Arguments for Community Childcare and Remote Learning

1. The danger of in-person schooling is transmission and close contact. This puts our students' health under constant threat. South Brunswick is a HUGE district, and it is insane to expect effective tracing and prevention efforts in such a large district. If one student gets sick, we may need to quarantine hundreds of students. If Rutgers is closing and choosing mostly remote classes, why should South Brunswick remain open?

2. There are some kids that may need to be placed in a physical group for monitoring, but even slightly reducing that number will be a good thing. Keeping small groups of kids spread out physically will reduce the likelihood of a breakout. This is because even if one kid gets sick and passes it around their small group, it will not eventually spread to 3000 other kids. What is easier: trying to coordinate ten people to work together to play a whack a mole game with 100 total holes or to have ten people each play a whack a mole game with 10 holes each?

3. If teachers get sick, there will need to be replacements. Where are we going to get those replacements fast enough? Kids will have teachers suddenly leaving without any warning and their education will be severely disrupted more so than starting out with pure remote learning.
Teachers are also human beings with kids and families too. I happen to care a lot about teachers because many of them were (and still are) the most positively influential people in my life. When experienced teachers are stressed, not only will we be contributing to a massive teacher burnout wave that will push out the very best from the profession, but they will also not have the ability to be emotionally present for their students and families. That hurts everyone because people who are hurting cannot help other people before helping themselves.

4. Even if the kids must spend an extra year in school because of missed education, it is not the end of the world because everyone is suffering from the same problem. Colleges will not be penalizing someone if they see a 19-year-old apply someday. Physical and social-emotional needs are most important right now because kids cannot learn without having basic needs met.

5. Childcare does not need to be a burden on a single family. Families can make agreements where Grandma from Family 1 will watch over the kids every other day while stay-at-home mom from Family 2 will watch over the kids on the other days. It's about finding another family that has a schedule and resources that work well with your own situation. Your neighbors are here for you if you reach out.

6. We can give the older siblings some more responsibilities at home nowadays. This will help build independence and maturity. They can be responsible for watching out for their little sibling's schooling at home, and adult volunteers in the community can occasionally check in with food and advice if the parents are away at work. The older sibling will always have a phone to contact a responsible adult they know in case of an emergency.

7. Technology is powerful. There are many tools that adults can use to monitor kids for safety from a distance. Additionally, there are many programs that can help kids with homework. Having large group chats can be so helpful when a child needs help with homework or just wants some advice. They can just type their request in chat, and anyone else can answer.

8. Not everyone in the community has a kid. Community members without kids can dedicate some time or resources in taking care of others whether online or in-person. Alumni in the district will mostly be taking online classes, and many alumni would be happy to help contribute to the education of kids.

9. As a Senior Research Assistant at the Social-Emotional Character Development Lab at Rutgers University, I work with numbers all the time. I may not be an epidemiologist, but I work with large data sets collected from interventions done on multiple medium/large sized schools. From my personal experience working in a research lab, I learned that it is hard to get consistent and hard data from schools even on a normal day. When I look at the preliminary numbers and data related to school re-openings, my personal and humble opinion is that it is better to be overly cautious than not right now. I do not want to attend the funeral of my little sister.

10. Mental health has been deteriorating significantly. If the kids of today are terrified of school shootings, how can we make sure the kids are not constantly scared of contracting a disease and possibly putting their own families in danger? This is especially true of the younger children. Do we really want to put kids in a position in which they might see their friends or teachers die after they find out they accidentally spread the disease?

11. Parents are super stressed out right now. That is completely understandable, but no one ever has to do parenting alone. Everyone is super stressed out right now, and everyone is short on resources, so we either close ourselves off and become selfish, or we open ourselves up to new ways of thinking and support each other. America is a highly individualistic society, but the problem with this is that it makes individuals feel like all of the burdens of life rests on them. Now is the time to think bigger. We can easily build a strong community that can support each other to the end of this pandemic. It takes a village to raise a child, and you are never alone.

If you agree or disagree with any of these points, I hope you will attend the Board of Education meeting on July 23rd and make your voice loudly heard so that the district can effectively decide on what we should do for the future.