The groan you hear is the creaking doors of a widening achievement gap. Districts have played tech catch-up since the ’90s. While District A ‘s been 1:1 for years, District B sent kids to the “computer lab” a few times a week. District B lost the online game before it began.

Let’s just own this thing for a change. Property-tax based school funding is inherently discriminatory. I live in a district that once asked its PTO to stop raising money because they did not know what to do with what they had. My girls had flat screen TVs to watch in their high school lounge. My students didn’t even have a lounge.

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Eduhonesty: I understand why Chicago is frantic to open school doors. Friends who work in Chicago complain about students who simply are not bothering to log in. Other students are logging in but not participating. You can prepare the most brilliant lesson ever designed, but it doesn’t matter if Brent and Ginger don’t log in, or if they wander away to get a snack in the middle of that lesson,

It’s been clear for a long time that a greater percentage of kids in traditionally college-bound districts are logging in. More of them overall are completing homework. The achievement gap will continue to widen as this occurs.

THIS IS WHY ALL AREAS SHOULD FOLLOW PRESIDENT BIDEN’S LEAD. VACCINATE THE TEACHERS. Biden says teachers should move up in priority to receive Covid-19 vaccine – CNN Do we want those schools open? VACCINATE THE TEACHERS.

I have worked in those old schools. I don’t believe that all of them can be properly ventilated. I don’t trust kids to follow all the rules about distancing and masks. (Anyone who does probably never had kids.) I know how crowded halls and cafeterias are. If we put everybody back in the same school that was overcrowded for the last decade, that school will still be overcrowded.

Those teachers across the country who are fighting openings? Why don’t we try listening to them for a change? Based on what they have heard and read, many teachers are uncomfortable going into the classrooms they know. They have seen what the hallways of their schools look like. They have a pretty good idea of what to expect if schools open. Dismissing teachers’ rational concerns is likely to become one more nail in the coffin as some of America’s teachers weigh whether or not to continue teaching in the future.

Two shots. It takes two shots.

Please — let’s reassure our nation’s teachers. Adding health worries to all the other stresses of teaching seems monstrously unfair now that those shots are out there.

Merriam Webster’s definition of first responders: a person who is among those responsible for going immediately to the scene of an accident or emergency to provide assistance. Teachers are their own version of first responders. I guarantee readers an academic emergency has been underway since last spring.

Let’s rescue the best and sometimes only people in position to step in and mitigate our learning losses. While we dig our way out of the learning hole that COVID has dug through the heart of our neighborhoods, let’s support teachers. Reader, are you in a state that has not bumped teachers into the current vaccination pool? When you have a free moment, please contact your legislative leaders to let them know you support vaccinating teachers now.

In practical terms, those shots may shut down most or all of today’s fights about opening schools.

A last observation: Please see my previous post, though, for a take on why not all children should be obliged to walk through those school doors. Privilege and School Re-openings | Notes from the Educational Trenches (eduhonesty.com)