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The president and his reactionary Republicans who are fearing for their political futures want to reopen schools. They hope to impress the public that everything is normal. If an enemy were bombing our cities, would our leaders attempt to convince us that we should go about with our daily business as if everything were normal?

COVID subjects the country to a daily bombardment that claims a thousand lives each day and many thousands more their health. Normalcy is impossible until millions in the U.S. and billions in the world are vaccinated.

The BISD faces its greatest challenge historically. What is the solution? First, the superintendent and the board must accept that trying to impose the semblance of normalcy is a formula for disaster. We live in a volatile situation in which predicting the future is beyond our powers.

We must reduce our operations that limit to the best of our capacities the deleterious effects from personal contact. The superintendent and the trustees are making life-and-death decisions. This reality isn't a hoax. This reality isn't fake news. This reality isn't bullshit. This reality defies a Trump lie.

Despite Trump's unwillingness to present one to the nation, Brownsville residents are demanding a plan from the district. There is no strategy that won't bring outrage from many quarters, but the BISD must plot a course that will allow the community to survive the year with the hope that a vaccine will rescue us from further perdition.

This is the plan: The BISD commits to distance learning for the year and eliminates all extracurricular activities. This will diminish social contact which is the prime source for the COVID spread. Anyone who sympathizers with Trump's "science" that our youth aren't capable of spreading the disease are inhabiting a fantasy world. We have no alternative but to isolate as best we can indefinitely.

I hate the thought of suspending extracurricular activities for a year. Mick had a fabulous freshman football season at Veterans Memorial and was looking forward to starting as a receiver this year for the varsity team.

There is nothing more important in his life than playing football. There is nothing more diverting in my life than watching him play football, but with the district taxed to the max meeting our children's academic needs, extracurricular events will break a system that can only bend so much. By freeing the BISD of this burden, the district will narrow its focus and have more money to buy laptops and the other necessities essential for teaching and learning.

Everyone is going to be inconvenienced. Therefore, everyone is going to have to adjust. For those recalcitrant individuals who don't want to compromise, the district should provide them with a video depicting the controlled chaos at our local hospitals and patients choking to death as they gasp for their last breaths.

"It is not my job to teach my child," complained a mother.

"But it is your job to keep your child safe," countered a BISD educator.

The district must build a strategy around distance learning while ceasing extracurricular activities. This will prevent the COVID spread. This has to be our number one priority or we will never know normalcy again. In order to achieve this goal, we must make the sacrifices. As a spoiled people, we aren't used to making sacrifices. Either we learn now or we will pay a mortal price.

Without our health, life is not worth living. Without our health, we may not have a life to live.

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