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Linda Rabadi Fair and her two children will stay with public schools.
Why we choose to stay How one family has faced a tough education choice by L I N D A R A B A D I F A I R photo by J O S H U A H U S T O N
It has been a difficult two years for families, full of pivots caused by a pandemic that highlighted the cracks in our existing, tenuous support systems. Now we’re seeing how a lot of Seattle families decided to navigate these unprecedented times – by leaving our public school system. I understand this choice. I contemplated it myself. In so many ways, my family was secure
throughout the pandemic. My husband and I both kept our jobs, our kids were good students without special needs. We had housing and internet connection. We were able to follow the instructions to implement remote schooling. And yet, it was hard — very, very, very hard. Our lives had an underlying tone of suspended animation. One thousand small frustrations took so much joy from our everyday life. Comforting sad and exhausted children who couldn’t handle one more asynchronous lesson. Countless schedule consults. Working early in the morning and very
late at night to advance projects that were paused during school hours. The isolation and burnout and, eventually, the loss of hope that school would ever return to in-person. Because for many months, it didn’t feel like we were going back. The school board showed no sense of urgency. The teachers union opposed returning to classrooms, even after vaccines were available. The district seemed only to focus on improving virtual school. No local government official was pushing to return kids to classrooms. Meanwhile, private schools were in-person or CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE >
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