Written by Ainsley Jackman
The San Diego Union-Tribune recently published a poll of a wide demographic of San Diegans on all things related to COVID-19, and the results are pretty interesting. Here’s some of what we learned.
While approval ratings on managing the coronavirus were up for both Gov. Newsom and county leaders, the latter outperformed the former by at least 10 percentage points, with 64% of respondents approving of Newsom’s response and 74% approving of local leaders. This may be an indication that deferring more authority to local leaders in tailoring COVID-19 responses would be a step in the right direction, both for maintaining public trust and in creating a more efficient and streamlined coronavirus response.
Although almost 60% of respondents claimed that they supported Newsom’s guidelines of allowing schools to open only after they are off the state’s watchlist for two weeks, only 33% supported a remote-only program when asked specifically how they wanted schools to return.
This discrepancy may have something to do with the practical realities of at-home schooling. For instance, while 47% of charter school parents said their children thrived while learning remotely, only 24% of K-12 parents said the same, indicating a resource gap that prevents children from lower-income families from learning as effectively online. Meanwhile, 71% of special-needs parents said they were very concerned about their child’s ability to learn well in remote learning, suggesting a similar problem.
The unfortunate truth the poll exposes is that although online-only learning is appealing in theory, in reality it not only prevents every child from reaching their full potential at school, but specifically neglects already marginalized children. It also suggests that these problems might be better solved if left up to local leaders who know the specific struggles and situations in their area and could help by accommodating accordingly, rather than allowing Gov. Newsom to dictate blanket orders that often appear to do more harm than good.
