Cheltenham School District just released a letter to the community confirming that after months of internal and external discussions, surveys of stakeholders, and feedback from the board, this fall will be an all virtual education experience for the roughly 4,500 students it serves.

This is the right decision. It’s the right decision for the students, parents, teachers, and broader community who could have been killed by a choice to re-open schools too soon. I’m proud of the district for making this recommendation, and I expect to be proud of the board for approving it on August 3rd.

But it is also a tragic decision, and I am in mourning for our nation’s kids.

To Be Five Years Old…

My daughter was so joyful about the concept of starting kindergarten. She is ready to learn, to make friends, to discover new perspectives, to solve problems, play games, navigate social adversity, and practice kindness.

I was excited for her. For the stomach butterflies of the first week of school that I can only vaguely remember. Back packs, lunch boxes, and fresh boxes of crayons. The lifelong friendships that she won’t get to to kick off yet, the connections with teachers and staff, the playground scrapes and bumps, the chance to learn and create every single day, the adventure of life away from parents.

I hope that the class of 2033 will still get some of those things in their first year, but I am confident that any ounce of meaning from remote education for elementary, special education, and frankly any student is going to rely on extensive adaptation and effort from parents.

Many families will not adapt.

An Educational Injustice

This situation will inevitably expand the chasm of inequalities — particularly racial inequality — that exist across the country and are alive and well at Cheltenham. I am left indignant about the fact that so many districts like ours are being told to figure it out on our own, and left without the resources to provide support to families that need it most.

As my wife and I think about creative solutions for our daughter’s first year of school, I recognize the deep perversion of the situation.

I am a School Director serving on a public school board. I have committed countless hours working towards a system that promises academic justice for all students. The elusive dream of an equitable public school system that meets the needs of all students without relying on private resources.

Yet I am in a position where I am forced to rely on my privilege and personal resources, creating a safety net of tools and adult supervision in order to support a virtual public school kindergarten experience. This is the opposite of educational justice.

This failure cannot be blamed on an individual school district, which is almost certainly doing the absolute best it can with the hand it was dealt. This is a failure of the United States of America.

It is a failure of the cowards who still refuse to face the pandemic and get it under control, the powerful who have refused to address systemic racism for generations, and the short sighted who consistently refuse to appropriately fund public education.

I am furious at state legislatures, our nation’s congresspeople, President Trump, and Secretary DeVos who regularly use their positions to perpetuate ignorance. I am unforgiving of the voters who have mired themselves in blatant propaganda and allowed themselves to become blind to flagrant and consistent abandonment of responsibility to the well being of our children.

I’m sure that districts will continue to do everything they can to meet needs without driving their districts and communities to bankruptcy, but public education requires a historic re-investment to succeed.

We are at the precipice of a moral failure.

What Do We Do?

Contact your local school board and demand policies that will provide a safe and effective education for families who cannot afford to stay home with their five year olds, or whose children simply are not able to learn online. Try to learn about their constraints and participate in the processes for identifying local solutions.

Contact the people who represent you in your state. Demand that they work to meet the needs of their districts without modifying the rules to allow the most vulnerable to be left behind.

Contact the people who represent you in congress. Demand that they include proper funding for public schools as part of the next COVID stimulus package.

As you look for solutions for your family, try to work with your local school district to systematize those solutions so they are available to other families.

Do not give up on public education. Do not form habits that remove you from reliance on public education.

A friend recently published a powerful essay in Esquire about COVID with young children: Why Parents Are Lying to Their Kids About COVID-19 Realities.

“The people who failed to manage this crisis demand foolhardy and dangerous plans to reopen schools, couched in language about doing what’s right “for the children.” The right thing for children has never once been on their minds. They will not do the one thing that will help: aggressively manage this crisis and this virus. And they will forget our children the moment they’re no longer a useful cudgel. The meaningful work to actually support them—to ensure that they have safe homes and are properly fed, have healthcare and good schools, that opportunity is equal and not simply the outcome of location and generational wealth—will not get done.”

This excerpt serves as a reminder that COVID was predictable and mitigable. So too are the structural inequalities that COVID exacerbates.

We are about to see a particularly devastating illustration of those structural inequalities. Another predictable item in a predictable list. We cannot let this prediction turn into fate.

Twitter keeps asking me to give them money so that I can be popular. My brain tells me that this is an opportunity that they offer everyone — some kind of general campaign in a desperate attempt to validate the dumbest business model since Facebook’s digital bananas. I usually just hit delete and move on.

But that’s not what my heart says. Over the months their persistence impressed me, and I decided that my account must be special in their system. I must be up there with BP and Exxon. I started dreaming about the possibilities being as Twitter famous as Elvis would have been, if only for a day. My wit and pith would change the lives of everyone who could experience it.

This is why, on July 4th, 2013 I decided to define the national dialogue by promoting a tweet of my own. I learned that Twitter charges you when people interact (click, reply, retweet) with your promoted message.

I'll stop here and tell the rest of the story through the digital communication equivalent of interpretive dance:

His post says, in so many words, "wah wah wah the crowd is acting like a crowd! Don't they know that they are a crowd? Won't they please stop acting like a crowd?"

Here's my response: Yes, Alexis, it is. Yes, Alexis, they do. No, Alexis, they won't. Welcome to the 21st century!

Below are the three mini-rants that his post inspired in my brain.

Rant 1: Gawker Did It Better

His isn't the first critical take on /r/findbostonbombers. The fine folks of Gawker, who are professionals when it comes to giving Reddit the often-deserved middle finger, already published one and theirs was hilarious. It pointed out all the ridiculous theories buzzing around the web that came from that crowd in language that I can get behind.

Most importantly they link to a brand new blue robe guy meme template.

See, that kind of response reflects the special unique, inappropriate complexities of the Internet.

Rant 2: Fix your own home before calling out strangers

Having worked in a newsroom for essentially a year I know first-hand that journalists are amazing. The folks at The Boston Globe are doing hard work, and they are doing it professionally. There are many others doing work with an equal level of integrity.

But boy, there are so many organizations that seem like they don't. I won't even try to list all the instances of public speculation and incorrect statements that came out of "reputable" sources since Monday.

Want to know what is more dangerous than a bunch of random people talking on a website? Media outlets with an actual audience spreading false information. Also, media outlets directing global attention to a bunch of random people talking on a website. We can let that one slide I guess.

Rant 3: You Lie!

Your post describes an angry mob with no capacity for reasoning or self reflection.

Maybe I'm just naive here but it seems to me that as far as mobs go, a reddit / 4chan mob is reasonably honest with itself. This is a point that Alexis decided to casually ignore (and then throw into a footnote in a way that somehow still misses the point).

Go look for yourself. Most contributions to that subreddit yesterday were one of the following:

1. Questions about the appropriateness of the conversation.
2. Reminders that nobody there knows anything.
3. Aggregations of relevant information put out there by the media or FBI.
4. Laughter at how stupid the media is for pointing everyone to their subreddit in their articles about how the community is a bad idea.
5. Someone pointing out things about a picture that sound like a wacky conspiracy theorist.
6. Others making fun of those people for pointing that stuff out.

There will inevitably be a few users who take themselves really seriously and act like they know what they are talking about. Those people will be instantly up-voted to the top because everyone knows the internet is serious business. OH WAIT NO THE OPPOSITE OF THAT.

The other point that was completely ignored is the fact that there are clear rules plastered on every page. These aren't just guidelines, they are rules enforced by mods and the core community. If you don't follow them, your posts get removed and your account can get banned.

Note: I said yesterday because as of today any images that aren't potential pictures of the FBI's released suspects will be immediately deleted.

My Advice

No hard feelings are intended to Alexis; he raises valid and important concerns. The problem is that his tone was not one of thoughtful dialogue, it was one of condescending aggression. Writing rants online isn’t a productive use of time… Who would do that…

…

Anyway, here's my advice to anyone who wants to be constructively critical of Internet activity. Depending on what you think it represents you should either:

1. Lurk moar.
2. Stop feeding the trolls.
3. Realize you won't stop people from communicating with one another, give up, and go play video games instead.

As for blue robe guy? Well, he's only internet famous because people on Gawker and The Atlantic keep writing posts about him. You heartless bastards.