A teacher forgot to exit a zoom call7/21/2023 ![]() ![]() And if you’re a family with two working parents, a snow day isn’t just the kids having fun outside. The very idea of a “snow day,” when the entire school system shutters (along with its core mission) is as antiquated and counter-productive as the agrarian-era summer break. Which brings us to January, a punishing winter storm, and power outages that extended schools’ scheduled three-week winter break, in Charlottesville, by four days, even though schools had power after two. A national study found the closures led to a greater risk of widening educational disparities among poorer families and children with disabilities, and increased anxiety, loneliness, child stress, sadness, frustration, indiscipline, and hyperactivity. We learned about the effect of these decisions last fall during parent-teacher meetings, when our beloved teachers told us the vast majority of kids in Charlottesville’s schools were behind in basics like reading, writing, and math. When schools came back in-person in the spring of 2021, they were inexplicably closed every Friday. Eventually, teachers scheduled optional weekly Zoom calls, but those calls were just sessions where students aimlessly said hello to each other for 30 minutes. ![]() No messages, no instructional materials, nothing other than an email with a list of web resources we could access and schedule on our own (think ABC Mouse). ![]() One day in early 2020, we got the message that the schools would be closed the next day. But we also shared in the miserable experience of how schools have been run in Virginia during COVID-19. ![]()
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