#school shutdown

New Hampshire this morning, I am simply captivated by the masterclass in local government happening in Claremont, NH right now.

So guy, get this.

The Claremont school district is kicking off the school year with a teeny, tiny little budget issue. They're somewhere between $1 and $5 MILLION in the hole.

And how, you might ask, does a school district find itself in such a pickle right as school is supposed to start?

Oh, simple. It’s because for the last two years, they RETURNED $1.5 MILLION to taxpayers because they thought they had a surplus.

They did the math so wrong they gave away money they never had.

So now, school might not even stay open, 19 new teacher positions have been axed, and everyone is in full panic mode.

To which the New Hampshire Department of Education has basically said, "Damn, that's crazy. Good luck with your local issue."

Parents:

Elementary age kids:

Middle school kids:

Most high schoolers:

The kids that were supposed to graduate this year:

The teachers who now have to develop three months of online lessons:

“We can’t go back to school because our president did nothing to prevent a pandemic and thounds of people are dead but half of the country still believes the lies of our racist fascist sociopathic president who cares only about being re-elected

Schools are closed today and Monday for COVID-19, but we don’t have any guidance beyond Monday yet. Teachers are reporting in on Monday to talk about what distance learning might look like, and pretty much everyone around us is closed for the next 2-3 weeks so I’m thinking that we probably won’t be back in school until after spring break. Yesterday our district was so adamant that only schools that had students or teachers who had been diagnosed with Coronavirus would be closed, but there was so much community pushback (because honestly, their letter and press conference was so ill advised and counter to everything the CDC has said) that they closed today.