and author of capitalism's crisis deepens, essays on the global economic meltdown, as well as jeremy newman, an expert on education policy and its impact on learning. it's great to have you both on the show today. jeremy. let's start with, you know, teachers unions in new york city and chicago want to return to remote learning for the rest of this year, saying there is not enough staff to keep classrooms going. if teachers call out sick. now some schools have even had to shut down for the week of thanksgiving because they were not enough substitutes. and we know the negative side effects of students remaining isolated. so why is remote learning now being push so hard? i mean, why can't we get teachers in the classroom? i think you're going to have to come to fundamental things like on the one hand you have to recognize. of course, there might be some circumstances where a school has to shut down. that the big question is, how is it that we are now 2 years into this pandemic? and we haven't been able to return to some form of normal for all these families. and so you have families on both si