Schooling in Missoula has turned into a massive joke.
Yesterday afternoon the school superintendent sent out an email confirming what many of us parents were dreading - Monday would become a permanent ‘no-school’ day.
Here’s how it was framed:
“We have committed to stay in the Hybrid schedule through Sept 25 and perhaps longer. We have also committed to keeping Mondays as our full remote learning days.”
Parents were informed that the school district is working on some kind of new schedule that will run through November 6.
What this is...no one knows.
It’s a good bet, therefore, that kids won’t be going to school on Mondays all the way to mid-November...if they even go back then.
It’s also a good bet that each kid will only go their two days a week - either Tuesday/Wednesday or Thursday/Friday.
My son does the latter, and come October, parents like I will be thrown another pickle.
You see, this is the time each year when teachers get their two-day professional development.
Hunter days.
So each year parents can expect to have their kids home 4 days that week - Thursday through Sunday.
This year, however, we’ll have 10 days.
It’s the Thursday/Friday of the previous week, then the weekend before the development week, then no school on Monday, then some kids will go on Tuesday/Wednesday - but not mine.
Mine will be home for the first three days, the two days the other kids go, the two days that are now cancelled, plus the two days of the following weekend.
10 days - parents are gonna love that!
If this wasn’t enough, each day school starts 10 minutes later and gets out an hour early.
It used to be that Thursday was the only reduced day, with kids getting out at 2:10. Now they get out at that time everyday.
Used to be an ironclad rule that schools had to go 180 days a year, and if they didn’t, they’d have to make that up.
Now I suspect we’re not even going 100 days.
My son goes two days a week, or about 8 days a month...or probably what will amount to fewer than 30 days before Christmas break...which I’m sure will be a lot longer than usual.
What are parents supposed to do? What about employers?
For teachers it’s great - work less, get paid the same, and when you do work, you have half the kids you usually do...if even that.
And there is absolutely no remote learning at all.
This year my son’s 2 days at home are a joke.
Each of those days he has a packet. This consists of two pages of second-grade level math (he’s in 4th grade this year), as well as 25 to 30 minutes of reading a day, 5 minutes of which has to be out loud.
My son used to go to school for about 7 hours a day, but now he has around 45-60 minutes of work a day at home.
It’s not right what we’re doing to our kids, and I don’t think our teachers became teachers to provide such a substandard, half-assed level of ‘education’ to our kids.
And yet not a single teacher will complain. Would you if your workload was reduced by 50-75% and you have half the kids you used to?
But that’s exactly what’s happening now, and it shows no sign of changing.
