It’s Time to Reopen Washington’s Schools

Sensible reopening is our safest bet for keeping our kids mentally and physically healthy - Maia Espinoza

For American families, Labor Day marks the end of summer vacation and the start of a new school year. Parents should be relieved to know that after having to come up with ways to keep their kids engaged and learning amid a pandemic, their kids will again be supervised by expert educators. But not this year. This year, politicians in Olympia are encouraging public schools across Washington to keep kids at home because of a belief that we can’t manage risks associated with COVID-19. Meanwhile, private school students across Washington are being welcomed back to school for in-person instruction. Instead of safely managing risks in public schools that serve the majority of our kids, the person at the top of our state’s schools has decided he would rather wash his hands of any leadership duties and condemn an entire generation of Washington students who will be left behind academically and developmentally. 

The failure to equitably reopen schools in Washington is an assault on working families and single parents and the public education system as a whole. The lack of leadership from Superintendent Reykdal has left local districts and parents to fend for themselves on a back to school plan, resulting in a majority of public schools in our state to resume 100% online. Incredibly, some school districts where face-to-face instruction is not permitted, school facilities are being utilized by private organizations providing in-person learning for a fee. Working families pay taxes to run these facilities and are now being asked to spend twice over to enroll their kids in the private programs housed there. 

I will not stand for a wholesale privatization of our school system like the incumbent is allowing. Working families and single parents have been hung out to dry at a time when we are spending record amounts of money in education. 

I was a single mom. I was raising my daughter, working to bring in money, and studying to complete my college education. If the state had told me I needed to not only do my own studying but also teach my daughter while holding down a job, it would have been impossible to balance it. I’ve heard from countless mothers who have had to quit their jobs in order to ensure the education of their child(ren). Right now, parents are doing their best given the situation, a situation in which the current Superintendent has shown no compassion for the reality facing working parents.

Our state should instead be helping these hero-parents, and that help needs to show up now--not when the legislature convenes in January. The good news is that there is more than enough money in our education budget to help parents ease their financial burden and give children the education they deserve. We can use funds to empower parents to make choices that they judge will help their children learn: technology, internet access, an additional computer, learning aids, and more.

But these investments in at-home education are not the final solution. We desperately need to safely and sensibly reopen our schools in a way that keeps students and teachers safe. Countries like Taiwan and Sweden never closed their schools at all by effectively managing the risks posed in the classroom. In places where schools have since reopened, simple steps like dividing students into pods to attend on alternating days and staggering lunch periods have led to success. Our state allows us to eat at restaurants in groups of 5, so why can’t we find a way to allow our students equal access to what is the state’s paramount duty - a basic education?

The alternative is horrific. The CDC found that up to 1 in 4 Americans considered suicide in June. The isolation of students and the overburdening of parents are clearly part of that equation. We have to release the pressure that is stressing our society by prioritizing the reopening of our schools, safely.

We have reached a point where it’s more dangerous and detrimental to keep kids at home, apart from their friends and deprived of educational resources. We are not going to live in a zero-infection Washington in the near future so we have to manage the risks. We cannot let our children down by allowing them to permanently behind our norms for development. Our kids deserve better and we should deliver it.