COVID-19 New Canaan

Letter: Time To Plan for Summer School in New Canaan

By |

First a huge debt of thanks to the entire school district for getting us ready and launching e-learning. Well done. Second kudos to the team for keeping up the spirit—absolutely vital—again fantastic. 

We now, however, need to start talking about how we can minimize the long-term effects of this situation on our kids and community. The governor recently floated the idea of kids not coming back to school until the fall—i.e. they would be out of school from March 11 to Aug. 31. I am not sure if people suggesting this were serious, or if they have outlined why this would be a prudent course of action, in my view this would be terrible for just about everybody. The kids don’t need more time away from educators and friends, they don’t need to graduate on a pass-fail basis, and they don’t need to be promoted or held back a year based on vague guidelines and crisis thinking. What kids need is an education (and society needs educated kids). We can accomplish this, also in these times. My proposal is very simple. For each day of e-learning we add back half a day of school (if we think e-learning is the same as real school—we should have a larger discussion about how we educate our kids and the investments we are making going forward). If we stick with the April 20 return we should be able to get out around July 1—not too bad considering. If we go longer in closure, we just go longer into July and August (this will be very simple to administer, and for people to understand).