Community Responds to Publishers’ Note
The Swarthmorean’s publishers’ note on the virtual reopening of Wallingford-Swarthmore School District Schools (August 21 issue) provoked much discussion on our website (plus a few letters to the editor). We’re always pleased to host thoughtful discussions of important local issues.
Here are the (lightly edited) comments we have received as of August 31.
I am so proud of my hometown newspaper! Bravo, Swarthmorean, for articulating so well what pediatricians like myself have been saying for a long long time.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Helge Hartung
I would love to have my kids in school, and, had the hybrid option remained, I would have sent them. However, it is incorrect to compare Target employees, working in a big-box store with wide aisles and 20’ ceilings and helping customers who walk through the store for a few minutes, with a teacher in a room, with limited ventilation, 6’ or less away from 15+ kids for hours a day.
I really want my daughters, especially my fifth grader, in the classroom. But I also want my wife, a teacher who is on the north side of 50, to survive the fall. This article takes a rather cavalier attitude towards her safety.
The one place I agree is that Superintendent Lisa Palmer does not appear to have applied much creativity to the planning process. We need creative solutions that allow our children to thrive while keeping our teachers safe.
Andy Rieger
As a teacher (out of district) and a parent, I flatly disagree with this. No one believes a virtual education is satisfactory. However, it is the safest alternative we have for our children, particularly our teenagers, and our community, particularly our teachers and our seniors. It is very possible that our case rates will be very low in late September and we can return to in-person classes AND stay open. The plan is not to abandon kids to substandard education, but to provide the best education possible while mitigating risks to an entire community AND paving the way to open more safely.
Finally, as a teacher, I implore you to have some faith in us. I dare say we can move mountains, and while virtual education may not be ideal, it may, in fact, teach your kids something.
Hillary O’Connor
The decision has been made. Now is not the time to point fingers and create further divides. If you truly want solutions for families, as you claim in this piece, then use your voice to put out a call for the community to come together and find positive solutions. Insulting the school board and encouraging more community infighting is out of character for Swarthmore and not a good look.
Jennifer Zwitch
Thank you Todd, Rob, and Greg! I too am baffled about the fact that we as a society have chosen to allow casinos, bars, gyms, and indoor dining to operate while keeping schools closed. Why haven’t we put all our energies and resources into making sure schools have everything they need to open safely? There are ways to open schools while keeping kids, teachers, and staff safe — these guidelines have been published and were being implemented in many schools before the misguided recommendation from Chester County Health Department that schools open online, regardless of each school’s ability to implement a safety plan.
If there are specific concerns about spacing, ventilation, sanitation, etc., in a school, then we as a society and the school board should be thinking about how to solve those problems. We should NOT just be resorting to online school because we failed to think creatively about the problem.
The notion that online school is the “safest” option ignores the very real facts about what happens when school is not open. As you so eloquently stated, this is a particularly acute concern for families who cannot afford to hire tutors or for parents who have to work full time and cannot supervise their kids all day. We are in a moment in history when we have all become aware of glaring inequalities in educational and social opportunities in our society, and we are supposed to be doing everything we can to reduce those disparities. Instead, we are creating a system where those who can afford it will manage to get through online school with the help of tutors and “pods,” while the folks who were already the most disadvantaged get left further behind.
If we don’t fix this, we will look back 20 years from now and regret our failures. Do we really want to be the generation that prioritized casinos and bars over schools? I certainly don’t.
Erum Hartung
Well done Swarthmorean and THANK YOU, Jennifer Lentz, for voicing the opinion of many in our district. During this difficult time, true leadership emerges and poor leadership is exposed. Unfortunately for our school administration and board, the latter applies. Our board has regularly made bad decisions with long-term negative impact to our community, and this is another shining example. School can be conducted safely, as demonstrated by the thoughtful plans in other districts and those being implemented by private and parochial schools in Pennsylvania. Our community needs to remember, when voting for the four board members eligible for re-election in 2021, that new leadership is needed for the betterment of our children and community.
Bob Kelly
This is the first time in my seven years of living here that I’ve ever seriously considered cancelling my subscription to this newspaper. The utter lack of science or care for the health of children or anyone else in the community shown in this piece make me seriously question your motives for publishing a newspaper for the community. It is not the role of the school to babysit the community’s children, and you’re responding to the failings of our country’s utter devotion to capitalism at the cost of everything else by blaming the schools. It’s disgraceful.
J.
Thank you, Swarthmorean, for finally saying what the “vocal minority” has been saying for months. Over 70% of parents want our kids back in school. The school board seems to forget that they represent us, and don’t get to judge what they think is best
M. Kearns
Brilliant work. More people need to hear this! Our kids are missing essential years of learning and development. Well said, Todd and the Swarthmorean team.
Marc P.
I appreciate and applaud the civil debate and the courteous respect demonstrated in these comments. Until we attain the perfect state of universal agreement, every opinion is worthy of respectful observation and civil discourse.
Jim King
Neither a fully remote option nor a hybrid model are perfect scenarios, but we live in an imperfect time. I agree with the board’s decision because they did, in fact, follow the science. They didn’t draw false parallels between kids sharing an enclosed space for six hours a day to adults spending less than an hour a few times a month to pick up necessities at a store. They looked at the spikes that occurred after Memorial Day and July 4, and recognized that a spike was likely to occur after Labor Day, too. As a parent, as much as I’d love for my kids to have a typical school experience, the instability of beginning hybrid only to scurry to react to a spike two weeks later is not a good option. In these unstable times, even an imperfect solution (among other imperfect solutions) that provides stability is the option I’m happy with for my kids.
Karen Sharif
We did choose hybrid for our high school student back in July, but I still vehemently DISAGREE with this opinion piece.
No doubt, the spring did not go well. But there has been a great deal of planning for the fall, and I am willing to give everyone a chance to make fall virtual learning the best it can be.
I don’t think that any of us knows what the results of a parent survey would be today vs. July. But, even if 70% chose hybrid, it is a BIG and UNFAIR leap to say that the board and administration have failed our children. I think our board and administration have been agonizing over these decisions. They have a direct line to the Chester County Health Department and other medical experts in making those hard decisions about the risks of sustained indoor exposure (which is different than shopping at Target) and the anticipated uptick after Labor Day. I do want them to continue brainstorming more creative options, but they have taken their responsibilities to our children seriously.
Strath Haven parent
The use of the word “guise” (“an external form, appearance, or manner of presentation, typically concealing the true nature of something”: Oxford dictionary ) in the second sentence of the publishers’ note betrays the bias inherent in the view(s) of the author(s) of this article. To suggest that the school board and faculty have a hidden agenda is ridiculous and a disservice to the work they put in to provide the best education for the children within the district. One can disagree with their decisions without suggesting ulterior motives.
Gerard Hooper
It is disheartening beyond words to witness our hometown newspaper that has uplifted our community for so long become just another source of division. Your editorial opinion is a disingenuous masquerade of concern for those most at risk in an online learning environment, when in fact you are simply advocating in your own self-interest.
Our school district leadership and our school board are following the recommendations of experts from the world-renowned Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Have the businessmen who publish the Swarthmorean personally consulted with these same experts? With any experts in virology and epidemiology? In matters of COVID-related health and safety, I place my trust in the scientists who are expert in the field. To the physicians who have commented here who disagree with the district’s expert consultants, I respectfully remind you that there is specialization in medicine for a reason. You may be caring for COVID patients, but you are not expert in virology and epidemiology. I thank you for caring for patients everyday, but humbly ask you to respect the expertise of your colleagues.
K.R.
Fantastic article, thank you! I am also baffled by the decision to close schools until October. Shouldn’t we make decisions based upon the actual data rather than a guess? I encourage everyone to look critically at the numbers, rather than accept one person’s viewpoint. As an emergency doctor who has seen COVID patients since March, I strongly feel that our numbers indicate that it is safe to go back to school. By closing schools, we are only widening the gap, letting our kids fall behind, and increasing mental and emotional illness in our community.
Melissa Zeserson
Todd, Robert, Gregory, I commend you on your courage in publishing this. Now your community knows exactly how much you value the health and lives of school staff, teachers, and their families. I sincerely hope they memorialize your names on a plaque, so that we will never forget. Perhaps my assumptions are wrong, but you seem to have the resolute demeanor of experts. I suspect that, dare I say it, you may have even mansplained a thing or two to some fortuitous passersby.
As we all know, a liberal arts education instantly confers on one the knowledge of a highly cited microbiologist. Surely, experts in epidemiology are in high demand these days, so I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedules to explain in plain language that, unlike in other, less-developed nations, viruses in America respect the democratic process.
Who among us has not spent eight hours in a Target perusing all those floors of delightful merchandise until told to leave by security because people were starting to feel uncomfortable? If those helpful Target workers can handle me hovering around them all day, a teacher should be able to handle a roomful of our kids.
That we should heed the advice of a select group of pediatricians should go without saying. They are full of helpful advice such as “Yes, a newborn screaming all night every night is perfectly normal.” I cannot fathom how we survived as a species for hundreds of thousands of years without board-certified, licensed practitioners.
Imagine the decades of therapy sessions and prescriptions our children must now endure because of this debacle. One whole month of Zoom calls in pajamas? How would that even begin to prepare them for the college experience? If our schools would reopen, all the teachers would simply have to do is not die. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Certainly, there is a prescription for death also? I’m pretty sure there is, but please don’t quote me on that.
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment that our school district should solve all the ills of our society, such as lack of adequate affordable child care, economic hardship, and food insecurity. All these problems would magically go away if the teachers would just spend some quality time with our children.
In that same vein, I salute Jennifer Lentz. Her name should be added to your plaque. She is definitely smarter than everyone else. She also cares about us, her ward.
I especially enjoyed your framing of this unfortunate situation as Us vs. Them. When we look at the insidious truth under a giant microscope, are not teachers the ultimate villains? How dare they subject our precious children to all these boring facts of ancient history? 1918 was such a long time ago. How is that remotely relevant to our advanced modern society? They pretend to nurture our children with scrumptious information, but as in a summer blockbuster movie of yesteryear, they turn out to be the archnemeses.
-Hao
Keep up the fantastic work. LOVE THIS!!!!
Rhoda O’Donnell
This is incredibly irresponsible.
Anonymous
Wow — a very powerful article, so well written. It highlights how backwards our government is in prioritizing non-essential businesses over education, which should be one of our top priorities. In a time when we are fighting to correct racial and socioeconomic injustices, decisions like this will only further the divide. I know these decisions are not easy to make, and I don’t envy the position our school board is in, but I wish they had made their decision on what our actual numbers are (which meet Department of Health (DOH) metrics for safe hybrid learning) rather than on hypotheticals. On a positive note, the Chester County DOH site shows that the numbers in our county have continued to improve for the fourth week in a row, and that our district data is one of the best in the county. Let’s hope Delaware County continues to mask up, socially distance, and act responsibly so that we can safely get these children back into their classrooms come October.
-M. Zeitz
I appreciate all of our VOLUNTEER school board members. This is not a full time job for them, they choose to volunteer their time to make our school better, and they care for our kids’ education. None of them signed up knowing that they would have to deal with a pandemic, and they are doing their best to protect our children and surrounding community. Are they making the right call? I don’t know. How many times are classes going to have to shut down as kids get sick and need to wait for a COVID test? I don’t have that answer. Is that better than just being cautious, or is the stop/start method better? It’s easy to sit back and play Monday morning quarterback, saying “Oh if I were on the board, I would do this or do that.”
We are humans and of course have opinions. I just find using this platform, that represents our community, is an irresponsible place to maliciously state that our board is intentionally “sacrificing our kids’ educational and psychosocial well being.”
On another note, can you name just one public school in our county or surrounding counties that are starting the school year with in-person learning? Do you think every school in the area is sacrificing kids’ education under some big guise? When did the “follow the science” mantra get the addendum “except when it’s inconvenient to me”?
-M.M.Q.B.
There isn’t an easy answer, however the massive disadvantage to ESL [English as second language] students, children with special needs, and children who are economically disadvantaged is an extremely valid point. Parents across the country are bringing lawsuits against school districts for violation of their child’s right to FAPE [free appropriate public education]. If I had an IEP [Individualized Education Program] student in WSSD, I would definitely sue for additional hours of in-person instruction. Luckily, some providers are stepping in to fill the gap for at least some children with special needs, such as the Social Enrichment Center in Media which will provide programs for students on the autism spectrum.
The point that some parents will opt for private school is also accurate. I made that choice before the pandemic when I moved my sons to the Prep for high school. That school plans to provide two days of in-person instruction per week this fall.
For those parents who are frustrated with the district, perhaps it’s time to think about the downside of being dependent on government for education. There are great alternatives to WSSD in our area.
-Kristina Vacha
