Fairmount School
Could it be reopened as a magnet school for kids, teachers and parents interested in mask-free, socially non-distant learning?
It doesn’t look likely that the State College Area School Board will reopen public schools fully — with no masks, no social distancing, no Plexiglass, no alternate day in-person/at-home schedules — anytime soon.
This despite the very early evidence (available by April 2020) that Covid poses a vanishingly small risk of illness and death to young people; a growing body of research collected over the last ten months showing that Covid transmission among children, young adults and teachers in school settings is rare and relatively unaffected by masking and other non-pharmaceutical interventions; and a growing body of research showing that knowledge loss, developmental regression, domestic abuse, despair, depression, anxiety, drug use, self-harm and suicide rates are rising rapidly among young people (and many others), due to disproportionate Covid fearmongering by the media, and the cumulative impacts of prolonged loss of self-determination, prolonged social isolation through school, sports and extracurricular club closures and prohibitions on social gatherings, and prolonged masking, social distancing and staying-at-home.
I think it would be wrong to compel terrified children and teachers to return to school, and wrong to compel parents to send these children to school, because they are all genuinely terrified, whether the thing they’re afraid of is less likely to harm them than many other things or not.
They will need support over the coming months and years to understand the comparative risks of Covid.
Covid risk can and should be weighed against the benefits of social contracts that empower individuals exercising their own civil liberties (freedom of speech, expression, association, assembly, and movement) without government mandates and derivative social ostracism coercion.
Covid risk can and should be weighed against the benefits of having people make their own personal risk-benefit choices.
People should be empowered to balance these complex issues for themselves and their growing children headed toward adult independence because living a full, rich human life of any duration (short, medium or long) inescapably involves myriad non-Covid risks and non-“safety” benefits. In other words, there are many things well worth doing, that have the potential to lead to illness, injury or death.
But Covid-terrified people certainly won’t benefit from compelled exposure therapy at this point, and Covid-terrified children should not be forced to return to school.
By the same logic, I also think it’s wrong to compel isolated but non-Covid-fearful children and teachers to stay apart from each other, and to force non-Covid-fearful parents to restrain their children from learning in normal school settings: both through academic learning and social connections, and through learning how to cope with and balance the many risks and benefits that come with making personal choices while living a human life in all its complexity.
I don’t know if there are any SCASD teachers interested in providing an option for non-fearful students and parents, and I don’t know how many parents are currently ready to send their children back into normal classrooms without masks, lines on the floors and Plexiglass barriers.
For that matter, I don’t know how many kids would be ready to come back to normal classrooms if their parents would want them to go, and there were teachers ready to welcome them back.
However, if the school board develops an interest in reopening the largely vacant Fairmount School (which housed the Delta Program before the new high school buildings opened a few years ago), I would be eager to teach any kids who want to go to school there and have parents who want to send them.
I would be happy to undergo the background clearance process as needed to qualify as a substitute teacher. My own learning curve for classroom management and lesson prep and presentation would have to be rapid and steep, since I haven’t been a teacher by trade up to this point.
I’m willing to take that learning curve on, because I want to be part of protecting and supporting the lives and interests of kids, teachers and parents who believe most people are in more danger from the social isolation of lockdowns than from Covid, while the rest of the district continues to protect and support the lives of kids, teachers and parents who believe most people are in more danger from Covid than from social isolation.
I have useful skills to share in English reading and writing (including journalism); Western philosophy; and printmaking for any age kids, and could manage basic math and science for younger kids if those happened to be the kids more interested in coming back to normal school, and those were the subjects their parents were more interested in seeing their kids learn.