Last week was the start of a new school year here in the overly-large school district, along with most of the others in Northern Virginia. The rest of the DC area began this week.
In the milquetoast verbal style of the Washington Post, this is going to be a “challenging” year for public schools in this area.
On the positive side of things, administrators in Fairfax and neighboring school systems have told the ignorant and cruel people currently in charge of the Department of Education they will not follow “demands that [they] rescind policies supporting transgender and gender-nonconforming students”.
Hopefully our school leadership will continue supporting the rights of all kids in their care, despite threats to withhold federal funding. I’m not totally confident they will, but for now, they are doing the right thing.
From the start of this chaos, “no” should have been the default response to demands like this. Maybe with “hell” or some variation on “frack” in front. Unfortunately, too many organizations, corporations, local governments, even sovereign nations seem to think acceding to bullies will make them immune from future stupidity. Instead, that approach just makes everything worse.
But not all the start-of-the-year news around here is good. Fairfax is attempting to ban cell phone use in all schools. Again.
Unlike past efforts, this time around kids can’t even take phones out during lunch or passing periods. And the rules also ban teachers from using the devices in their instruction: “For all grade levels, cell phones are no longer permitted to be used as an instructional tool.”
I’ve even heard that some high school principals have told staff members that they may not use phones in view of students. We’ll see how long that particular policy extension lasts.
Whatever the rules say, I don’t expect this iteration on banning phones in schools to work any better than the past two (at least) attempts that failed when I was working in the district. In this battle, always bet on the kids (and some teachers) to find a way around the rules. Too bad we can’t find a way to harness that creativity.
Anyway, to all of my friends and colleagues who have to make this work, good luck. Let me know when it falls apart. Probably somewhere around the end of the first semester?
The photo is one view of the Department of Education building in Washington DC. I wonder how many educators are still working in that space.