We’re not startled!

“The startling evidence on learning loss is in” the New York Times exclaimed last week in an editorial reprinted in today’s WI State Journal. The cause: shutting down K-12 schools due to the Covid-19 pandemic hysteria.

“As the Times has finally acknowledged,” National Review observes:

An estimated 6.5 million more students became chronically absent across the nation due to the pandemic. Absences were most prevalent among Latino, black, and low-income students. In short, school closures were especially devastating to the nation’s most vulnerable students. 

Most experts, including the reviled Dr. Anthony Fauci, were warning of dire consequences during the school shutdowns. But the teachers union kept the schoolhouse closed in Chicago, New York, and here in Madison WI.

Madison locked its school doors in mid-March 2020. Nine months later, black students were itching to get back in their desks — 58% of them, according to a district survey. Even then, the WI State Journal could see that “The science favors getting kids back to school sooner than later. Virtual learning is hurting math scores the most, according to education researchers. Pediatricians warn about social isolation, abuse, depression and hunger.”

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned in 2021: “Emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts among adolescents jumped 31% in 2020, compared with 2019.”

The teachers union hostage demands  

The Madison teachers union is signaling strong opposition to a return to in-person learning, even as local public health officials haven’t reported any school-linked COVID-19 hospitalizations or deaths and as some private schools that have been open for in-person instruction since the beginning of the school year report few major pandemic-related problems.

— “Madison teachers oppose return to classroom,” January 2021.

The teachers union laid down a gauntlet of demands — over two dozen! — before they would return, including (Surprise! Surprise!) that teachers union default: More Money, aka “hazard pay.” Socialist provocateur John Nichols had their back. When a former governor encouraged schools to reopen for in-class instruction, Comrade Nichols lit the match:

“Scott Walker is exploiting the pandemic to … attack teachers and their unions.”

Blaska’s Bottom Line: “Teachers and their unions” — always the progressive’s top of mind priority. Children? Schmildren! All the while, Wisconsin’s smaller school districts remained open or closed for only a couple of weeks. Nationally, schools in Republican states such as Florida and Iowa kept their schools entirely open.

Or have you forgotten?