10/04/2020
Hey Bound for Glory folks. Do us a favor? It's a literal matter of life-or-death. Dave is a Tulsa Public Schools teacher. Deborah Gist, Tulsa Public Schools superintendent, makes her recommendation about continuing distance-learning TOMORROW. Please email her at [email protected] and ask her to CONTINUE DISTANCE LEARNING for TPS. (You can make an argument if you like, but it's largely a numbers game, so making the subject line something like PLEASE CONTINUE DISTANCE LEARNING is probably the most important.) If you care to read my arguments, they appear below. Thanks, friends. DD
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Dear Superintendent Gist:
Please continue distance learning for Tulsa Public Schools. Tulsa's COVID numbers are still too elevated for students or staff to return to schools in person.
Other Oklahoma communities that chose to prematurely force in-person learning are experiencing deadly COVID spikes even higher than ours in Tulsa.
If rates are slightly lower in Tulsa, it is because of the wise choice of our district to implement distance learning. Continuing it will continue to save lives.
One of my students is living with an elderly relative suffering from COVID, (which they only revealed during a class exercise.) If school were in session in-person, my classroom would almost certainly have seen an outbreak. My wife is badly immunocompromised. She would very like have died.
There have been challenges in the implementation of distance learning. Now that we are just starting to turn the corner and become expert at serving our students with distance learning is no time to suddenly shift course and create more chaos.
In this time of crisis and upheaval, our students need consistency above all else.
For all of these reasons, PLEASE CONTINUE DISTANCE LEARNING for TPS.
Sincerely, David Dean