COVID-19 has affected so many aspects of our lives, including the educational experience school-age children had (or didn’t have) this year. For kids entering 9th grade, their disrupted 8th grade experiences add unhelpful stress as they start high school.
This got me thinking about how we could use Opportunity Education’s Quest Forward Learning curriculum to help young people entering high school be better prepared so they could start 9th grade with confidence instead of anxiety. I discussed the idea with my teams at Opportunity Education and Quest Forward Academy who were able quickly to put together the Summer Bridge Program, terrific 2-week crash courses in Math and English.
I’m underwriting the costs, so the Summer Bridge Program is free of charge. The response to this point has been terrific. You can learn more about this Summer Bridge Program here.
There are few things I find more uplifting than the optimism of young people. And so I was quite pleased to see thisvideo that students at Opportunity Education’s Quest Forward Academy, Santa Rosa put together, expressing gratitude for the hard work so many men and women are doing to keep us going through the current coronavirus crisis.
Better still, producing this
video wasn’t an assignment – it was an idea that came from the Quest Forward
Academy Student Council. Student leaders
planned and directed the filming, and one student – the Student Council
President – edited the final product.
Gratitude is a wonderful feeling to share and I am so glad these young people took the time to do so.
When you get old enough and have some success in business, people start asking you for your opinion on issues. (In my case, it’s a funny thing because I built Ameritrade on the idea that the advice brokerage firms were peddling wasn’t worth all that much and some people would
prefer to make up their own minds about how to manage their financial futures.) So even though I’m not a doctor, people have been asking me what my thoughts, attitudes, and opinions are as we go on with the war against the Coronavirus (COVID-19).
A
lot of decisions were made in March reflecting a rapid evolutionary response. At my companies and philanthropies, we’ve
been able to keep most of the jobs although I have needed to make some
difficult personnel decisions.
My
wife and I aren’t young so we haven’t been taking any chances. Whether at home or in my office, I’m
effectively self-quarantined with everyone on my payroll who’s able to do so
working remotely.
On
the Health Front:
As
we go through the next 30-60 days, we will learn more about immunity,
mortality, and treatments. I don’t think
the country will have any large gatherings of any kind until we have a vaccine,
and that will not be right away. In the
meantime, I think medicines and treatments will be developed that will help to
prevent people from getting the virus and to heal those who have acquired
it. This spring and summer will be an
anxious and tough time for everyone.
Hopefully we’ll have a serum soon, and I’m sure there will be an easier
and quicker test developed before too long.
On
the Business Front:
Globalization
is changed forever. Old supply lines will disappear, and new ones will open. Each country has its own culture, so each
will experience its own health and business conditions. I think the United States will come out of
this war not only the strongest, but stronger economically, somewhat
similar to our position coming out of World War II. But this is only if we can get our
unemployed back to work. For the
long-term economic viability of our country, we need to get people back to work
as soon as it’s reasonable to do so. The
items mentioned in the Health section above will need to support what’s
reasonable. We need to know that we are
a nation at work or going back to work soon.
I have lived through four previous severe economic recessions, and I have faith in our Free Enterprise system; so much so that I’m willing to look across the valley of economic downturns to guesstimate how we might come out, take risks, and make investments for what I see as attractive possibilities. However, achieving our health goals and not achieving economic goals will have dire consequences, and we need to be realistic about that as we make trade offs.
We
as a country need to develop an attitude and systems for getting the unemployed
back to work while continuing to fight this virus. It won’t be an easy path but I am confident
we’re up to the challenge.
