What Democrat Covid and education policies look like on the ground

A black gentleman from Chicago, Willie Preston, posted this on Facebook.

I went to bury my Grandfather last week. My son went with me and when he returned back to school this week his assistant principal inquired why he missed two days last week. He told her he went to Mississippi and she contacted us and demanded he be quarantined for seven days from the point of his return. We explain he returned last Friday got him a COVID test and sent over the negative results. We just got a call that we have to come and pick him up, despite the negative COVID results because today is the seventh day and he can’t return until after he was out seven complete days. Also, they have no online option for him to keep up with his classmates. This is Horrible. CPS and Chicago policies are horrible and are destroying the futures of our children. #WAKEUP…

This posting got 51 likes and 24 favorable comments within 24 hours.

I understand that this is an anecdotal story, but I do believe that it represents a LOT of American parents and grandparents with school-age kids.  In this case, the Chicago school system is placing arbitrary safety rules with dubious scientific support ahead of the critical learning of the child.  And what is the primary duty of a school system if not the critical learning of a child?

I know the Chicago school system very well – having served as the senior consultant to the Chicago Board of Education during a brief period of genuine reform.  The last thing the politicized school board in Chicago concerns itself is the education of the children – especially the minority children trapped in segregated substandard public schools with poor quality education.

What drives these major city school boards is politics.  Appointments to the school board is a highly partisan political process.  Many promotions within the system are predicated on political considerations.  Board meetings are consumed with which alderman’s cousin will get a construction contract … or a catering contract.  Union contracts are negotiated with union members on both sides of the table.

And while Mr. Preston’s Facebook posting is anecdotal, he is representing a much larger portion of the school parents – and the black school parents – than may be commonly believed in the general community.

Mr. Preston is correct. The policies of the Chicago public school system “are horrible and are destroying the futures of our children.”  The Democrat political machine’s policy of racial segregation and a bifurcated system of unequal education has resulted in “destroying the futures” of millions of black students over many generations.

I also had the opportunity to work with the late- Marva Collins and her West Side Prep Academy.  She kicked aside all the excuses as to why black children were not succeeding in school – the blame usually placed on the parents and the black children – and created a school that took the same economically and socially disadvantaged children and turned them out as college-bound graduates.

Mr. Preston is correct in pointing to the “policies” of the school board – which are the policies of the folks on the fifth and second floors of City Hall – the Office of the Mayor and the City Council Chamber, respectively.

Mr. Preston’s specific example may seem narrow, but it is symptomatic of much larger – and much longer – policies that have been, and are, “destroying the futures” of so many young children.

So, there ‘tis.