Covid is gonna mean an end to public education in this country.

That's what they're doing right now.

There will be mass resignations, and people will not want to send their kids, and schools will close.

This will happen most quickly and decisively in Southern and other red states which do not allot supplies like sanitizer and PPE to public school systems and which attempt to go back on normal fall schedules.

These regions have already defunded schools to the point that they are barely surviving and teachers live on poverty wages.

These will be the first schools to go.

This has already happened. Catastrophe/Katrina was treated as a pretext for ending public education in New Orleans.

The public school system was replaced by privatized charters and religious public schools, and we did nothing.

Now it will happen across the Jim Crowed South, and nothing will be done because people in wealthy states have decided that people -- including Black people -- in poor states made their own bed and deserve their fate.

Funds will not be allotted. The "backward South" will be blamed, and kids won't have public schools anymore.

They will lose their schools first.

And this will happen across the country.

But it will happen more slowly in the Northeast because there is more funding and it takes longer to dismantle a stronger infrastructure.

But it will happen.

In the North, it will happen first in the places where it has already begun: in urban areas that have never been well-funded and where charter schools are being pushed.

It will happen in Chicago and New York and DC, and it will happen in areas where there's been white flight.

People like Trump and DeVos view public education as a public charge, which they believe should be eliminated.

I am not saying that anyone has a moral duty to send children to school.

I am glad I do not need to make such a choice, but if I did, I would be considering homeschooling for the first time. And as a journalist, I was viewed largely as an opponent of the homeschool movement.

No one should die over this, but people will.

It's a horrific proposition, sacrificing children in this way.

Here's something I know because I spent so much time researching homeschooling-related abuse and neglect:

Most states have very few homeschooling regulations. You can research yours, and you can probably register a homeschool quite easily.

I don't support this, and I've advocated against it.

But I wonder if it could be a lifeline for some people that could give you time to figure things out right now?

I know Black people will be hit disproportionately with truancy charges, and school starts in a month.

I have always advocated against the lack of restrictions. In some states, you can just state that you're now a homeschool and never encounter any oversight again.

I still think this is bad policy, but if I had school-age kids, I would use it to my advantage at this moment.

I would *eventually* figure it out. I'm not advocating neglect.

But this has been a collective trauma, and it's ongoing, and there are currently more important things than meeting grade-level standards.