Boston City Councilors are calling for the city’s school district to start all remote amid the pandemic, saying Mayor Martin Walsh’s plan for a “hopscotch” hybrid model just doesn’t make the grade.
“When we talk about science-driven and data-driven — this is neither,” Councilor Ricardo Arroyo said, calling the current plan to have most kids go back to school part-time a “recipe for disaster.”
He added: “We’re legitimately talking about life and death.”
Five city councilors telling the Herald that the district should follow the lead of cities like Somerville in starting the school year with essentially all-remote learning as the numbers of cases of the highly contagious coronavirus tick back up.
“We see Somerville, we see Cambridge, we see districts across the country really paying attention to data, and we seem to be really stuck on this ‘everyone has to go back’ mentality,” City Councilor Julia Mejia said. “We can’t play politics with people’s lives.”
The current plan involves most kids going back in a “hopscotch” model, with half of students back on certain days, and half back on others, with people being allowed to opt out to remote learning. Walsh and school district officials insist that this plan is just that — a plan, and is subject to change based on data.
Walsh said in a statement, “As this public health emergency is rapidly evolving, the Boston Public Schools is taking the time needed now to prepare for several different scenarios, with a particular focus on remote learning or a hybrid model.”
City Councilor Lydia Edwards said the default should be flipped — everyone should be remote unless there’s a very good reason that they shouldn’t be, like if they have special needs.
“We should be as cautious as possible,” Edwards said. “Our default should be we should be remote until there’s a vaccine or the second wave has passed.”
But Annissa Essaibi-George, a former BPS teacher who is the council’s education chair, said families prefer in-person learning to remote, and that the hybrid plan does a good job creating flexibility to adapt to the realities of the year.
“It offers real options for our families, especially for students who need the in person instruction the most,” Essaibi-George said. “Here in the city of Boston we have such high numbers of students who really do need in-person instruction.”
Of the comparisons to Somerville, or other all-remote districts, she said, “I don’t think it’s fair to compare Boston with a smaller school district.”
City Councilor Michelle Wu also called for all-remote to start the year, saying, “The draft reopening plan doesn’t meet the scale of need or public health risk that our families are facing … It shifts the burden of health and safety onto families.”
And City Councilor Andrea Campbell said, “We’ve just been hearing from far too many students teachers and parents and too many of them just don’t feel safe … There’s just too many open questions for us to rush this.”
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August 06, 2020 at 07:57AM
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Boston City Councilors push for all-remote schools amid coronavirus - Boston Herald
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