When someone speaks to me and asks that his or her comments are off the record, I will honor that request … even when the individual tells me something of extreme significance.
That said, I spoke today with a Texas state legislator whose name will remain my secret. He told me was meeting in Austin with state education agency officials on the topic of the Covid-19 outbreak and its potential impact on the Texas public education system.
Get a load of this:
Millions of Texas students are on spring break this week; thousands of Texas teachers are on break, too. Many thousands of students, their families and teachers are going to travel abroad during this time. They will return home late this week and are slated to return to school next week.
This legislator is concerned about the impact that the Covid-19 will have on the system, namely whether it would be wise to allow students and teachers back into classrooms when they might potentially have been exposed abroad to those who are carrying the coronavirus germs.
Hmm. I asked the legislator: Do you think the Texas Education Agency is going to close our schools? This legislator doesn’t think so.
Here, though, is the question I would ask someone in authority: Wouldn’t it be prudent to close Texas’ public school system for two weeks to examine all those who traveled abroad to see if they had been exposed to coronavirus carriers and then extend the school year two weeks at the end of the academic year?
The World Health Organization today declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic, which means it’s beyond epidemic status, that it’s now a worldwide threat to potentially every human being on Earth. The virus is reported in 142 countries, killing more than 4,000 victims worldwide.
Italy has shut down. There might be more nations that follow the Italians’ lead. I don’t expect the United States of America to join them. Still, there well might be some drastic measures on tap to deal with those who ventured perhaps too close to where the coronavirus is doing its worst.