To be clear: He is not dat kind of doctor. Peterson’s Ph.D. of the University of Colorado is in education administration, which he has done since 2001 in the school district Minnetonka (current student population: 10,900).
On Thursday, Peterson introduced his recommendations to the school board for reopening the neighborhood under a “hybrid” model, one that allows for in-person lessons and some distance learning.
Peterson explained that no student should be personally forced to attend school, and that some teachers do not want to return, and others “may not be able to return, because of their own health risks.”
Those who can, and do, will experience the unique challenge of trying to learn further – a skill most springers have tried for the first spring – en personal classes, at the same time. Wille!
While schools in Minneapolis and St. Paul will stick to distance learning to begin the semester, the hybrid model is popular in the suburbs – at least among those who call the shooter. Most large suburban districts plan to reopen on a hybrid basis, the Star Tribune reports.
Let’s hope the people in charge are a little better informed than Peterson, whose remarks also drew the attention of the Minnesota reformer. In his remarks, Peterson seemed to make it worthwhile to send students home in the first place.
“COVID is spreading outside the schools,” he said, making it obvious, but then observed that this one preventative measure did not work to stop coronavirus altogether.
“The closure in the spring was meant to not protect children at school from grandparents, and vulnerable parents, and other family members. How did that work? We still got thousands of grandparents and get sick, and many died. The system could not recognize that students who are not in school go to other places, and that others in our society were not careful about their interactions with other people.Family members, as students, got the virus from those other engagements, they have passed it on to other citizens. We know for a fact that no student got it from school because they are not in school. “
Instead of just condemning risky behavior that takes place outside the control of the school district, Peterson sounds a little sorry. If people continue to spread the virus and stop dying old people, then why should schools be the only ones doing the right thing?
He then made a vague reference to “thousands of deaths and other health-related problems” caused by students’ stay at home, saying: “The research is clear that many more students suffer from the closure than from the coronavirus.”
Yes, doctor. Do you think that the reason students may not have suffered so much from the coronavirus is because … schools were closed?
“Other countries have successfully navigated the virus and not shut it down,” said Peterson, who went on to say that the United States was not one of them.
Peterson went on to say that children at school “are not so affected by the virus, and are not good carriers of the virus,” and recent evidence to the contrary called “just restless” and “not validated by officials.”
Unless your Dr. Anthony Fauci reckons (many do!), Who said late last month that children as young as 10 just seem capable of transmitting the virus as adults. Then again, Fauci said that in an interview with MSNBC, and Peterson, for one, is not so sure about this whole journalistic sector.
“It feels like sometimes the media tends to focus on investigations that scare people, and raise concerns about the threat of the virus,” he said. “Media has a mission to encourage people to stay away from each other, and stay away from businesses and schools.”
We do?
(We do not.)
Interestingly, Peterson added that health care workers continued to work in person – because they … had to? – while I ignore to mention that as many as 200,000 had contracted the virus, and as many as 1,300 may have died.
Shortly before he went on to finally explain the details of his hybrid plan, Peterson threw in one last sweeping statement.
“There are probably more risks to our students and their families from the flu than there are to the virus.”
This is kind of a throwback claim, because a few have even tried to compare coronavirus and flu since, say, March. But, for Peterson’s sake, here’s an excerpt from a recent National Geographic story:
What’s more, scientists today have a better sense of how to measure the lethality of COVID-19, and the numbers are alarming. Using a more sober calculation called the infection-fatal rate, together with the value of the data of the past months, the latest best estimates show that COVID-19 is about 50 to 100 times more deadly then the seasonal flu, on average.
This means that the US and other countries that see business storms have to brace for a very deadly summer and fall if tactics do not change.
We are still in the middle of that deadly summer, including in Minnesota, where 17 more people who tested positive for COVID-19 died over the weekend, bringing the total to 1,657 so far, among a total case counts of nearly 61,000. In the most recent data, per Minnesota Public Radio, the age bracket with the highest rate of increase is 20-29. Second is 0-19, the Minnetonka group and other school districts are welcome back soon.
“I realize that every point I make will probably have someone who disagrees with it,” Peterson said.
While it was happening, one of those people was Denise Specht, president of the Minnesota Union of Education.
Administrators like this should file ethics complaints against them. Their code of ethics says:
“A school administrator will take reasonable action to protect students and staff from adverse health and safety conditions.”#ReopenSafely Discussion 2 / x
– Denise Specht (@DeniseSpecht) August 8, 2020
En:
“A school administrator will not engage in conduct that engages in dishonesty, fraud or misrepresentation in the performance of professional duties.” Https://t.co/UndzUrLenT#ReopenSafely Discussion 3/3
– Denise Specht (@DeniseSpecht) August 8, 2020
We’ll have to see if Peterson’s optimism survives the month of August – or worse, if it’s contagious.
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