Who runs our public schools, anyway?
Our favorite Madison morning daily newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal, wants our public schools open for in-classroom teaching (and, often, learning).
So do the kids. So do their parents. What’s the hold-up? The teachers union, of course. It is always the teachers union.
In sticking their nose above the foxhole here in the occupied territory, the State Journal dares throw nary a pebble at the school yard bully. Not even mentioned, for they fear the reaper. No special interest group wields more political clout hereabouts than the teachers union. None more selfishly protects its privileges than Madison Teachers Inc.
These are the same self-regarding people who say “follow the science” but ignore it when it suits them. School has been virtual and online for 10 months now. Kids are suffering. You wonder why the near doubling in shootings and stolen cars?
That is what Madison Metro Superintendent Carlton Jenkins meant when he said the “metrics surrounding COVID-19 cases in Dane County do not yet support a safe return to school buildings for most students.”
His “metrics” are more secret than the Colonel’s recipe but the super gave a hint when he acknowledged that he cleared his metrics with the district’s teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc. MTI — if we take them at their word — said 94% of its members supported the shutdown. There’s your metrics!
Science is real except when it is not
Because the science doesn’t support the “metric.” The evidence—including CDC guidance and a new CDC report— clearly shows closing schools do little to protect against illness in either children or teachers.
Teachers take pride of place in the vanguard of progressives who preach “follow the science.” Except when they don’t. “Madison Teachers Inc. is right and Dr. Fauci is wrong.
It’s no different in other union-boss cities. Chicago’s teachers union threatens an illegal strike, even though 130 private schools and 2,000 early learning centers have been open safely since Fall, the NY Times observes. Teachers get paid either way but kids suffer.
“No Covid-19 mitigation strategy has been as destructive to students, their parents, and the economy as school closures,” a leading economist and physician writes.
Somehow, the lights are on and kids are learning in Madison’s private school classrooms. And in public schools in Cambridge, Deerfield, Marshall, Sun Prairie and Verona — among many.
⇒ MMSD’s own survey found students want back in the classroom — especially students of color.
Tell the school board you want schools open for in-class learning TODAY
“Teacher resistance is a disaster for the most vulnerable,” columnist David Brooks writes in the New York Times.
“Do Black lives matter to you only when they serve your political purpose?” Brooks asks. “If not, shouldn’t we all be marching to get Black and brown children back safely into schools right now?”
Blaska’s Bottom Line — That’s a question for the Progressive Dane contingent on the Madison Board of Education — Ali Muldrow, Savion Castro, Ananda Mirilli, and Nicki Vander Meulen (who may or may not have rejoined the party). All support BLM insurrectionist Brandi Grayson for city council. And for candidate Maia Pearson.
They would rather blame the police and institutional this or that for crime and academic under-achievement.
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
Unionized teachers will begin to care about the children and families … just as soon as they ante up their “fair share” of union dues. Who does this hurt the worst? That’s right, …. minorities. Since education is perhaps the only chance to break the cycle of generational dependence, it is especially evil when teacher’s unions deny minority children an equal educational opportunity through school choice, vouchers or STEM academies.
It’s history repeating itself all over again. Before the GOP passed the Civil Rights Act, during the times of Democrat-enforced segregation, Bull Connor and his police dogs, Lester “Ax Handle” Maddox and his thugbuggerists and Gov. George Wallace’s fire hoses and private militia, the KKK, … good Democrats all, … stood in the schoolhouse doorways prohibiting black students entry. Today, the same Democrat-endorsed teacher’s unions are standing in the same school house doorways preventing black students leaving to seek a better educational opportunity.
Shame on them.
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SING IT, muh Dawg!
The Gotch
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look out, they can’t handle the truth.
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The Black mayor of San Francisco,
the most liberal city on Earth, just SUED the city’s own public school system!
Get a load of this!
– City of San Francisco says its public schools could’ve opened last September
– Private and Catholic schools have been open since last fall with barely a handful of COVID cases
– City alleges its own public school board has been derelict in its duty
– Only priority, City of SF says, for local school board officials has been to develop a concrete plan to get kids back in school — which they have failed miserably at (City attorney scoffed at their phony “plan for a plan to make a plan”)
What kind of malfeasance and negligence did it take for the most liberal City on Earth to have to sue its own public school board to do its most basic duty???
And will Satyaphatassdown follow suit in Madison to say to the femmes of colour…. enough already, tell that union to cut the antiscience “muh teachers will die” B.S. and get back to work?
Call their bluff and see if they want to illegally strike like the City of Corruption to the south.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-02-03/sf-sues-its-schools-to-reopen-during-coronavirus-pandemic
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And right on cue, the Madison Clown District cancels ONLINE LEARNING tomorrow due to the predicted 2-4″ of snow. Just try to wrap your head around that one. The stupid, it hurts.
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The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) is the accepted scientific organ through which public health research is shared. Moreover, the study occurred in Wood County, WI, so it has that Wisconsin vibe.
Truly, the chance of young students to even transmit the virus is at 3.7 percent. Wisconsin-based statistics suggest there has been no child K-12 who has died from coronavirus.
The only valid point that individual teachers might have is this: “What about older teachers who have legitimate underlying risks?” Then give those persons a semester sabbatical, with the approval of their MDs. They come back in the fall, when most everyone should have shots.
There. Genius that I am, problem solved.
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Genius that I am, problem solved.
This is all about the public schools, sir! The public, unionized, schools!
How dare you bring science and logic into such a discussion!
Have you no shame?
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Wonder how many teachers’ homes in Madison sport those stylish “We believe in science” yard signs…… of course, without irony.
Speaking of science, here’s another tidbit to consider: Don’t scientists often conduct experiments using “control groups” as a benchmark to measure how other tested subjects do? The control group in Madison consists of private/parochial schools, which have remained opened while taking reasonable precautions to protect students and parents. I for one haven’t heard of them being super-spreaders–or indeed any kind of spreaders. And kids are actually learning instead of being enlisted in a collective Zoomy illusion of learning. If the control group shows us that something is being done right, doesn’t it follow “scientifically” that the other group needs to be modified in some way to meet the benchmark? Oh well, it’s easier to just put a sign in your yard.
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Did anyone happen to see a video that Tucker Carlson played on his show last night in which teachers in the Chicago public schools performed–completely without irony–some kind of interpretive dance celebrating the lockdown of that city’s schools and their role in keeping students “safe” by keeping them out of classrooms? I laughed till I cried. The problem with trying to parody lefties is that they always beat you to it.
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not too sure the Chicago teachers “perform” any better in the classroom, based on the academic acheivement results in the Chicago school system over the past 10 years.
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Them there Firearms Safety Classes sure haven’t taken…
The Gotch
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Fine and dandy until Covid 2.0.
It just suits so many public employees so well.
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It’s crazy, and YES, defies conventional wisdom, RE: known health risks.
I would LOVE to see an hour’s worth of local “virtual classroom” video. IMHO, it would be enlightening, and likely showcase the problems w/ online education for young kids, especially kids at risk of failing.
For all the virtue signalling & moral high ground taken by teachers and teacher organizations, the most basic need of students seems to have been set aside. Hard to say why.
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so find a kid and mentor them.
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Did that for decades via my company. Some make 100’s of 1,000’s now -but some ended up on welfare and/or jail… For many, HS school is their best last hope.
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Good on you, g’ss!
The Gotch
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I wonder just how well their brothers and sisters who are police and E.M.T.’s think about this?
After all, they sometimes have to get up close, real close to patients and suspects in order to help or arrest them. (Working at an E.R., ever try to do chest compressions at more than 6′? Or how about providing that “breath of life” at more than 6′?). Or (Just try to “cuff and stuff” a person into a squad car at more than 6′.) Perhaps those people should also want to go out on strike if they don’t get their way and get paid to sit home and not work.
Or how about Clinic, Nursing Home and Hospital workers? Perhaps they too should go out on strike to keep the sick away from them.
Hell for that matter, how about those people who work at places like Kwik Trip? Where are their 6′ walls of separation?
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Lots of yapping going on here about something most of you think is a hoax.
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Too bad some parents are so sadly lacking in rudimentary child raising that outside mentoring is necessary.
No one The Gotch knows wants any child to lack/be denied the opportunity and personal agency to get ahead, and not be limited to things like pastry manufacture.
The Gotch
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