I'm watching my school district board meeting, where they are discussing the concerns with how we return to instruction.

Everyone who is speaking from the community and our board are speaking politely and intelligently. People are taking about mental health concerns among all the other issues. Some community members voiced concern for the teachers' health, which was nice to hear. The board is even examining scientific data on infection rates.

This is so incredibly refreshing.

#CoSoTeachers

^ This group of people who I work for couldn't be more different than the board which was in place when I began teaching in the district. That group was adversarial and inflexible, and actively fought the concerns of the teachers.

It took a long time, but over the last 10 years, this community has spoken loud and clear at the polls to make it known that collaboration is what works best.

One parent who is also a healthcare worker and teaches at a regional medical school raised a great point I haven't heard anywhere else. He talked about how he sees Covid patients every day, and then went on to say:

Many people are (correctly) pointing out how being out of school takes a toll on students' mental health. But what if a student loses a close friend, or a teacher who they built a long relationship with to thus virus? Think of that mental health impact.

The discussion now is delaying opening in-person instruction for a month or two, until the county has their game more together in terms of better testing turnarounds and contact tracing.

That's... Reasonable! Knock me over with a feather!

We're going full virtual for first quarter. So happy my board put safety first, and overruled the admin plan of giving parents choices between 3 concurrent programs that would be a complete mess to implement.