Parents across the United States are lobbying their children to return to face-to-face learning, as some students face the possibility of completing an entire school year without entering the classroom, in addition to the months they missed at the end of the 2019 school year- 2020.
North Carolina mother Kelly Mann gave up her full-time job in July to stay home with her three daughters after the Wake County Public School System said they would be stuck in remote classes in the near future because of the pandemic of the coronavirus.
Her sixth-grade daughter, always an A / B student, dropped to a 50% math score and was feeling “isolated,” Mann told Fox News.
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“It is crazy. It is not education. North Carolina is not serving children. They are not defending the right to education now, and this is completely political,” Mann told Fox News. “We have science, we have the facts, we have medical specialists. We know that schools must be open to our children.”
On Saturday, Mann helped organize a rally with more than 100 parents and educators at the North Carolina governor’s mansion to pressure state and local leaders to reopen classrooms.
They got a boost when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Duke Health released studies last week showing that personal learning is generally safe if schools take proper safety precautions.
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Parents met in downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Saturday to demand that district schools reopen classrooms, as did neighboring districts, WDIV reported.
Christy Hudson, a mother from Fairfax County, Virginia, told America’s Newsroom that the county’s postponement of personal learning is “moving” and “devastating”.
“We are seeing our children undergo tremendous academic regressions, as well as social, emotional and behavioral problems,” said Hudson.
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In North Carolina, a patchwork of counties has continually delayed the return to personal learning.
The Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Educators Association (NCAE), a teacher lobbying group, will not support returning to classrooms until school officials receive vaccines or the two-week county moving average. for positive coronavirus cases it is below 5%. The NCAE cites examples such as Brunswick County, off the coast of North Carolina, where all levels of education have returned to virtual learning after broadcasts took place within schools where students could not distance themselves socially, PortCityDaily reported.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is allowing schools to choose between three operational plans, including totally remote. Cooper said his priority “is to physically take our children back to schools” during a press conference on January 27, when asked about recent studies by CDC and Duke Health, which found that students can return to personal learning with dissemination minimal coronavirus.
“We know that it is better for them there and that they learn more and receive a lot more attention,” said Cooper. “I will ask the school councils and local superintendents to study these data that have just been published.”
Kelly Mann (left) and her daughters. (Courtesy of Mann)
Mann said he wrote to Cooper about reopening classrooms with no response. A former public school teacher who was a member of the NCAE, Mann founded the group on Facebook Wake County Families and Teachers to Safely Reaopen Schools to vent last summer. It grew rapidly to more than 5,000 members, she said.
“I don’t see Wake County schools opening this school year,” said Mann. “Schools serve a community more than just educating. They are the first line of action when abuse occurs at home, when a child is not showing up at school.”
Mann managed to place his middle daughter, a sixth-grader, in a private school, but was unable to find a place for the fifth and eighth grade daughters.
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“My eighth grade daughter is doing her best. I see the price of having no interaction with others and how it affects the two who are still far away,” said Mann.
Mann blames NCAE for keeping many North Carolina students out of class and said many parents are upset about NCAE President Tamika Kelly’s social media posts, comparing parents who want to reopen schools with the privilege of whites.
Kelly responded “exactly” to a tweet stating that the drive for personal learning is coming from “white parents” who “need a break”.
“It is revealing. Three or four months ago, none of these parents had heard of the NCAE,” said Mann. “This is the leader of the group that portrays us as a privilege of whites because we want open schools. I would say that she is privileged because she does not know what she is doing to the underprivileged.”
South of Wake County in Cumberland County, mother Michelle Hallas feels sorry for her daughter, a veteran who has not set foot in a classroom since her first year in March. Like Mann, Hallas started a Facebook group to bring together parents who want personal learning to be an option – and she also sees the NCAE as the “biggest obstacle”.
“They are blaming the teachers, saying that they don’t feel safe, but that is not the case,” Hallas told Fox News. “I have teachers in my Facebook group and teachers that I know … Everyone I know wants to go back to class.”
Michelle Hallas and her youngest daughter, a high school student. (Courtesy of Hallas)
Hallas works for a pharmaceutical compliance company, which means she spends her days working in hospitals.
“I haven’t even had my vaccine yet and I still work in hospitals where COVID patients are,” she said. “We live by the promise that the CDC has made us that if we wear our masks, wash our hands … we will be safe. We want teachers to do the same.”
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Fox News inquiries of Cooper’s office, the NCAE, the Wake County School System and the Cumberland County School System were not returned at the time of publication.
Fox News’ Talia Kaplan contributed to this report.