COVID plan for CMS schools can’t be fast, cheap — and good

I came to the church I serve with big ideas and holy urgency. Both were needed, because we were facing huge challenges and our survival was at stake. Early on, I was sitting at a table with some leaders ‘casting vision’—less flatteringly, I was saying what I wanted and when I wanted it. And one man started taking notes, which I thought was a very good sign. When I paused for breath, he passed his paper over to me. He’d drawn a triangle and written a word on each side: Good. Fast. Cheap. Underneath he’d written, “pick two.”

While I’d never come across anything like this in seminary, my friend explained that it was a very common concept in production and engineering. When facing a problem, you can design a solution that contains any two of those three elements. Your solution can be fast and cheap, but it won’t be good. Your solution can be fast and good, but then it won’t be cheap. You can want fast, cheap and good solutions — but they don’t exist. Our only power lies in picking which two of the three elements we will design for. Our church is beautiful, but we don’t have much money. The ministry we do must be good and it has to be cheap — so I accept that things can’t happen as quickly as I’d like.

I’ve come to treasure what I lovingly call the triangle of doom. Knowing what’s possible helps us make wise decisions and develop realistic expectations. In fact, these days, I’m often the one drawing the triangle of doom and pushing it across the table.

As a city, we are facing huge challenges, our future is at stake and we need to consider the triangle of doom. No matter how desperately we want them, there are no fast, cheap and good solutions. I have two school aged kids in CMS and one preschooler. All of us are learning remotely at home and none of us are thriving. But nine months in, our city has had time to design and advocate for other solutions. We could have freed, empowered and invested in our educators to redevelop the curriculum and redesign the standards with remote learning in mind. We could have invested in more technological infrastructure to make sure that all kids had the tools they need to work remotely. We could have offered stipends to parents who had to stay home to supervise their kids. We could have designed some kind of universal gap year and freed all families from the anxiety and stigma of falling behind. We could have used sites like my church as remote learning pods for small groups of kids to allow some in-person instruction and child-care for essential workers while still limiting exposure for students and educators. All of these solutions were possible, but none of them would have been fast or cheap.

Instead, several South Charlotte families are suing to re-open CMS immediately. This is the fast and cheap option. It won’t cost any additional money to go back to educating as if there were no pandemic and we can do it immediately. But it won’t be good. Not for everybody. It won’t be good for teachers with pre-existing medical conditions who will have to choose between unemployment and risking death, between potentially contracting a life-altering illness and definitely being unable to pay their bills. It won’t be good for students who expose vulnerable family members to Covid-19. It’s not just a matter of whether or not someone survives. Many of the essential workers we hang signs for serve us without the benefit of health insurance or paid sick leave. Getting ill often triggers a series of unfortunate events that leads to bankruptcy, homelessness and incarceration.

And many people are sure that this is just doomsday pessimistic thinking. Most people who support re-opening CMS immediately do so because they sincerely believe it will be good for everyone. But Charlotte has a history of designing solutions that are fast and cheap but only good-for-some. Whole neighborhoods have been swallowed up by redevelopment projects that were fast and cheap and good-for-some. Our schools were re-segregated by a solution that was fast and cheap and good-for-some. The problem is, the people at the table making decisions are usually the people of privilege and power who do benefit by these fast cheap choices. We don’t listen to the people whose lives are destroyed by these ‘solutions.’ We need to face reality. Fast and cheap solutions are never good for the most vulnerable people in our community. When we fight for them anyway, the very least we can do is be honest about that.