Cali school system lets parents choose: no live class in the fall, or two days per week. Parents reply:

A school district in the high-income town of Mountain View California recently sent parents its 2020-2021 back-to-school plan. Despite overwhelming evidence that children are at very low risk of contracting the Wuhan virus and are highly unlikely to transmit it to adults, the school system won’t be allowing students to return for a normal school year this fall.

The school system sent parents a choice:  They could either keep their kids home, with online schooling, or they could send their kids back to school just two days a week, doing school from home the other three days.  Here's the clever presentation of the "choices:"


After receiving those options, a parent sent this response.

Dear Elected Officials and School Leaders of Mountain View,

I’m reaching out to extend a huge thanks to the [Mountain View school system] for only asking our children to return to school for zero or two days per week for the coming school year.

As a dual-working family that expects to have our incomes cut in half after one of us has to tell a boss we’re only able to work either zero or three days per week next year in the midst of a global recession, we’re extremely thankful that you figured out how to require only one of us to lose our job, rather than both of us.

Of course there’s no hard feelings because we understand that as our duly elected representatives and the people hired by them, you are obviously powerless to make alternative choices, like those made by the leaders of Florida, Texas, Australia, and France, who have all decided to reopen their schools completely next year.

As parents we take great comfort knowing that the financial sacrifice our family will be forced to make will help prevent massive numbers of children from having mild, cold-like symptoms for a few days from the coronavirus, which they most likely contracted from their parents in the first place, according to most of the scientific literature available.

We also understand that this decision had nothing to do with the letter sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday by the California Teachers Association arguing against reopening schools, despite the fact that no such letter has ever been sent to the governor during previous seasons of the flu, a disease that has killed far more children than COVID-19 has. Despite their actions to the contrary, we know that teachers only have our children’s best interests at heart.

As long-time citizens of Mountain View, we’re grateful to know that our tax dollars will help to pay for the full salaries of administrators and teachers next year, despite the fact that their workloads will have been reduced by more than 50 percent. Since one of us anticipates being unemployed in August anyway, we’d be happy to do the other 50 percent of the work that teachers and administrators are unable to do remotely.

Finally, we can’t help but feel selfish for wanting our children to go to school to learn things while we work to put a roof over their heads, and we hope you’ll forgive us for immediately researching how we can move out of Mountain View and California as quickly as possible in order to achieve these selfish goals.

Honestly, we probably don’t deserve to be a part of this community anyway.  In the unlikely event we’re still living here in November we’ll be sure not to forget all that you’ve done for our family.

Once again, sincere thanks for all your hard work to find creative new ways to make the Bay Area one of the least hospitable places to raise a family in the entire country. We didn't think we'd ever find ourselves agreeing with Donald Trump for the first time in four years about reopening schools, but somehow you guys found a way to make it happen.

Sincerely,
A Mountain View Parent