We Came to Believe that a Power Greater than Ourselves Could Restore Us to Sanity

The excerpt below is taken from Time magazine July 23, 2020 approximately one month after Buffalo Public Schools made the inscrutable decision to close their remaining classroom at Western New York Day Treatment, a program for high school students with clinical mental health issues, the only program so designated in an urban district of 33,ooo kids. Yeah take a minute or two to let that all sink in before you read below what any human of measurable sentience could have predicted with heartbreaking accuracy.  

...Another variable is whether a child came into the crisis with pre-existing mental-health problems. In the U.S., 7.1% of children in the 3-to-17 age group have been diagnosed with anxiety, according to the CDC. An additional 3.2% in the same age group suffer from depression. Then there are the 7.4% with diagnosed behavior problems and the 9.4% with ADHD. Silver found that in the aftermath of 9/11, adolescents’ level of distress closely tracked whether or not they had a history of such conditions. Other experts expect to see that pattern repeated because of COVID-19.

“Children who were struggling before [the pandemic] are at higher risk now,” says psychologist Robin Gurwitch, a professor at Duke University Medical Center. “You have to be careful about kids who were already in mental-health services; we have to make sure services aren’t disrupted.”

I can't resist the temptation to reiterate Dr. Gurwitch's comment though. It's not so much prescient as turd in the punchbowl obvious:  

"Children who were struggling before the pandemic are at higher risk now." 

I'm not a Professor of Psychiatry at Duke but I think I might have been able to see how this was going to play out. For the life of me I'm stumped how people who've chosen the education and well being of children as their life's work  willed themselves not to see it. 

It may come as a shock to a few that I am less involved in a pitchfork and torches cum guillotine resolution than in helping the district restore itself to sanity. Back in June the outlook was dire. June? you're saying, so what's changed? Valid point. The only thing anyone seemed to know back then was that New York State was walking around with its pockets turned out bumming smokes and hitting people up for gas money. It was pretty clear that whatever budget cash schools were counting on was going to be a pipe dream. Cuts were coming. Something akin to panic mode took hold. Buildings closed. Class sizes of disabled kids went from 6 to 8. Someone used the phrase "staff rich" to justify closing down the only remaining classroom for Buffalo kids with legitimate mental health issues. Too many adults teaching too few kids costing the district too much money. Case closed. 

Through whatever lens one uses to separate egregious acts against children from the financial benefits these acts net, it could be said that closing this remaining class and kicking the kids in it back to the schools most of them barely attended before arriving at Day Treatment made good sense financially. Theoretically or financially it was the move to make. Unless of course this happens to be a district that claims to be steeped in trauma informed education. If you go to the BPS Home Page and search "Trauma Informed" an exhaustive list of resources fills the screen. Yet somehow a district that proudly speaks of being trauma informed in its practices managed to inflict more trauma on kids whose lives have already had too damned much of it. 

What makes me so sure anyone was traumatized by the closure of Western New York Day Treatment? I'll fill you in on the phone conversation I had with the Dad of one of my students the other night. A guy who moved heaven and hell to get his daughter into this place and admits to breaking down at the meeting when he learned they were going to accept her. It was not an easy conversation and there is no happy ending. It hurts like hell. Stay tuned. 

I Have to Take this It's Obscurity Returning My Call

  Remember this dude? 

This is none other than Larry Quinn former Buffalo Board of Education member pictured playing with his phone as a Buffalo high school student named Chronicle McClain was speaking of Board members who ignore speakers during the public input part of the board meetings by tapping pens and looking at their phones instead of hearing what the public has to say to them. Is there a name for doing the very thing someone accuses you of doing as he's accusing you of doing it? I think in the era of Covid we can call it Dysynchronicity and we'll give Lars a credit for it when they come to put it in the NED. Someone during the dark days of the dreaded Quinn Paladino and Sampson Board named him Lars and I swear it still makes me laugh to this day. Was it you Gibson? I think it might have been. 

Well it's been ten years give or take since Quinn and Golisano fired Johnny Mucks, let Ted Nolan skate, lost Chris Drury and Danny Briere then cashed in by selling the team to the Pegulas. Larry's upward failure was a Billy Fucillo sized huuuuuuge  payday - some wags claim he pocketed a couple of dozen million in the deal but that's just idle speculation, you know the kind we all love to traffic in about someone we don't like. Quinn's tenure as a board member probably matched his failure as the managing partner of an NHL team but the sendoff didn't involve millions or even a gold plated Casio G Shock. His departure from the Board of Ed probably carried more of the ignominy he deserved for losing the Coach of the Year the GM of the Century plus two of the top skaters in the league. So why dig this up now? Isn't there a statute of limitations on failed Board of Ed members? Funny you should ask but this past week Larry felt inspired to fire a little broadside at Buffalo teachers and their grizzled union boss Phil Rumore. It'd be one thing to just play that little management card guys like Larry always play when they try to weaponize the tensions over something like remote learning and turn parents against their kids' teachers. We've all seen it, they do it whenever a contract negotiation isn't going the way the district wants. Poison the waters with some suggestions that these teachers aren't being reasonable, that they seem to care more about buying another Tesla and vacationing in Cabo more than they care about little Trevor and Olivia's education. Remember a while back when East Aurora published some of the negotiations in the paper in an effort to demonize teachers with the greedy, lazy don't gaf about the kids card?  So Lars did what rich white guys like him are known to do. He threw some shade at teachers and their union President. The problem is HOW he did it. 

Here's the opening from his Another Voice piece in the Buffalo News:

"I spoke to a friend yesterday who is aligned with Phil Rumore and the teachers union. He initially told me the schools were closed because they are following the science. Halfway through the conversation he told me the real problem – more than 1,000 teachers were apparently threatening to go on strike if the Buffalo Public Schools opened."

He just had to play the Insider card with the rest of us peasants. You know the other day I was talking with one of my kind of people who actually hobnobs with lowbrows like Phil Rumore kind of vibe. And I know what the rest of you dopes think but let me share what really went down because it's only fair that guys of my stature should enlighten the rest of you rubes when I get the scoop through my well placed sources. Sources the rest of you lack. And when it's all boiled away the guy says with a straight face that 1,000 BTF members have conspired under cover of night to launch an illegal strike the first week of school. These would be people who lost sumer school jobs for the most part. And Home Instruction jobs too more than likely. Also people who are going to be faced with child care expenses should their own kids be put on remote learning. Come Fall a lot of these teachers will not be bringing in their coaching stipends either. A sad number of teachers wait tables for extra cash. They too will be out of luck. If you're missing the larger picture which by now I'm pretty sure you're not, BTF members would be hard pressed to sign up for an activity that will dock them two days pay for every day they strike when most of them have been without a paycheck since June. Anyone who's ever had the misfortune of cashing one of those Taylor Law deduction post-job action checks will tell you it's downright painful. And anyone in the current day late and dollar short state of America in Covid who thinks taking a two day hit for every day on the picket is a good move might not be smart enough to teach your kids. 

Quinn goes on to cite science about droplets and infection rates and quotes a like minded NY Times writer who claims dropout rates will soar if kids and teachers aren't forced back into poorly ventilated buildings lacking proper staffing, PPE, cleaning procedures and Covid testing. Isn't dying from getting sick in an unsafe school building the ultimate form of dropping out? And shouldn't a bon vivant like Quinn even  here in small town Buffalo have the sense to understand that many of these minority kids he claims to care so much about live in multi-generational homes with elderly relatives whose health issues could make them more susceptible to bad outcomes should they contract the virus? Maybe it's time to put away the sailboats and that put a hair up our guy's Topsider. Hard to say exactly but if floating lame brained conspiracy theories supposedly gleaned from inside sources is all Larry Quinn has to to with himself these days maybe he should go put his name on the sub list in City Hall. Put your money where your mouth is Lars, show those teachers how it's done. 

C'mon you sons-of-bitches -- Do you want to live forever?

The rotten core of Stage 4 capitalism and people like Donald J.Trump and Betsy Devos are telling us the only way to save the oligarchy is to put other people's kids and their useless overpaid Blue voting teachers back into their classrooms while a global pandemic flashes and yearns. Bonus points if you caught the Berryman reference. 

Conveniently, what passes for a democratic government here is

making no allowances for parents and pressuring them too to return to work whether they have school age kids or not. And with a government that unequivocally states it has no intentions of helping out minority owned businesses, parents of school age kids and anyone else of lesser status, parents are naturally insistent that schools open to watch their kids since they've got no other choice. The hostility of parents for what they perceive to be pampered and/or uncaring teachers is pre-packaged and part of the larger plan. Hard not to blame some parents for it as they've been put in a lose/lose position. Rather than taking the side of teachers who insist on children's and their own safety above all else, some parents have adopted the attitude of If I'm going to get corona so the hell can my kid's teachers. What's lost in this is the very real possibility of their kids catching it too as well as spreading it at home and through the community. 

Today's news tells of a device shortage caused in part by the massive shift to online pandemic schooling, complex supply chains that involve several sources to build devices topped off with Trump trade sanctions against China where a lot of these devices and their component parts are produced. And to the surprise of nobody low end laptops and tablets are becoming more expensive because you know supply and demand and all. In places of low supply teachers are creating the dreaded learning packets that some parents equate with guaranteed proof of learning taking place. In others kids are using outdated laptops, misfiring ipads and their own or their family member's smartphones to stay connected and learn. 

Have we all by now seen the pic of the little girls sitting on a curb in the Taco Bell parking lot with their electronic devices trying to take advantage of the free wifi while Bezos, Gates and Musk are stacking their Coronavirus billions? France has just committed to paying workers between 70 and 85%  of their wages until July so the country can stay together, people can stay in their homes and nobody has to kill themselves out of sheer desperation. Imagine a place where the government takes active measures to look out for its citizens and puts its money where its mouth is.

We are experiencing an unprecedented event in post modern America. We can safely say that Late Stage capitalism has failed Americans miserably. The forces of this failed system are mustering now to push students and the adults who teach, feed, and drive them back into school buildings that are often poorly ventiated and lacking basics like hot tap water and windows that open all the way. Extra protective gear, cleaning supplies, personnel and sanitizers as well as drastically reduced class sizes, and social distancing will be required for schools to even hope to experience a safe reopening. But instead of additional funding to meet these Herculean requirements most schools are seeing their funding cut. Did I mention the U.S. military set a new record for the size of their latest budget?

I'm hoping to find some worthwhile messages in this mess. Hope you'll come along for the journey. Wash your hands, wear your mask and spread out.