It Could Happen Here - Chicago Public School's Pro-COVID Lockout Part 2

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

Part 2 of our interview with Lucy about COVID in Chicago public schools in which we take a look at what these classrooms are actually like and examine the broader implications of these actions for the labor movement in general.Chicago teachers currently aren't getting paid, you can support them individually or collectively here: https://twitter.com/Itmechr3/status/1480711797736943617?s=20 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things going badly and falling apart. And today we are back with part two of our interview with Lucy about how the Chicago public school system is falling apart under the relentless assault of cruelty, malice, and incompetence by the Chicago public schools and by the mayor, Lori Lightfoot.

Enjoy. There's another thing I want to talk about a bit, which is when you've been back, when you've been sort of teaching in these really like sort of, what is it actually like to teach in these classrooms? And like, you know, how safe actually is it so i mean i've been in a lot of different environments when i was teaching middle schoolers i did not feel super covid safe um they are i don't know if people know this about middle school age kids they love to touch each other especially boys they love to like wrestle they're always putting each other in headlocks i'm constantly having to just be like six feet six feet apart or three feet or whatever cdc has said we are now um they don't put their masks on they put their masks in their mouths all the time like in their mouths um oh no there's they're constantly

finding like weird little excuses to have their mask off like they'll just sit there with like like they're allowed to have water bottles because they can't use the water fountains they'll just sit there with like a straw on their mouth for like extended amounts of time and i'm like i need you to put your mask up take quick sips and put your mask up and they're like i'm drinking like i'm gonna be drinking at the end of this day but like i know take a quick sip. Put your mask back up. It's really, really important for your safety. And then I have other kids who are absolutely straight up, like, terrified of this because, like, they've lost parents.

They've lost grandparents. It's really scary. At the high school level, it's been a little better. High school kids are a little more rational. Um, but I still have a few who are just like their masks are down around their chins all the time or under their nose. And I'm like several times the class period, I'm like, okay, time for everybody to do a mask check. Make sure your mask is covering your nose, your mouth, your chin. Um, I'll remind them, like I have a spouse at home who has an underlying condition and like,

please don't have me bring home a deadly disease to him because that would really not be great. Most of them are pretty good, but still they're getting sick. Like I think we had like 40 kids out of my building on Monday and like 28 staff members or something like that were out. And we had one sub. Oh, God. Which is the other, that's the other issue is this isn't really a question of if we should go remote. It's a question of when will we be forced to go remote? And we can either do that now before everybody has gotten sick and wait for this to subside and get some better mitigation strategies in place. Or we can do it after everybody is sick and then we're going toide and get some better mitigation strategies in place or we can

do it after everybody is sick and then we're going to be scrambling to figure it out and also be sick at the same time i don't really see how that makes any sense yeah and that's the part of this that i've just been like i i just like i don't get it like i could just like fundamentally there's there's just like a mental break where it's like i i don't understand why like lightfoot and cps are so insistent about not going remote like i i get that like yeah it's it's hard on kids but it's like it's it's you know it it is the years 2020 2021 and 2022 like no matter what you do it's it's hard on the kids and it's like yeah just i also i wonder how much of it is the remote learning that's hard on them and how much of it is just the um everything around them is crashing and falling and burning around their

ears because um the messaging that they've been getting is that they don't matter. They're not important. Their safety isn't important. Their families aren't important. And some of them like want to be remote. A lot of them, a lot of their parents want them to be remote. They're like, you know, it's not as good, but at least I feel safe. Some of them even thrived in remote, like actually did pretty well. And I really wish that it was just an option

for those students who actually did well with it that they could just like if we even ended up with like a third of our students choosing it it would mitigate this so much because that's a third of the people not there to spread it around um so can i ask like how big how big your class sizes are um right now the building i'm in now i have like 25 to 30 in some my it was kind of similar at the last building like they're in that range 25 30 i have like always have like one or two that are like 20 or below that are usually um special education like inclusion classes where i have a co-teacher um but yeah it's you know some of them are pretty crowded and it really varies by school like there's definitely schools that have over 30 kids in a room um and don't have the staff because it's just that's the other thing is like they keep talking about you know i keep seeing people be like fire all the teachers and i'm like good luck like yeah yes is

chronically understaffed what are you gonna do yes it's like this like yeah i think again like this job is really hard like it's being a teacher yeah it's hard it's exhausting it's very very rewarding like when it's good it's great when it's bad it is miserable yeah um so yeah and like what it looks like and i mean that's you know it depends it really depends on what school you're in um i think everybody can agree that it is difficult right now. So we, we have like air purifiers going and masks on, and I cannot understand what my kids are saying a lot of the time. Like I do not know. And they speak so quietly. Yeah. Like I need you to shout it, say it like you mean, whatever it is.

So, but you know, that's been challenging and frustrating and exhausting, but the worst thing ever is finding out that one of my students is sick. Like it, I hate when they're, I hate it when they hurt, like whenever that one of them is hurting, I feel bad. And knowing that their home's sick is it's, it's really upsetting. And just, it's, you know, it's distressing for teachers to know that their kids are struggling in a way like that. So that's, you know, we want them to be safe.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

as part of My Duda Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, like these kids, it's like, and this is true of the staff too, when you're getting sick, like yeah like some of these people will be okay but enormous numbers of people are like some of these people are going to die so these people a lot of these people are going to get disabled um yeah i mean the the long-term long-term effects are really bad and we you know one of if people remember uh we we did an episode with one of our friends who's a nurse and like yeah like he he had long covid his long covid was like he he couldn't do more than like like getting out of bed or like like just walking across a room would just put him in bed all day because like there's you know there's an enormous range of sort of like of of long covid side effects and yeah it's like it's

it's just like cps is just child public schools. It's just in like, they're getting people killed. Yeah. And it's, and it's, you know, that's like the question, like they keep talking about percentages and I'm like, these are human beings. Every one of those numbers is a human. So when you say like only, you know, point whatever percent are going to be long term affected, like, OK, those are people. Can we stop like dehumanizing them with these data points? And as for like the issue with like how kids are less affected by it or whatever, like the fact is, like, we allow this to spread around the more variants we're going to see and yep we don't know that the next variant

isn't going to be the one that is really significantly harmful to children yeah and we are basically turning our schools into these petri dishes where this thing can mutate and become stronger and now we have vaccinated people who are in that mix and it's becoming resistant to the vaccine so i you know i'm i'm a social studies teacher not a science teacher but this seems like a bad move to me yeah yeah it's i don't know like it's just sort of heartbreaking in a lot of ways i mean it's just like they've just decided that you know and again like i don't know why lightfoot's doing this like maybe it's just like she wants to shore up her base thing because she's trying to build a base among like the just

like rich weird north siders or something but like it's she's a small business person that's always been people are the small business owners who don't want to close schools because then, you know, their workers won't come in. And, you know, I want to feel sorry for them, but I don't. No, I don't. No. Like, fuck you. Because there's also a lot of small business owners who have been very supportive of us. We had, there was like a taco place offering free burritos to us.

I really appreciate that. There's a lot of people in the community who understand that the lives of our children are so much more important than you missing two weeks of profit. People figure that out. And if you want to bail out businesses um we can figure that out but right now and also like is is saying like we have we aren't we refuse to do anything that might be inconvenient for business owners like what is that yeah and it's like it's like yeah so you know and also yeah but like business owners did get bailed out like they got they got they got zero percent loans most of those loans got written off.

Meanwhile, yeah, I was like, well, okay, what did Life do with the COVID money? She gave it to the cops. Oh, hey, guess who's also just a rampant spreader of COVID? Oh, yeah, it's the cops. Yeah. Guess who resisted vaccines the most? The cops. There is one funny thing, which I'm

actually very excited about, which is that the cops are having their first... they have a new class graduating, but for the police academies, which is really bad. And there's a whole, well, one of the like Lightfoot's things was that there was a huge campaign against building more police academies because, you know, everyone hates the Chicago Police Department. They're awful. department they're awful and if you have 100 billion dollars for a new police academy why or 100 million or whatever it was why can't you put some better ventilation in the schools yeah well it's good yeah it's because because like the cpd are like basically feudal lords they have knights they go out they can shoot you like they rob you they just like any any any large number of like black kids on the streets like if you just have

like 15 kids walking around like eight quad cars will show up and you know there was in lightfoot was like no no her like one of her campaign things big campaign things like no no we're gonna make sure we build these academies and but so they're they're having their first like round they've been having trouble recruiting because of covid which is good yeah and and they're they're about to have their first police academy exam and it's going to be in person and i am this is the only one of the few is this jr bosonaro where it's like i am rooting for the virus here like please god save us from these cops but yeah i mean it's it's but they're just gonna bring it home and spread it around yeah yeah that's the sad thing it's it's just it's grotesque and yeah yeah it's

been this thing where i'm like watching like the school system is just throwing their hands up and saying we don't care we're done the health system the health care system is like crashing and burning all around us nurses are quitting are quitting. Hospitals are like, we don't have room for more patients. Like, did you have a cancer treatment schedule? Sorry. Did you have a surgery scheduled? Sorry. I just saw somebody on Twitter saying she has a brain tumor and she's supposed to have a surgery for it. And she can't now because of COVID because they have no beds. There aren't any any and you're telling me that the right move right now is to keep the schools open which has always been yep in every every pandemic that we've ever had schools and hospitals and prisons are like

the place where the whatever diseases spreads and i know we've been claiming that like there's not been spread in schools but we've now seen the data that there in fact is a huge amount which i've been like screaming about this since we started that their contact tracing models are they're absurd they are like kafka-esque like basically um so we start from the assumption that everybody is six feet apart and wearing their mask at all times yeah which they're not it's not it's not even it's not even physically possible in a lot of classrooms for that to be happening and then two we start with the assumption that those things work and so you'll get a call from a contact tracer that's like, hey, on, you know, like last Tuesday of Tuesday of last week, were you within six feet of any of your eighth graders for more than 15 minutes? I don't know. I have no idea. Even if like, even if I did know what difference does

it make? It is an aerosolized virus. It is in the air. And the more you sit in classrooms, the more it accumulates. Like we have seen like studies about this. We've seen studies about how CO2 accumulates in the air when there's crowds we know that stuff accumulates like that in classrooms very very quickly and you're gonna tell me that as long as i wasn't within 15 or within six feet for more than 15 continuous minutes not even like um not even 15 minutes like added up throughout the day just 15 minutes continuously i'm not gonna get a virus are you shitting me like yeah that makes no sense and so then if and if and if your answer to those questions are no because whatever you were following the rules then they're like okay you got covid somewhere else it wasn't at school

yeah no it doesn't yeah it's nonsense it's like i go to work and i go home i don't do anything else so i don't know where else it's coming from. Yeah. And I also just want to do a brief digression about, like, okay, so, like, I went to, like, a pretty good, like, a pretty well, like, a very well-funded, like, Chicago area sort of school. And, like, okay, those places, ventilation sucks. Like, again, like, again, I went to a very well-funded school. Like, we had drowned dead rats falling out of the ceiling like wow it was it was incredibly my great high school memories was my principal just like running full tilt pushing a trash can because dead my school was wild we had how bad it was a we had a chemistry teacher let a kid set off a smoke bomb

like that they'd made like in a classroom but it didn't work so it just like actually blew up like it was a time but like yeah like it does project-based learning okay yeah gotta light the school on fire but like like this is a this is like yeah like like these schools are not like they're not safe environments yeah the building i worked in at the beginning of the year was 100 years old it was built in 1920 and there was always this like sewage smell around the bathroom because the pipes were messed up it was weird like they couldn't fix it i think it was the i was the second or third time my building lit on fire. Like we,

there was a, there was a whole thing of the building that was made of asbestos and they just had left it there because it was like, Oh, it wasn't exposed. Yeah. Yes. We'll still have asbestos.

Yeah. All over. Like, again, like I, I, I went to like a good, well-funded one of these schools,

right? Like it's, I don't, I think there's, there's like, there's, there's these two, there's two things I think it, like, is interesting.

Like, there's, when you, like, talk to, like, the people who want the schools to open back up, right? They'll, they'll start talking about, like, oh, no, it's fine. Everyone wears masks. Everyone's vaccinated. Everyone's 60 to 40. It's like, no! No, they're not. Like, this, this is how it works in this, like, imaginary play world you've, like, created in your head.

I'm like, have you ever met a child? Yeah! Like, have you met your own children like oh and that's the best it's like well i've been having my kids wear a mask like you have you're full of shit okay because i told that kid to put their mask on like 15 times yesterday and i love them beautiful face i hope they get to show it off someday but right now yeah keep it covered up, please. I'm begging you.

And I'm like, I'm not like that teacher who's really authoritarian. Like I've never been good at like writing kids up and getting on them for stuff because it's just like, I don't know. I hate doing that. I hate being that person. Yeah. So it's been like really, it's like a struggle it's like am i going to be the person who nags them every five seconds or am i going to be um the teacher that they like and want to learn from like yeah you know this isn't sustainable so but you're asking like the attitudes of people who want to open

schools back up and i it's it's hard because I I have talked to parents who are worried but they are also very upset because they see that their kids are struggling yeah and I really do feel for them on that like I really really do it is hard to see a kid struggle but it is harder I think to see a kid sick that is really hard. And it's just this, like, there are ways that we can overcome the difficulties of remote learning. We can find ways to give them the emotional support. We can find better socializing outlets. But I don't know how we fix, like, you've become very ill and your body isn't going to recover in the way that you thought it would.

Like, I don't, I can't fix that. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonorum, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So that's something I've heard from other teachers that like that prepare remote learning stuff like is harder and takes more work than. Yeah, it does. It's really rough. I don't like doing it. I want to be in the classroom, but. Yeah. And I just I just want to like once again, yell at all're like, yeah, like you are advocating to do more work because that's that's the thing that will keep the kids safe.

And it's. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't understand, like the behind the scenes, how the sausage gets made of a classroom. But I think a lot of people have this idea that, like, we are given curriculum and plans and materials pre-made. And sometimes that's true it depends on your subject mine is social studies is not a subject where that happens very much which is part of why I like it because I like to be creative so like my week looks like there are a lot of hours after school where I am sitting down, I'm looking at the standards that I need to teach, the topics that I need to teach, and I'm researching it and learning it and finding

a way to teach that to kids who don't have the same like baseline knowledge that I have. And then I'm creating like an activity for them i'm creating um you're i'm finding like material like sources and like videos and stuff that they can watch that are going to help them or things to read i'm modifying those things for the kids who have um you know learning differences i'm translating some of those things into spanish for kids who don't really read very well in english yet so like that's a ton of work on its own. And then when we switched to remote, we have to figure out how to do all of that on Google classroom where now it has to all be typed. Like, or, you know, like how do I figure, like, how do I do a group project online? How do I

let them do something creative that isn't just sitting here answering questions on a worksheet? That's hard. And we've been really good at it. And I've found all kinds of really cool tools to do that with, but it's so much work and it's work that I'm willing to do because I care about my job. I enjoy my work. I love my students, but, you know, and i want them to be safe but like you know it is a ton of work i'm not just sitting here eating bonbons all day or drinking cocktails yeah and i think there's there's like a larger sort of like like americans have this like this sexist sort of like hatred of like or in disrespect to people who do both care work and a lot and creative work yeah absolutely both and then simultaneously there's this sort of like you know the the there's there's there's a

resentment to people who get to actually do something that helps people and you know i think like right now we're seeing just the most toxic fusion of that which is that like yeah i know like these like you know instead of like you know recognizing the enormous amount of work that that's going into all like that's going into into teaching like the amount of sort of like the care and love that's going into the creativity that's going into it and just like like the people people's willing that like you're willing list to make like enormous sacrifices to try to keep these kids safe they're just like no like the teachers are lazy they don't want to work they're going on strike like and it's yeah you know and it's like they're doing this and it's

like yeah like you you are like they're killing their own kids and it's just like it's it's this weird fusion of like we we occupy the space as this like combination of like feminized care labor emotional labor and um that sort of like like intelligentsia like professional white collar intellectual kind of thing and then also we're teaching a um more introductory level of our subjects so we're seen as like discount intellectuals who are also women who do care work so it's it's very frustrating and i don't think a lot of people understand the amount of um skill and expertise it takes to be a teacher and be effective at it like it's not just i need to know social studies to the level that a 12th grader would know it.

It's I need to know social studies beyond that level and know how to communicate it to a high school student. And also I need to know a lot of stuff about like child development. It's, it's really, it's something. And I, you know, I find that to be fun and challenging but i wish it was respected yeah and you know and then you're talking about like people are sacrificing their own kids i want to point out a lot like i think there's a racial component to this yeah um the people who are in wealthier schools and who are mostly white know that their kids are going to be fine. Like they are in

schools that actually do have the resources to distance that have air filters that have good ventilation. They're vaccinated. Their kids are probably going to be fine. The kids that aren't going to be fine are low income students of color. And it has always been this way. It's always been this way with schools. Like when schools were desegregated, we started with private school vouchers and we started with all of these like state testing requirements and withholding funding from schools that don't meet those, you know, test standards and all of these, like, um, this extra oversight on teachers, like that stuff all comes back to white people don't want to have to worry about black people's kids.

That's it. And, you know, they will move their kids out to the North side or to the suburbs or whatever. Notice that all of those suburbs schools have flipped remote. Notice that Lori Lightfoot's kids are in a charter school that is not remote. and more than that yeah like lightfoot lightfoot lightfoot won't eat like lightfoot will not put herself in a room with this with the same number of people no like a teacher has to go to every day she won't do it she was telling people at the press conferences they had to wear their masks even though she wasn't wearing hers which was very strange to me it's like like that's the thing like when you get to the politician level they know it's dangerous like they know it they they you can tell me

yeah like they won't do it but like no no they're they're perfectly willing to just send to send you off to die to send all these kids off to die and it's just yeah sometimes i feel i get kind of doomer and I wonder if like if that's not the plan. Like, is it that I mean, I don't really believe that. I think what it really is, is this just like malicious neglect? Like if you're somebody who's a policymaker and someone comes to you and it's like, I need you to care about this population here that doesn't have a lot of money and needs a lot of things. And you, the policymaker are going to be like, oh, that sounds like so much work. And then somebody else is going to come to you and be like, I need

these things over here. And I do have a lot of money and I do have a lot of influence and I'm going to make your life difficult if you don't do what I want. They're going to do what that other side wants. And what that other side wants right now is for kids to get back into school so they can have free daycare so parents can go to work and that's and that's it and teachers are standing here being like I didn't get a master's degree and do you know countless hours of professional development to be a babysitter you and no, not to knock babysitters. I was a nanny for a long time. That is hard work, but, um, I didn't get a master's degree to be a babysitter. I got a master's degree to be a teacher. And I'm in an environment right now where I can't really teach

effectively. And all I'm doing is babysitting. They want to warehouse kids. That is what we're doing with the schools. That's why they want them open and it's you know it's it's hard not to feel like they just are doing it because they hate us even though i know it's not it just it does feel that way i i will like i will say that like so you're so if you become elected as the mayor of chicago like your job is to break the teachers union like that's that's like that's like, that's, that's, that's, that's like the role you're auditioning for.

And they have been, they have been trying to do this for literally my entire lifetime. They've been trying to do this like since before I was born, like that's honestly like wouldn't surprise me if this was another part of this was just them once again, trying to break the teachers union. Oh, absolutely.

And like, and if, and not even just that, like, yeah, you don't mean unlike, like not just on the sort of political level like on the incredible cynical level of we'll just kill them and well it's it's a labor thing like it's not just a

chicago teachers union or even a teachers union thing it is a labor movement across the board thing that um the largest i think the largest unionized workforce in the country is teachers and we on top of that are a union of workers who have the power to absolutely bring our economy to a grinding hole if we want to we could all go on strike right now and nobody's going to do shit until we go back to work um they could if they you know they could try to like replace us with like people who are basically like hall monitors and give kids like canned curriculums, but they wouldn't really be learning very well and parents wouldn't be happy with it and they wouldn't be entering the workforce with the skills they need to make money for the economy, to, you know, make money for the almighty

Dow. So, it has been a project for decades in this country to try to break teachers unions because teacher unions occupy this space where they allow other unions to happen. We have, you know, enough influence on politicians that they can't just disband the labor board and make unions illegal, which they would absolutely fucking love to do. And if they could just get rid of these damn teachers unions, maybe they could do it. So, you know, and that's what you see with the education reform movement, where you have all these people advocating for vouchers and charter schools.

And it's, you know, I, they want to break labor. And I see a lot of, I mean, now I'm going to, I'm going to scold some of my comrades, but I see a lot of leftists who are really skeptical of teachers and don't want to support the teachers union. And I get it. Like there are a lot of teachers who really suck. And there's a lot of teachers who are not radical. Like most teachers are not radical. A lot of them are pretty conservative. But at the same time, if you were to abolish schools immediately right now and break up the teachers unions and all that, you're going to end up with rich people go to school, poor people don't.

If you're poor, your kid goes to work. if your poor year kid goes to work, probably won't be in a coal mine, but you know, they'll probably be like soldering my computer chips or coding or something for like pennies an hour. And I don't want that world. And if you actually care about labor, then you need to support teachers unions because the public schools are central to all of these communities that we want to be reaching. And the unions are the only thing making sure that they stay public yeah so yeah it's like i was like again like two two two two ionica's comrades who are anti-school it's like yeah like okay i hate school i'm for it d-schooling is great but we need to do other things first yeah you have to and like again like

you you you need to like it's like support the workers not the institution like it's like it's like saying i'm a vegan so i'm gonna go after mcdonald's and please like well can you do this like like so like i i my high school was like oh like all this was much like incredibly conservative but everyone was still in the union that was like the one that was the one thing that was like well okay there were there there there were two countervailing forces one was that i the christians didn't seem to understand what liberation theology was so occasionally they'd accidentally hire a leftist because they were like oh you're christian you're fine you're from you're from america yeah we're not gonna question you further the second thing was that even because everyone was in the union and that was like that was that was

literally the only those are the only two left-wing like even like vaguely things i've gotten into so many teaching spaces by talking about how i like critical pedagogy and they don't understand that friary was a communist yeah or being like oh I'm really really really into Chicago history I especially love the history of like labor in Chicago because it's it's huge people here care about it and they don't get that like I'm an anarchist yeah but you know and and a lot of the like um sort of like education reform language, I think it's very funny. It is 100% just lifted from radical like sociologists and anthropologists

and educators who are trying to find ways to dismantle like authoritarian structures in schools. And so they'll come up with these like, you know, like restorative practices and all this stuff and then they kind of get they they make their way up to the ivory tower and then get repackaged in this it's it's like i don't know it's like a machine or something that like sucks up radical ideas brings them up to the academy repackages them to make them nice for politicians and then spits them back out and it is exhausting and i hate it it makes me so mad i'll never forgive people for what they

did to the term restorative justice yeah yeah do you have anything else that you like want to make sure that people like understand about what's happening in the schools right now um i guess just the biggest thing is i want people to understand about what's happening in the schools right now um i guess just the biggest thing is i want people to understand that like if this is a question of when and under what conditions are we going to be forced into a remote learning situation this isn't like we want remote learning because we like it because it's fun it's because it's going to happen if you like it or not the schools are going to close if you like it or not because the unless you're okay with just like people are going to get sick and die and or going to work sick which i think most of us agree that's insane

it is there are you we're going to be in a situation where we don't have enough staff to keep buildings open so either we can try and mitigate that now and keep that from happening, or we can just throw our hands up and say, fine, let the schools collapse. I don't want the schools to collapse. So if we could just go remote for two weeks and get some good testing in and have a vaccine requirement. And personally, I would like to advocate for remote as an option for parents who want it. I don't think that's on the table right

now, but I think more parents out there should be demanding it. And I also would like to say to parents, you have a lot of power that you don't understand. The school districts listen to the parents so much more than teachers. One parent's voice is worth like 10 teacher voices. So if you see something going on in your schools that you're not comfortable with, if you have questions, contact your principals, contact the district, talk to people, talk to the other parents that you know organize yourselves um if we had you know strong parent organizations on our side we would be absolutely unstoppable and we could have the school system that we want and that our kids deserve yeah and i think i like the the right figured this out

a long time ago that you can absolutely yeah look at what they're doing to the school board meetings with crt yeah we could have that for people who are actually good people who care like there's no there's no reason that all the other parents couldn't be going and saying i want my kids to learn about race and i want them to be wearing masks and i want everybody to be vaccinated yeah so i think i think that's a good note to end on we We can make this better. We just have to work together. Try. Yeah.

Do you have anything that you want to plug? Do you have a way to support the teachers? I think I'll send you a flyer that we have. It has some information for contacting aldermen, getting COVID tests, and a petition to sign. If you could post that, I would really appreciate that. I would definitely, definitely do that. Awesome. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for coming on. Yeah, good talking to you. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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