Justin Murphy – Rochester Democrat and Chronicle USA TODAY NETWORK – in the D&C on 9/11/2020 on page A1
There’s never been a first week of school like this before.
The masks. The distancing. The incessant temperature checks and hand-washing and protocolabiding that have become nearly second nature in 2020, all now transplanted into classrooms across the Rochester region and the country.
Even this approximation of education is under threat from a withholding of education funding from
the state government. The impact of that withholding is being felt unevenly across school districts, with the Rochester City School District taking the hardest hit.
Another significant disparity has to do with how much time children are spending in physical classrooms as opposed to learning at home. On that front, a parent coalition has filed a lawsuit seeking to force a full return to in-person learning.
At the same time, many local children and teenagers have spent the summer taking part in demonstrations over racial injustice. Those national efforts now have been concentrated locally after the news of the death of Daniel Prude in March at the hands of Rochester police.