Unfortunately, we are now, in late July, having this discussion on how school reopening will be structured with only a month or so before classes are set to start. This is because our elected leaders in Washington and Concord have dragged their heels and then completely abdicated their responsibility and finally chosen to ignore the preponderance of issues involved in effectively addressing this pandemic. They have allowed mixed messages and division to erode public trust. And once again, they have refused to acknowledge the much bigger societal issues our country and our state have been facing for many, many years, all of which are now being exacerbated by the current situation. They have essentially entirely sidestepped the issues they discount as unrelated to mitigating the effects of this pandemic and pushed for opening the economy and our schools. Will pushing these decisions down to the local level effect the Hollis/Brookline, Hanover or Bedford school districts in the same way as districts like Manchester, Nashua and Berlin? Absolutely not.

Those well-to-do districts have much less diversity, disparity and poverty in their student body and are much more capable of affording the expensive solutions required to address all of it. Make no mistake these elected leaders are passing the buck down to the community level and tasking each of us, those much less able to make any systemic change or even afford the high costs required to mitigate any of these fractures in racial and economic disparity that have been left unaddressed in the United States for decades. A basic minimum income would help some parents remain home for more hours to at least attempt to assist their children with schoolwork and possibly address the needs for those who are food and/or housing insecure.

Forgiving all small business loans and extending protections from evictions would decrease the impending tsunami of business bankruptcies and homelessness. Family medical leave benefits would minimize local costs for the eventual quarantining that will be mandated for both teachers, parents and students when schools do open. And ensuring healthcare benefits for every American would better provide for universal testing and treatment.

Listen, it could be minimized as simply rude for our society to have continually short-changed public education so that teachers have historically been stuck with the costs of adequately supplying their own classrooms, but forcing all educators and administrators into a situation where they must now decide whether to continue in their career and thereby potentially risk their health or life is simply unconscionable! Without any of those benefits in place, sadly the best we can hope for is that our local school district does what’s best to mitigate the potential loss of life.

If students, teachers and administrators are able to remain alive and healthy, then they at least have a shot at catching up on their teaching and learning. With a devastated population, what hope do we have of ever building any viable local or national economy? Maybe instead of focusing on academics, the best we can hope for during the year or two to come is addressing the precipitous decline in empathy in our country and focus on what it means to be an American and have true compassion for each and every one of our fellow citizens.

We can only hope to get through this with the combined strength of everyone coming together to achieve a common goal: getting through this in the best possible shape we can. That should be our true measure of American Patriotism right now … United we stand, divided we fall.

Newsletter