Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had much to say on television a couple of days ago, according to the New York Post’s Lia Eustachewich, regarding the issue of whether schools should re-open in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. She wrote:

“Former Big Apple Mayor Mike Bloomberg urged President Biden to ‘stand up’ to unions and tell teachers to ‘suck it up’ and return to in-person learning, calling virtual learning ‘a disgrace.’

The former Democratic presidential candidate sounded off on teachers’ resistance to the push to reopen schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on the president to push the prioritization of children’s wellbeing.

‘It’s time for Joe Biden to stand up and to say, the kids are the most important things, important players here,’ Bloomberg said Wednesday on MSNBC. ‘And the teachers just are going to have to suck it up and stand up and provide an education.’

He added, ‘Teachers say, “Well, I don’t want to go back because it’s dangerous.” We have a lot of city and state and federal employees who run risks, that’s part of the job. You run risks to help America, to help your state, to help your city, to help your family and there’s just no reason not to have the schools open.’

Slamming virtual learning as ‘a joke — worse than a joke,’ the billionaire philanthropist said the remote instruction hurts ‘poor people’ the most.

‘Poor people don’t have iPads, they don’t have WiFi, they don’t have somebody at home to sit during the day and force the child to pay attention and without that, the virtual learning just does not exist,’ he said.”

Mr. Bloomberg urged Mr. Biden to fight back against the teachers’ unions.

Battle the teachers’ unions is exactly what the former Mayor did during his twelve years leading New York City. His brave work in making it possible to fire bad traditional school teachers, in creating charter schools, and strengthening the professional training of those in the education field are perfectly documented in Joel Klein’s excellent 2014 book entitled Lessons of Hope: How to Fix Our Schools.

The words above are the Michael Bloomberg I remember. The one that went to work each and every day trying to improve the lives of his citizens. He brought tremendous prosperity to the place my family loves in almost every area in which he could have influence.

His campaign for President was disappointing in that it appears he got tied up in following liberal talking points in order to try and win the Democratic nomination. He also had difficulty expressing his past accomplishments. But now apparently he is back telling it like it is.

In an editorial Mr. Bloomberg wrote at the end of January he observed:

“Early research suggests sharply reduced learning gains; widening racial disparities in achievement; and an eruption of anxiety, loneliness, depression and other mental-health afflictions among students isolated from their peers and stuck at home. Some districts have seen a rash of suicides. Education analysts warn that the long-term consequences — for disadvantaged kids, for racial equity, even for America’s global competitiveness — could be disastrous.

In short, getting kids back into classrooms should be a national priority. More local leaders are recognizing that, but in some cases, districts have tried to reopen, only to be stymied by unions. In Chicago — which has one of the country’s largest school systems, and where more than 75% of students are economically disadvantaged — the union has simply defied the city’s reopening plans. In Montclair, New Jersey, the local union is blocking even two-day-a-week instruction. In Fairfax County, Virginia, the union got teachers moved to the front of the line for vaccines — and then decided that in-class instruction shouldn’t resume until vaccinations were ready for students. No vaccines are currently authorized for those under age 16.”

As teachers receive the vaccine in the nation’s capital we have reached a point where both charters and regular schools need to figure out how to safely open to our children.

The Washington Post’s Perry Stein wrote in her newspaper yesterday that efforts to bring students back to in-person learning in the District are demonstrating an uneven response depending upon where families live:

“The partial reopening is a relief to families of all incomes, but the mismatch across the city has teachers and parents questioning whether the city should be pouring resources during the pandemic into an in-person learning program that White students are disproportionately enrolling in. . . In D.C., families in the poorest ward rejected offers for an elementary school spot a twice the rate of families in the wealthiest one.”

However, because pupils in the city are predominately Black or Hispanic, Mr. Stein points out that “most students returning are students of color.”

Here are some other interesting demographic statistics from the piece:

“Of the elementary students expected to return to classrooms, 60 percent are homeless, learning English as a second language, receiving special education services or designated as at-risk, which means they are in foster care or their families qualify for public assistance. At the middle and high school level, 70 percent of students fall into one of these categories.

White children, who make up 16 percent of the D.C. school system’s population, are a minority of the total number of students expected to return to classrooms — 28 percent of the 6,300 children at the prekindergarten and elementary level, according to city data — but a larger percentage of them chose in-person learning.

As a result, some campuses in the wealthiest neighborhoods have most of their students — hundreds of children — returning. And on the other side of the Anacostia River, some schools have just a couple dozen students listed.”

So far, the Post reporter states that 9,200 pupils have committed to returning to the traditional schools out of a total allotment of 15,000 spaces. There are approximately 50,927 students currently enrolled in DCPS, which is operated by the Mayor but is publicly funded.

The decision as to whether to send a child back to school is complicated depending on safety concerns, childcare arrangements, and other parental responsibilities such as a job. In addition, the traditional school system is not offering after-care.

Also, returning to in-person school is not a all-or-nothing proposition. The high school student I tutor through the Latino Student Fund can return to Woodrow Wilson High School beginning Monday, but that is only for two days a week. He must balance going back with helping the family take care of other siblings.

To make maters more confusing, as if all of this was not confusing enough, according to Ms. Stein, “every school has a different reopening plan.”

When this mess is over we really have to solve the inequities of education opportunity across this town. I’ve argued for decades that the most powerful solution for reaching this goal to to turn all schools into charters. If the regular schools can have different reopening plans then they can have different curriculum, different hours, different schedules, different personnel rules and responsibilities.

Since this is now 2021, and one of my New Year’s resolutions has been to increase my flexibility, I’ll allow that under the new plan some of the previously designated neighborhood schools will be able to remain open for enrollment to anyone who wants to attend them in the community. But as far as the hierarchical structure of these institutions, I draw a red bright line. They are all to be independently managed and reporting to a board of directors.

The pandemic has cost minorities tremendously regarding illness and death. This was all predictable based upon the tremendous achievement gap between affluent and poor in Washington D.C., which is an echo of the gap in the social determinants of health.

Our community has suffered enough. Time for a change. Do something. Don’t just sit there.

Let’s together change the model of schooling after this series of traumatic events. We can follow the precedent established by New Orleans after the Hurricane Katrina. There public schools reopened as charters. We have the example. Now let’s implement.