Questions frequently asked

Just what is our actual goal here, Massachusetts?

I ask because, after last week's assumption by the state that districts are stuck on how to arrange desks, the Commissioner's On the Desktop this week features this in the opening letter:

As I said on Twitter on Friday:

“I am requesting that you hold off on announcing any final decisions about what reopening will look like for the fall in your district until early August.”

With all due respect, Commissioner, Worcester isn’t going to have twice as many buildings in three weeks. #MAEdu pic.twitter.com/pdX7CG4e81

— Tracy O'Connell Novick (@TracyNovick) July 10, 2020

Neither the infection rate nor the federal stimulus is going to double or triple the number of buildings in Worcester. Our--or any district's--failing to let families and staff know what we know of that NOW is dereliction of duty.

So what are we really trying to do here?
Read through the FAQ and see if, in your view, this indeed addresses the most pressing questions on the minds of district leaders right now.

What is the main goal? It is to reopen schools.
Why are we reopening schools? There is no substitution for in person instruction.

...and so on. This will mean little to some of you, but it reminds me of nothing so much as the Baltimore Catechism, the learned-by-rote recitation that a generation of Catholics were drilled in that you may or may not have absorbed much from but you could snap out the "right" answer when you were asked!

This is about control.
Somehow, in the middle of this pandemic, facing the worst crisis to Massachusetts education in at least this generation, if not several, the most important thing for the Commissioner is not that students and staff are truly kept in healthy conditions--and note that staff continue to have little said about them--nor that district leadership have all the information they need to make decisions--you can't run schools without a way to get kids there, yet we have no transportation guidance as yet, for one--nor that districts make the best plan for the resources available to them--and that INCLUDES BUILDING SPACE--but that he run the show.

As Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone wrote today in Commonwealth Magazine:

There may be a limited number of activities in which we can engage at this point in time while keeping COVID-19 at bay. We need to admit that to ourselves and to the public. I’m the mayor of a city with a $400 million a year local restaurant industry. We would love to have indoor dining fully up and running. It would do wonders for our local economy, restaurant owners, and employees. Yet this disease forces us to make difficult choices. The safety and operational capacity of our schools should come first. If we can run one extra thing and then try to build around it, that thing should be our schools. 

Instead, the state has put schools at the back of the line. We reveal our priorities with what we do. And Massachusetts just entered a new phase of reopenings called Vigilant that opens casinos in advance of opening schools. That’s where our priorities currently reside.

There are a myriad of ways in which we in Massachusetts are doing better than other parts of the country are doing, but when it comes to school reopening, our priorities are messed up across the board. We aren't doing what is needed to get kids back in buildings safely, and we're attempting to force districts not to be straight with staff and families about what is possible, while building plans for what is impossible.
This is far too important for power trips and literal gambling.