Like many other working parents, single parents, widows and foster parents of school-aged children in Durango, I was hopeful when I received the “9-R Matrix for Return to In-Person Learning” sent out by 9-R on Dec. 16. To my utter disappointment, it said nothing more than in-person learning will return once COVID-19 is gone. When the schools closed suddenly in November, it was known that our schools were not the source of community spread and that several schools had zero cases of COVID-19.
I wondered if there was really a shortage of substitutes available during these times of extraordinarily high unemployment. How has the Miami school district and other school districts around the country and around the world been able to remain open to in-person learning since the beginning of the school year?
Yet Durango, at a fraction of the size and with not one case of student transmission, had to shut down completely. The only conclusion I can come to is that the school district only cares about families that can afford to have an adult stay home all day and teach their children – given all the recent support that remote learning is a disaster, that middle-class and low-income families and children are being hurt disproportionally worse. For us, living in the 9-R school district, the promise of equal education for all won’t even be on the table until the matrix goes into effect on Jan. 11. Shame on you, 9-R.
Deborah SneadDurango
