<I have been a member of this community on my main for a while now, this is a throw away, due to the nature of the post, happy to prove to mods if needed>
I am the friend of a teacher at OCHS who is not on reddit but would like to get this information out to the community.
Today, there was a memorial service for a high school senior who died due to covid. This was organized and run by the teachers union.
Backstory: Ever since the school went online in March 2020, the teacher's union at OCHS was pushing for transparent safety procedures from the administration, school board, and charter company Aspira Inc. of PA. During the 2020-2021 school year, the school was entirely online and teacher union members pushed for administration to work with staff to create a safety procedure for returning to in person school.
At the beginning of this school year, teachers were underwhelmed with the safety precautions, and overwhelmed with in-person and virtual students at a school that is already challenging. There has been no transparency or clear communication from administration. Instructions and policy that were given in the beginning of the year have changed without clear communication to staff, and the covid dashboard that staff were pushing for still hasn't happened. All this to say, that teachers and staff have been asking for help and sharing solutions for a year and a half and been ignored.
After Thanksgiving there was a huge spike in covid cases. Entire classes have been in quarantine. Many teachers were also going into quarantine sometimes a day after returning from the previous quarantine. The teachers union begged for classes to go virtual through December to protect our students and families, and especially to support the school nurses who are understaffed and working at all Aspira schools because there aren't enough on staff. If OCHS went virtual for 2 weeks, it would give the nurses about 2,000 people they wouldn't have to worry about contact tracing and contacting for quarantines and testing.
The OCHS school board ignored the teachers, and tried to blame them for not caring about students' education. (The board members who have never been in the building this year, while the teachers are showing up everyday.)
Tragically and traumatically a senior passed away due to covid this week. Teachers continued to push for virtual classes and the board continues to deny the request. In response, the union decided to hold a memorial and action today: teac
... keep reading on reddit ➡They conned their way into a televised game on ESPN against the elite IMG academy with predictable results. I'm guessing the owner expected some kind of magical bad news bears outcome and an end to his financial woes.
So my three girls will be starting high school this upcoming school year and WAHS is the school that normally we'd feed into due to where we live (just barely outside outside of the 526 loop off of 17). My house to JICHS is eight bad miles, my house to WAHS is 2.3 easy miles.
Does anyone out there have any information about either school they can share? Is the drive to JI going to be worth it? Our main concern is quality of education and teacher to student ratio.
One girl is a good student and will try out for soccer. One girl is OK student and will do sports outside of school. One is very good academically and will not be participating in athletics.
All three currently have after school activities (two of them in West Ashley and one of them barely in N. Chas. off of Cosgrove Ave. They'll all probably continue these activities for the foreseeable future.
My wife doesn't work so the daily drop off / pick up is covered and we already know how shitty AM and PM the traffic will be.
Thanks in advance.
Trying to remember the name of a charter high school that was on E. Burnside & 20th?
Here's just a small list of how it was different:
-We only had about 20-30 students, top.
-We called our teachers by their first names.
-Our lunches were healthy and not junk the usual greasy pizza or burgers.
-We had no bell, sports team, or auditorium.
-We went on field trips to universities, racing grand prix twice, and farmers markets.
-There wasn't any "cliques" since the school was very small anyway. We just blended together.
-We did not have final exams at the end of the semester. Instead, we gave a presentation on what we learned to teachers, our classmates, and their parents. IMO, these presentations were way more effective than final exams. I still remember what I presented many years later. I can't even remember my college final exams.
