Greenwich failed my children
To Greenwich Public Schools and Town of Greenwich,
You have failed my children!
You failed my sons in third grade when Cos Cob School flooded and children were displaced throughout the school for months.
You failed my kids in fourth grade when classes went remote and they had zero teacher instruction from March on.
You failed my kids in fifth grade with endless quarantines, remote learning, no school play, no field trips, no normal social interactions with Plexiglas cubicles and distancing at lunchtime, and the inability to breathe properly with masks on all day.
You have now failed my kids in sixth grade, for the fourth year in a row, and this is the biggest fail yet ... and I say “yet” because your ability to continue failing my children appears to be never-ending.
Once again, halfway through their school year, any semblance of a stable learning environment comes to a screeching halt. Central Middle School is closed for repairs. They are now bused to another school to “learn” in a cafeteria for an undetermined amount of time. All who contributed to this disaster should be ashamed of themselves and should step down immediately.
I’m disgusted. I’m angry. I’m appalled. I’m devastated for my children who deserve better, who deserve the bare minimum of attending a school that doesn’t have to close its doors midway through the school year.
You’ll say kids are resilient. You’ll say we’ll get through this together. Enough is enough! Everyone has their limits. Children have limits too. How much more disruption can they take before the repercussions become permanent? Their social, emotional, mental, and educational well-being have been destroyed over and over and over and over again.
My sixth-grade twin boys have not had a “normal” consistent school year since second grade. That’s insane and 100 percent unacceptable. I thank God every day that I’m a learning specialist and I can pick up the pieces of where you have utterly failed them by stealing away their schooling and their literal school, allowing it to fall so far into disrepair that it becomes “unsafe for human occupancy.” I have had to adjust my work schedule to teach and support them for four years causing financial stress for my family. What has happened to the other kids whose parents aren’t educators to fill in the gaps? Do you even care?
A very long time ago my husband (born and raised in Cos Cob) and I chose to raise our children here in hopes of providing them with a wonderful education in a town we thought cared about that and cared about our schools. How wrong we were. My sons are the fifth generation of Vizzos to attend Greenwich Public Schools but I will now make it my life’s mission to convince my husband to pack up and leave this town that has failed our children year after year. And I will shout this from the rooftops until I feel heard because this is a travesty.