@lousy
I take it the word that offended you was "glorified", maybe even the concept of "glorified daycare".
If you drop the word glorified it's just daycare. No matter how you look at it from any angle top to bottom or even upside down school does substitute for daycare. The kids we hope are in a quality school, where they are receiving top notch education form dedicated top notch educators. You must know that is not true in all cases. There are rotten apples in all baskets and educators are no different and takes a little while to whittle the bad ones out. All schools are not equal either. However, we are not talking about the exceptions. We are talking about the good ones with the good teachers.
The kids of 2 working parents are with those "good" teachers for the better part of a full work day. Many of those "good" schools provide after school supervision for the kids until a parent picks them up after work rather than have the kids go home to an empty house until one parent gets home. Schools that don't provide that service send the kids home at the end of the school day. The kids that go to an unsupervised home are called latch key kids because they have their own key, let themselves into the house, and latch the door until Mom or Dad gets home. Some parents pay someone in the immediate neighborhood to take their kids in or some hire a person to come in and stay with them until a parent comes home.
Let me post this from this mornings paper. It comes from Associated Press reporter Christopher Rugaber:
"Nearly 2.5 million women lost jobs and stopped looking for work during the pandemic. In most cases, experts said, it was because so many children were suddenly stuck at home, going to school online, and THEIR PARENTS LACKED AVAILABLE or AFFORDABLE CHILD CARE (the caps. are mine). Better child care options or more flexible work schedules would be needed to fully reverse the trend."
Millions and millions of parents rely on the schools for the supervision of their kids while they are also being educated, fed, and kept safe. Minus the educating part this is child care. It is free. The Parents can work and bring all of their paychecks home and contribute the money to the funding the family budget.
When schools are closed the family budget takes a hit. NY state runs a 180 day school year. With school holidays and vacations it works out to a 40 week school year. This mean the kids are out for 12 weeks of summer. Families have to plan for how to deal with these weeks and still work. Some have family that takes care of it at no cost. Others have to hire someone to stay with the kids all day. That group loses money from the normal budget over the summer. Some families build that into the annual budget and set the summer money aside bit by bit so it's there to handle the summer outlay, but it has hit the weekly budget all year long. Unexpected days off create chaos for a lot of folks who are not good at planning for unexpected happenings:
Snow days! The following schools are closed due to today's snow emergency. S-H-I-TTTTTTTT! What are we going to do with the kids. It really becomes Hell when the snow emergency goes beyond that one day. Our school district in agreement with the Teacher's union plans for 10 snow days. If they are not used they fitted somewhere into the rest of the school calendar. Usually extending the single Memorial Day of into a longer number of days, usually the Friday before and the Tuseday after. Mild winter? Still more days? Late Easter? spread them evenly before and a after the scheduled days off.
Why not just attend school for the number of days that you didn't use? Most school unions go by the letter of the contract. The teachers work 180 days. The schools won't pay for the extra days and we (the teachers) don't work for free.
What about the unforseen events.
Phoned in bomb scares before school. School is closed.
Phoned in bomb scare during school. Evacuation and in many cases students sent home, particularly in inclement weather. Can't keep the kids standing out in the cold, snow, rain for hours while the police bomb squads search the school.
Shooting incident.
Practice for an active shooter on the premises.
Water main break. Against the law to hold school without running water.
Major power failure especially in the winter.
There are more.
Some parents literally go mad at these times. So many employers don't give a shit. Workers are not allowed to leave or if they do they are docked pay for the time they are gone.
So my upset friend, this discussion has never been about the schools, the dedicated teachers, the work they do, the work they carry home every night, the sacrifices they make, the low pay they receive when compared to individuals with the same level of education, at least a BA or BS + a Masters degree and for many extended Graduate work to stay on top of their fields. Lo and behold these hard working educated people who bust their asses to leave no child behind and try their damnedest to get every kid to reach his or her optimum potential are at the same time doubling as child care workers for the millions and millions of households with more and more 2 parents working to support the family. Glorified? No, not hardly. In the eyes of many not worth the money they are paid. There are a lot of people out there, TAXPAYERS, who have a say in only one tax bill they pay - SCHOOL TAXES, who whine, bitch, complain, and vote NO on school budgets because those lousy so and so teachers are after another GD raise. I wish every one of them had the same attitude you do as to the value of education and the teachers who provide it. It may be the most important job undertaken in every society on earth, the education of the future of the world.
