Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another.
Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.
When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before.
I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday gift. Given the nature of illness, that means giving it to their family, too.
And they in turn may pass it along to someone who knows someone who knows you. Do you see where this is going?
There’s a physical health impact. There’s an emotional health impact. And there’s an economic impact as well. Sick people may not be able to work. People who miss work will have to spend less money in local businesses. Sick people will cancel restaurant plans. Sick people flood emergency rooms in local hospitals.
I’ve been digging around this morning for a quote I’ve used before. So far I am still looking so I’ll have to paraphrase: all the failures of our society eventually get pushed to schools.
We don’t have adequate paid sick leave policy in our country so people go to work sick, and/or can’t take a day off to care for a sick child. Plus, we don’t have robust childcare options so sick children are sent to school. We don’t have adequate affordable healthcare options and the ones we have are fast disappearing. Add to that the recent attack on public health policy and it makes this December even worse than many others before it.
In my opinion we should care about all of these people whether or not we know them because it is the right thing to do. At the very least we should be smart enough to realize it impacts us and care about that.
A Christmas wish? A December dream? A radical notion?
Close you eyes and imagine what you would like the next several weeks to be like for you. I bet that’s pretty much what our school kids would like, and all the hardworking professionals in our schools would like, too. How do we give it to them?
Ideas? Let me know.
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