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Don’t shoot the messengers–they deliver
As parents across southeastern Pennsylvania attend confusing school district meetings and try to figure out how they can return to work, if they’re fortunate enough to even have a job, two things are certain:
- Schools are overwhelmingly under-resourced to teach our kids during the pandemic.
- The decades-long respective failures of the federal and state governments to prioritize our children has caused the current level of confusion and disfunction.
Our natural reaction is to blame our local school officials. However natural the inclination, the accusation is a bad fit—we’re only shooting the messengers. They’ve been working tirelessly to construct plans they know will garner negative reactions from many parents no matter what. Tasked with the impossible goal of pleasing everyone, districts are left to provide multiple overanalyzed, unrealistic, watered-down education plans, instead of perfecting one.
Consequently, parents have lost confidence and are looking for alternatives, such as tutors to teach kids in pods (for those with financial means) or cyber charter schools that, unbeknownst to these well-meaning parents, each year drastically underperform most public schools. Decisions like these will further hurt our schools already struggling for resources. But who can blame parents who are just looking for predictability, so their children can receive some sort of consistent education while they try to make a living?
Our fight is with the lawmakers who’ve been advocating against the effectiveness of public schools for years. For years, they have underfunded our schools, putting a larger burden on local taxpayers to pay more while our children receive less. As hard as local government officials may fight for their communities, they don’t control the billions our schools need. Most of the time they too are merely the messengers, telling their state counterparts that we demand adequate school funding and reporting back to us that the Commonwealth doesn’t care.
When we need them most, Pennsylvania lawmakers, along with the federal government, have abandoned our districts to fend for themselves during the pandemic. Pennsylvania families need our elected officials’ leadership, along with federal and state resources, now so schools can effectively and safely teach our kids throughout the pandemic.
Montgomery County students, at least, can point to local officials doing their utmost to keep their eye on the ball (i.e. serving several hundred thousand children and their families), choosing to take decisive action instead of engaging in endless moaning.
In lieu of federal and state leadership, the county commissioners, fronted by Chairwoman Valerie Arkoosh, are the first and likely the only local officials to shunt a substantial allocation of the federal stimulus funds enacted in March to schools via grants, putting $15 million where their students are, especially for Montco’s poorest districts that need the most help.
“It is my hope that this additional funding, which can be used for unbudgeted COVID-related expenses dating back to March 27, 2020 will provide a small measure of relief and certainty for our schools,” Arkoosh said.
We call on every county in Southeast Pennsylvania to follow suit and do what they can to support their students at this critical time.
No one should be willing to accept the notion that when it comes to our students, this is a no-win situation. Montgomery County commissioners didn’t. Our leaders must have the will to get this done for our kids. It’s time for them to step up and do what we put them in Washington, D.C. and Harrisburg to do: lead.
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