Free Republic

For the past year, parents and students across the county, mostly in Democrat-run municipalities, have been experiencing excessive levels of stress due to unending school closures. Red states like Florida, Texas, and South Dakota have been open for months. Meanwhile, the teacher’s unions have a stranglehold on the public schools in Democrat states, refusing to open for a litany of absurd reasons. Part of me sympathizes with the conservative parents who are struggling to cope with working from home and the online curriculum management of their children. (Though that sympathy does not extend to liberal parents who knowingly voted for...

As an adult who teaches, I got to choose an open school. Union politics have now barred millions of families from a similar privilege.I don’t blame schools for closing in March. Very little was known about COVID-19 then, so closures seemed the safest decision amid the uncertainty. Neither do I blame schools for a meager showing that semester. My own district threw together online curricula and instructional materials practically overnight. The results were dismal, but it’s the best many could have done given the situation. However, we’ve now had nine months to understand this virus, and all the evidence favors...

Here in Georgia, the mass hysteria about the coronavirus has caused the governor to declare a “public health state of emergency.” He has advised public schools and daycare centers to close for two weeks in order to curb the opportunities for the virus to spread. It’s unclear which is causing more panic in the hearts of Georgia citizens — the coronavirus, the toilet paper shortage, or the fact that parents will have to be home with their children nonstop for two weeks straight. Many other states are also closing schools, so millions of our nation’s families are suddenly experiencing a...

Flu Dismissals Sarah Carlsruh, October 15, 2009 The H1N1 virus, the “swine” flu, is an increasing concern with flu season here. According to an August 24th President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Report, this flu strain in not necessarily “more deadly than other flue strains,” but it “is likely to infect more people than usual because it is a new strain against which few people have immunity.” PCAST predicts that the epidemic could infect 30-50% of the U.S. population, “with symptoms in approximately 20–40% of the population (60–120 million people), more than halaf of whom would seek...