Some are very contemporary, vax or anti-vax.  Some are school-specific, phonics-based or whole language.  Some are fringe, Proud Boys or Antifa.  Labeling gives us a quick recognition of our different perspectives of the world.

Too often, focusing on perspective results in micro-differences and blinds us to our macro-agreements.  When we isolate and focus on our different perspectives we tend not to see the larger world and the many issues upon which we may agree.   

My most differing friends each want orderliness in the checkout line in the grocery store.  They want roads without potholes and bridges without detour signs.  They want safety on the highway and at city intersections.  They want the option to come and go as they please.  I have seen the most conservative and liberal of friends hold the door open for an elderly lady.  And, equally grumble about the price of gasoline.  Last evening, I saw friends of different perspective sitting on a hillside with their respective spouses and friends enjoying a free, public concert.  Without prejudice, their heads bobbed and feet tapped to the same music.  There is a lot upon which we agree.

Finding the macro-agreements can allow us to understand the micro-disagreements.  I am reminded that those loyal to the Crown and those faithful to the Stars and Stripes have been staunch allies over and over again since Tom Paine’s day.

At a school board meeting tonight, proponents of mask and no-mask will speak from their perspectives.  There will be disagreement.  There also will be decisions about school enrollment made depending upon the outcome of the discussion.  The greater agreement is that we get to have different perspectives, to speak our minds, and to make personal decisions based upon our perspective.  The greater agreement is that all children need their education.  The disagreements are real and, in the greater scheme, are okay.  Children will be educated.  We will work things out, because we are not dead and refusing the medicine, but living in a reasoning community where we have and always will have different perspectives.

The car is still down the road even though I cannot see it when looking with one eye closed.  Such is perception.

“When You Know What Is Right, Try To Do It” – A Mantra For Leadership

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“When you know what is right, try to do it” was often used as a sign-off by the late Bruce Williams, longtime radio talk show host.  It is a mantra that should be a constant beacon for guiding school leadership.

School is a complex intersection of competing interests, sometimes harmonious but mostly not.  There are mandates and demands, wants and needs, and a myriad of human personalities.  One may believe that school is a one-way street, a set of rules and regulations without exception, and too often a monolith without compassion – it is none of these.  School is a human organism made up of you and me and the entire school community.  Consider all of a school’s populations converging at the place called campus and any school becomes a Times Square at rush hour every day.  Regardless of the size of the school or community, any decision made at this intersection can be complex and complicated.  Leadership tries to find a “right thing to do” pathway through the congestion that results in a sound decision and action.  Mr. Williams’ words provide a consistent flashlight for leadership.

“How can this be”, a reader may ask.  “School is simple.  It educates children.  The law is straightforward.  Children between the ages of 5 and 180 are to be in school.  The profession is ancient.  Teachers teach and children learn.” 

Gadzooks, were it that easy!

Let’s look at three examples of complex issues.  The annual school calendar.  Student use of cell phones in school.  School mitigation protocols during the pandemic.  Here’s looking to you, Bruce Williams.

Some decisions are very complex, but resolve once leadership makes a decision.  For example, the first day of school.  It is just a date on the calendar, but it causes annual debate because so many are vested in the calendaring of a school year.  In our state, the school start date is after September 1 as a protection of the tourist industry.  However, school sports begin in mid-August, an adjustment that creeps earlier in that month every year in order that spring sports do not extend too far into June after school is dismissed.  School leaders try to explain that school does not begin until the first day of classes, but families, coaches, school maintenance staff, and principals know that school really starts on the first day of fall sports practices in mid-August.  And, the last day of school is not the day classes end in May or June, but after the last scheduled event of the spring sports season.  The calendar is a complex issue with assorted legitimate vested interests and leadership needs to acknowledge and fit all interests into a decision.  It is not easy to decide “what is right” because so many school staff, school families, and local businesses are in conflict on their “right”. 

Oh, and then there is spring break.  Pedagogically the break should be between the third and fourth quarters of the instructional year.  Traditionally the break has been attached to the Good Friday and Easter weekend.  Economically the break wants to be before airlines and resorts and hotels in the south change from winter to summer rates.  School assessments say that the break should not interrupt the annual schedule of statewide assessments and college preparatory ACT and AP examinations.  The sport schedule again speaks up and says the break should be after the winter sports state tournaments.  Complex?  Do you think.

I hear Mr. Williams and respond with “when it comes to the school calendar, comply with state mandates, prioritize school instructional and assessment needs, and school programs”.  Right is creating a calendar that allows the school to achieve its educational purposes.  Criticism of such a calendar will arise, but when school programming is the deciding factor, leadership has done what is right for children in school.

Now, how about something more challenging.  Cell phones in school are today’s chewing gum, only its more complicated than a pack of Wrigley’s.  At face value, school is not opposed to chewing gum or cell phones.  Both are inanimate, do not pose safety risks, and are small enough to be unseen, most of the time.  It is what children do with chewing gum and cell phones that raises them from innocuous to troublesome.  The chewing of gum became attitudinal.  The sound and sight of gum smacking chewers looking at a teacher while smacking away pushed some teachers over the tipping point.  And, the incessant wad of dried gum stuck under desks and table tops is so disgusting.  Hence, the right thing to do:  “no gum chewing in my classroom”.

It is what children do with cell phones, like gum, that is the problem.  Children divert their attention from what is being taught and what they should be learning to what they hear, see, and do on their cell phones.  For some children, it is attention to school work or attention to the cell phone, and it is clear that in most classrooms there can be only one focus for a child’s attention.  Hence, the right thing to do:  “no use of cell phones in my classroom”. 

Once again, it would be nice if doing the right thing were that easy.  Children have learned to text on a phone while the phone is in a pocket of clothing.  Cell phones kept on a lap during class time are, unlike the smacking of gum chewing, out of sight of the teacher.  Worse by far, some children are belligerent enough to not turn off the ringer of the cell phone and will answer a call or text in the middle of class as if they were in their bedroom at home.  This is a straightforward challenge of school authority.

Is the proper decision, “no cell phones in school”.  This does not fly for many parents who want their child always to have access to their parent.  Truth be told, this access is a good thing, even for school purposes.  It does not fly for parents who insist their child is responsible and should not be punished because other children abuse the use of cell phones in school.  It even does not fly for the many lay coaches and activity advisors who are not teachers and use texts and e-mail to communicate during the day with their athletes, actors, and activity kids.

Mr. Williams would wisely add, “… every decision has unforeseen consequences, so be careful about your decisions”.  Is it really a good idea to collect each child’s cell phone at the beginning of every class in order to prevent any possible in-class use of the phone?  Collection and redistribution create their own problems.

Hence, the right thing to do:  “keep your cell phone turned off and put away during class time.  Respond only to the abusers.”  Mr. Williams’ advice tells us that the right thing is to protect teaching and learning time and to assure that the protection does not give rise to new and unanticipated problems.

Last and certainly most, not least, is the issue of pandemic protocols in school.  Remote education, limiting group attendance, and masking being three focal points.  The right thing to do is always to protect the health and safety of children in school.  The question arises, what should school do when some parents support protective school actions and some parents oppose the steps taken to create this protection?  The question is exacerbated when the protocol is “either/or”.  Early in the pandemic, school campus was either open or it is closed, the number of people gathering inside for a school event was either limited or it is not limited, and people in school either wore masks or they do not wear masks.  By their nature, either/or issues immediately create oppositional groups and pandemic protocols are the perfect examples of oppositional issues.

From the school leadership perspective, the right thing to do is to protect the most vulnerable people in the school from a school-based spread of the virus.  The vulnerable include those who are immunocompromised, those over 60 years of age, and those not eligible for vaccination.  Closing the campus does this in a large and complete way.  Limiting the size of indoor gatherings to create social distancing does this arbitrarily.  Requiring everyone to be masked does this in a very personally demanding way.  Each of these three protocols has definite anticipated and unanticipated reverberations. 

The most prominent argument has been “who makes the decision to protect a child – school or the child’s parent?”.  Some parents want complete school protection and other parents want only the protections they choose for their child and they may choose none – no campus closure, no social distancing, and no masks.

Mr. Williams, help!  Interestingly, Mr. Williams also was a prominent financial advisor who was neither a risk seeker nor risk adverse.  “Everything has risk, so what is the worst that is at risk”, he might ask on the air and then listen to the caller enumerate.  “Don’t risk what you cannot afford to lose” was a common follow-up and that is where school leadership enters the issue of pandemic protocols.

The right thing to do is a “no child will die or suffer serious health damage due to a decision I make” decision.  Leadership can risk the loss of parent opinion and even a parent’s removal of their child from the school.  Leadership can risk the anger of people who cannot attend a basketball game.  School can risk the “I hate wearing a mask at school” complaints of children and employees.  Leadership can risk being forced out of their job or recalled by the electorate.  These can be outcomes of leadership doing what they know is the right thing.  But, risking the life and health of children – not on my watch leadership says.  All other arguments shrink to “I want what I want”. 

Determining the right thing to do and then sticking with that decision is like standing in the middle of a busy intersection as traffic passes by.  Unnerving is understatement.  But, conviction in a “do the right thing” decision is a bulwark against those who want leadership to do less.

Civility – Another COVID Casualty

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COVID has taken and is taking more from us than we know or currently can imagine.  Illness, death, and the disruption of the lives we knew have been only the most visible losses.  It is the multitude of non-medical losses that will have changed us the most.  Damage to the fabrics of our community and social psyche will linger long after the masks come off.

I begin here.  None of my family members, immediate or across three living generations have died or been seriously ill with the virus.  We have been lucky.  The agony of those who lost family and friends or whose family members are seriously health-impaired due to the virus is both devastating and unimaginable.  614,000+ deaths so far and counting.  Unimaginable loss is an inadequate expression.

For most of a year we have watched the health department’s weekly reports of positive tests, community infection rates, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID with a variety of emotions.  In our  county there have been 30 deaths, 111 persons hospitalized, 2,577 positive tests out of 18, 669 tests administered, as of this date.  We currently have 30 active cases and our community has a moderate-high infection rating.  Our county fairly represents our state, but both are well below the death, illness, and loss in other parts of the nation.  These are matters of data and reported facts and, for a community with nominal effects, COVID has seemed more abstract than real.

The pandemic is not over. It is necessary to say that new variants, unanticipated surges of infection, and less than careful behaviors could again upend our quiet county data and the lives of our communities.  As we continue to deal with medical disease, we need to consider all the other casualties of COVID.  The damage to our society requires our attention and consideration.  We are not the society we were.

To enumerate our losses, I am concerned with these.

  • Civility toward fellow citizens
  • Trust in leadership
  • Greater economic gapping
  • Polarization of discourse
  • Economic resilience
  • Family coherence
  • View of the future
  • Child/adult connections

Each of the above topics is dramatically damaged by COVID.  Each topic is a small treatise of its own, but I will write only of one and allow a reader to consider how the pandemic caused sickness and behavioral disease in the others.

Civility is an older term that is never out of date.  Wrap up courtesy, politeness, good manners, graciousness, geniality, and consideration of others rather than self and you have the meaning of civility.  Civility is often expected, but it is a choice of how we act toward each other.  It is very easy to be civil toward other people when we are are agreement.  Civility is tested when we are in disagreement – how do we act and behave toward people we disagree with?  COVID broke our civility and things were said and done that stretched and then broke the harmony of local civility.  Can we get it back?

What happened?  First, COVID changed our social harmony.  Whether admitted or not, the presence and threat of disease and death touched everyone.  Immediately, we were divided by our disagreement that we were at risk of sickness and death or we were not risk.  Some friends said COVID was just a new and annual influenza and some friends said COVID was a new plague.  No one I knew stood neutral on this question.  Immediately our social conversations and behaviors were skewed by this single issue.  Keep this conceptualization in mind – annual flu without much consequence versus plague that causes death – because civility cleaved on this.

Second, the protocols arbitrarily adopted for community health added gasoline to the fires of initial disagreement.  Shut downs and closings were so dramatic and devastating to our “usual” that disagreement quickly elevated to anger.  Friends believing that COVID is annual flu were angry that schools and stores were closed.  Working parents lost jobs or needed to stay home taking care of children.  Employers lost employees.  Businesses instantly lost business and some closed forever.  Friends believing that COVID is the plague were angry that anyone would not want schools and stores closed, because social isolation was the only way to contain a plague. 

Third, things said and done can not be taken back.  COVID is unrelenting in this.  Lives have been lost and health has been ruined and there is not getting those back.  The lack of do overs also holds for what was said and how we treated each other.  Friends who usually spoke with smiles called each other crazy or stopped talking to each other.  Friends who walked toward each other turned their backs and walked away.

Social media is so easy yet so indelible.  Friends found it easy to make caustic and mean comments toward others on FaceBook or twitter or in e-mails.  Once said or written, they could not be retrieved or changed.  Social media created new channels for anger that further eroded civility.  We are known by what we say and do – this is a fact of life with or without a pandemic.  Now, it is more true than ever. 

Lastly, life goes on.  Regardless of where we live, urban, suburban or rural, we circulate in relatively small groups of friends and associates.  These are the people we rely upon and who rely upon us directly or indirectly.  I am happy to say that no one in my community circle died or suffered serious health impairment from COVID.  That said, COVID split my community circle and anger flared and things were said and done based upon those angers.  Civility in my circles diminished significantly.

One our human traits is the gift of forgetting and forgiving.  These two traits are choices, though.  Civility in our community may return but it will be by our choice.  Personally, I tend to forgive quickly but seldom forget.  COVID marked the generations of its survivors and only time will tell how we put our social and community lives back together.

In closing, do your own analysis of how the pandemic has affected your

  • trust of government or any community leader,
  • economic sustainability,
  • connections across generations, and
  • positive attitude about the future.

What has been lost?  What has been gained?  What will they be in the years to come.

COVID is affecting more than we know.

The Start of the 21-22 School Year Depends Upon Your #1

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We know these six things.  Adults make the decisions regarding the education of children.  Schools are pivotal to the economic vitality of a community.  Children are the last in our population to be eligible for COVID vaccination.   The virus of March 2020 is not the virus of August 2021.  During the pandemic, the issue of whose voices determine educational policy has become more important for some than the education of children.  The education of all children matters.  Since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, these six topics have dominated discussion of public education.

The opening of the 2021-22 school year is a matter of determining which of these will be #1.  As in most scenarios, there is an analogy we can apply.  This is one I have used in prior blogs.  We are in the dilemma of three adult men in the movie City Slickers.  We face uncertainty in our future.  Curly, the old and grizzled cowhand, asks us a simple question.  “What is your #1?  When you know that, everything else will become clear.” 

With less than a month before the start of the fall semester, what is our #1 for this school year?  Each of these six knowns is vying to be the lead story, #1, for the 21-22 school year.  Of the six things we know, what we make our #1 will drive the others.

What do we really know?

Yes, adults make the decisions regarding how children will be raised and educated.  First and foremost, adults as parents decide how children will be raised.  It starts with a parent and that parent’s child, and it generalizes to the neighborhood and community.  “This is how children are raised here.”  Adults, as politicians, business and community leaders, and school leaders, weigh in on public policy, local employment, and schooling.  Adults make the decisions – this a primary law of the child’s world.

Yes, schools are pivotal to the vitality of a community.  In March 2020 closed school campuses had an immediate and adverse impact upon parent availability for daily work.  Some parents still have not returned to the job market.  Closed campuses curtailed the community’s access to the entertainment value of school athletics, theater, and activities.  Closed or open campuses make a difference.  Something as basic as the retail sales are reviving this summer as children require new school clothes, shoes, backpacks, and supplies.  Open schools are a sign of a community open for new business.

Yes, senior adults then all adults and finally older children over the age of 12 were and are eligible for vaccination.  Early data showed the elderly were the most vulnerable to severe COVID illness and death and their early vaccination reversed that data line.  Vaccines were provided to working adults to assist their return to employment.  Finally, young adults and teens became vaccine eligible.  But, not children under the age of 12.  Now, it is this age group, the vaccine ineligible, who are the focus of attention for decisions about September.  Masks or no masks.  In-person or remote.  Options and conditions for how children can attend school.  The health of the last to be vaccine eligible is our issue today.

Yes, the virus mutated, and today’s Delta variant is different than the initial virus that spread across our communities.  And, yes, the science of understanding virus is a changing story meaning that we are moving from a pandemic virus to an endemic virus that may be circulating for years to come.  Medical science needs to stay current if not anticipate these variants.  There may well be more variants and more vaccines in our future.

Yes, we are in a battle of voices.  The growing question is whose voices will determine the decisions to be made.  In 2020, the voices were divided by in-person versus remote education.  Those voices splintered into adults who chose to open enroll to a non-local school and those who disenrolled from public school and enrolled as home schoolers. In 2021, the voices are divided by masking versus no-masking.  Per usual, most parents have opinions on this issue but only a small number of parents vocalize their opinions as demands.  Letters, texts, and petitions are sent to local school boards.  The issue is narrowed down to who will decide whether children will be masked in school – parents or school officials.  Everyone has data and studies and reports to cite in favor of their opinion.  However, at the end of this day, the adults making this decision will be the adults elected to the local school board and the adults hired as school administrators.

Yes, the education of all children matters.  The pandemic has caused multiple parsing of children into constituent groups of specific concern.  Children needing special education and assistive education quickly rose to our attention.  Children in homes without adequate Internet connectivity required other means for transporting instruction between home and school.  Children without adults at home to supervise and support remote education became at risk of falling behind or dropping out.

Most data indicates that vaccination protects against infection and makes subsequent “break through” infection less severe.  And, vaccination provides protection against most variants, so far.  Yet, the argument about vaccination or no vaccinations persists.  The real choice may simply be whether to be vaccinated and all other decisions will spring from that.

Communities will be healthier physically and emotionally when children are eligible for vaccination.  Communities are healthier when school campuses are open to in-person schooling.

Adults will continue to make the crucial decisions regarding school.  School boards and administrators, not parents or community voices, will make decisions regarding masks or no masks in school.  If the school board decision is “masks are optional”, parents will make the daily masking decision for their children.  And, parents will continue to choose where their children will be educated.  Public school enrollment will continue to decrease as dissatisfied parents demand options that align with their opinions.

What to do?

Everyone gets to decide their #1.  School leaders, parents, community – all decide.  Depending upon your #1, things clarify differently.

For school leaders, our #1 continues to be “the education of all children matters” and all decisions flow from this #1.  #2 is that public schooling is authorized by state statutes and those statutes vest elected school boards and employed administrators with school-based decision making.  #3 is parents will make decisions regarding where to educate their children – public school, open enrollment out, private education, or home schooling.  And, parents will make decisions regarding masking when school leaders determine that masking is optional and not conditional.  #4 addresses local conditions.  An open school campus is best for local communities.  And, a mutating virus plus a vaccinated population will continue to determine the status of an open campus.  Lastly, #6 is that the public always will have and will voice their opinions.  Voices, however, do not overpower statutory duty, parent responsibility, or the realities of public health. 

For some parents, parent choice is #1.  They have the right to choose where their child will be educated.  School leader decisions regarding masking and other protocols may influence a parent decision.  This #1 makes the education of their family’s child the highest priority. 

For other parents, their opinion is #1.  They want an open campus, their child to attend the local school, AND they want the local school to create protocols and rules that align with their opinions.  The alignment of school and their personal opinions matters greatly to these parents.  Where to educate their child always hangs in the balance of how well school aligns with opinion.

For our community, the business of business is business and business is #1.  Our community prioritizes an open campus, happy parents, and the education of children.

Why is this thus?

The #1 of school leaders is premised on this – children get one whack at each grade level and each subject/course.  One year of diminished learning creates negativity in a child’s education.  One year of wobbling decisions about what is #1 lessens a school’s productivity, parent commitment to a school, and child engagement.  While we generalize education across the K-12 grades, the knowledge, skills, experiences inherent in each annual curriculum matters.  Case in point – Remember fractions.  The manipulation of fractions is easy for some, hard for others, and complete mystery for a few.  What happens if, due to a lack of instructional commitment, all children in a grade are not provided with good or complete instruction in fractions?  What if fractions are a mystery to all?  The result will be devastating to subsequent mathematics, as well as chemistry, physics, and all shop courses.  We are required to create educational proficiency in all subjects for all children.  This is our #1.

Additionally, school boards are committed to equity, quality, and protection of the most vulnerable students.  Rules and protocols become easier when generalized to the majority.  Easy does not necessarily protect those most vulnerable to school failure or to viral infection.  How we “treat the least of these” has a familiar and essential ring for school leaders.

Regardless of the pandemic, children need to be educated.  Primary grade children are in the “prime time” for their learning to read.  Mathematics changes from arithmetic to algebra-based math in upper elementary and middle school.  College and career preparation is ongoing in high school

The Big Duh!

School boards and administrators that acknowledge their responsibility to this #1 know what comes next – policy and rule statements that clarify school behaviors for staff, students, and parents.  Parents, knowing the decisions and decision-making process of their local school board, can make informed decisions regarding where to educate their children.  With clear statements, communities can plan on when campuses will be open and the conditions for closing a campus, if necessary.

“Understand your #1 and everything else becomes clear.”