The People's Power

Make Some Noise!

It was now the middle of July. Several weeks had passed since the riots took place in the city. For the most part, the protests have died down. There was still a group of protestors who were still marching throughout Milwaukee to keep the pressure on lawmakers and to break the record of over 200 days of protests that had been set by the Fair Housing marches in 1967-68. The neighborhood that had been impacted by these riots were still recovering as of late. Josh was sitting in the living room, watching tv. The news was showing a speech that President Trump had made again, denouncing "Marxism" and talking about how crazy ANTIFA thugs won't be taking over the streets as long as he was around.

Then, the news switch to talking about Milwaukee Public Schools(MPS). Josh went to a high school that was in MPS. MPS have been closed since March 16 of this year. Josh was hoping that they were going to talk about schools reopening. Being in the house all of the time was boring. But, school was even more boring. He was hoping that schools would stay close. He turned the TV volume up.

Reporter: Milwaukee Public Schools have announced that all schools in the district will be reopening virtually. Board members had met up a couple hours ago to review safety procedures and the prevalence of COVID transmission in the community in order to see if reopening in-person was possible. Board members eventually concluded with a loud no.

The news switch to Superintendent Thomas talking about school reopening.

Superintendent: We know that this announcement will be received with mixed reactions from parents and students. But, we believe that this is the best course of action at the moment. COVID transmission remain high in the community and we fear that by reopening schools, we could potentially get students sick and staff member sick. If student or staff were to get sick, they would be required to quarantine for 14 days. This means that student would miss out on several days of learning if they or staff members were to get sick. We understand that learning loss has occurred due to the pandemic. But, we need to make sure that there is no further learning loss and reopening virtually will do just that. We apologize for any inconvenience this may make. But we care for our students and staff members and this decisions reflects that.

Josh cheered. He wasn't going to have to go back to school in-person, which meant that he wasn't going to have to wake up super early to catch the bus. On Josh's Facebook, the news of school reopening virtually was met with the expected mixed reactions. On the Fox6 News article about MPS reopening, people left sarcastic comments such as "I ain't gonna lie I kind miss the prison food MPS used to give us" and "MPS should mail me that mock chicken leg for real". However, some of Josh's friends were not so humorous. Maddie posted, "They can move tf around with virtual school because I am finna fail this mf". Tyrell posted, "Online schools sound ass asf". Tyrell was a friend of Maddie whom Josh had spoken to a few times. However, none of their post were as serious and emotionally charged as Andi's post.

Andi posted, "Bro, virtual learning is going to be such as struggle for many of us. How are we supposed to be in a distraction-free environment? There are so many things to distract us at home. On top of that, why isn't the school providing more assistance to us? We have schools that are literally partially reopening once a week to allow students to get in-person tutoring. MPS should know better considering they have the highest number of under-achieving students, many of whom are black like myself. We were struggle then. And we are struggle now!"

Josh began to feel guilty for wishing school would be virtual. He was happy, but none of his friends were. In fact, some of his friends were going to be on the verge of dropping out because of school being virtual.

"I gotta do something, " thought Josh, "I got it. I'll try to get school to reopen but how?" Then it came to Josh. A petition. He had seen a petition for George Floyd during the early days of the protest and it received millions of signatures and the officers who killed George were arrested on the spot.