To: Mayor Bowser, Chancellor Ferebee, WTU President Davis, DCPS Principals: Restoring Wednesdays at DCPS

For decades, our children’s education and our country’s economy have been structured around a 5 day work week. This was put on pause a year ago as COVID-19 hit and we tried to understand how to limit its spread. 

But underneath the many important debates on how to reopen DC public schools safely lies the much more simple question: why is Wednesday still not a full day of structured school? 

• From a COVID-19 transmission perspective, there is no reason children should not be in school Wednesdays. 
• From a parent and guardian perspective, there is no reason children should not be in school Wednesdays.
• From a child health and education perspective, there are very clear reasons why Wednesdays should be a full day of learning and instruction.

We respectfully demand that DC public schools restore Wednesday schooling immediately for Term 4, equivalent to the other 4 days of the week.

The initial logic of the closed Wednesday was that school custodial staff should have adequate time to deep clean the buildings--a reasonable idea at the time but science has since shown it does not require a full day. Additionally, in practice, this has not actually been occurring in DC public schools, however the 20 percent reduction in schooling has continued.

There are many issues to be worked through as we reopen schools safely, but nobody--from the CDC to our Mayor, Chancellor, Washington Teachers Union and Principals--has stated a clear health, safety or learning argument as to why schools should continue to be instruction free on Wednesdays. This 20 percent drop in learning for an entire year is a burden carried by children, parents and guardians. It leaves a mid-week, free-form gap that consistently needs to be filled and is the source of great frustration and inequity for our working families, harming vulnerable and at-risk children the most. This 20 percent drop in education has been unexamined, yet it is felt each week by parents and guardians as children suffer and employers lose patience for parents and guardians absence or distraction.

We, the undersigned DCPS parents and guardians, respectfully demand that our DC public schools immediately restore full Wednesday schooling for Term 4.