All I have to say is, "That's right there are children that were homeschooled for the first time because their parents loved them." Does that mean other parents don't love their children? I can't answer that. These children are home, healthy, happy, learning at whatever pace they could maintain and they don't have heart conditions after vaccination.
Some parents rely on school and after-school programs in order to work. There are plenty of jobs not filled in the USA. How many of the people not going back to work are keeping their children home because the pandemic gave them a chance to regroup and set priorities they could not before?
Sometimes life throws you a curveball. You make the best of it and hold your children, your elderly parents close, and find a way.
Chicago schools did not have sessions last year. Why? Because the teachers didn't want the children exposed to a very bad virus. They took a stand as a unionized group and told the school administrators, "We ain't teaching and RISK the lives of the very children we hold dear every day." There were school lunch programs carried out and other supplemental efforts for children reliant on the Chicago Public Schools for their well-being, including meals. THE PARENTS WERE HOME in the beginning of all this disaster. They weren't working.
I love the public school system in this country, but, enough is enough. No one person who is a governor or superintendent has the right to place children AT RISK when there are other paths to follow.
I have to mention this. Look at all those states that didn't even keep records. There is one or two Blue States, but, they are primarily Red States. Either they don't want to spend the money to understand the people of their states or they like to hide statistics so it doesn't complicate elections or both. That is amazing. When are Republicans going to stop being terrified by their own actions? Because that is what record keeping and graphs like this reflect, the more quality of government when the facts are known. It's a darn shame. A global pandemic and they don't give a hoot about how the people are doing.
How many states cut unemployment benefits to FORCE and INTIMIDATE people to return to work? Why? Because they wanted to protect their families? Something wrong with that in states where no one cares about securing them away from a potentially fatal virus that DEFINITELY maims EVERY PERSON infected.
By Dana Goldstein and Alicia Parlapiano
As the pandemic took hold, (click here) more than 1 million children did not enroll in local schools. Many of them were the most vulnerable: 5-year-olds in low-income neighborhoods.
Philadelphia - On a sweltering July afternoon, Solomon Carson, 6, jumped off the stoop of his family’s tidy rowhouse in West Philadelphia, full of what his father, David, called “unspent energy.”
When a stranger asked his name, he answered brightly, but added that he couldn’t spell it. “I can help you with that,” his father said, patiently pronouncing each letter, with Solomon repeating after him.
Solomon was supposed to have learned the basics in kindergarten this past year, but his first year of formal education was anything but.
When Covid-19 closed classrooms, his parents chose not to enroll him in city schools that they already had doubts about. As they were not working, they decided to teach him at home along with his two older brothers. And they signed him up for a virtual charter school that advertised in-person tutoring — and failed to provide it.
Now, as Solomon heads to first grade, Mr. Carson is cleareyed about where his son stands academically. “I really think we can improve,” he said.
Solomon is part of a vast exodus from local public schools.
As the pandemic upended life in the United States, more than one million children who had been expected to enroll in these schools did not show up, either in person or online. The missing students were concentrated in the younger grades, with the steepest drop in kindergarten — more than 340,000 students, according to government data....
