Students to Stay at Home the Rest of the School Year | Eastern NC Now

Publisher's note: The author of this post is AUTHORNAME for the John Locke Foundation.

    JLF's Becki Gray continues with her regular appearances on North Carolina Public Radio WUNC with host Jeff Tiberii. In her latest appearance, Becki joined Rob Schofield from the N.C. Justice Center to discuss the extension of the stay-at-home order, the cancellation of in-person classes for the rest of the academic year, and reopening the economy.

    School children will not return to in-person instruction this academic year. This means children will have to continue online education until at least the fall.

    Gray acknowledged the importance of children staying connected with their teachers and classmates during this time:

• In an emergency, [online learning] has worked quite well. I would like to offer support to teachers and students to continue this: to remain connected and have that little bit of discipline...
• We need to continue what we have done.

    Schofield suggested children will need therapy after this school year:

• A lot of kids don't have internet access... This is an incredibly difficult situation even in the best-situated families... There are tons of kids being left behind...
• We need to think about... the trauma we are inflicting on our children and our teachers and our education system. There is going to be a significant need in the months ahead for therapy and counseling.

    Gray expressed her sympathies for the difficult position the governor is in, but emphasized the need for more data to make important decisions about managing the state:

• I do not envy the governor right now. When he was running for governor, no one could have imagined that these would be the kind of challenges he would face...
• Everybody has said we need to do this safely. So it all comes down to having more data, more testing; we need to know how many people in the population may be immune to it... There is still a lot of information that is not being disclosed or is not available and it all hinges on the data and the testing.

    Listen to the full episode of the podcast HERE. Follow Becki Gray on twitter: @beckigray.