Covid and School
 

I think it is time to start this thread.

People are saying teachers are essential. My district had the balls to send out a survey and say that parents needed childcare.

Is school essential? Are teachers front line workers, without the resources of private entities? Are teachers baby sitters, because they do not get paid like a baby sitter?

What is the answer at this point? All virtual? a blended model? Full speed ahead?

What are the districts and colleges doing around you?

Send them all to school and let God sort them out.

Or is it darwinism?

What seems strange about 'essential worker'-izing teachers is that the work can be done remotely in a lot of places. That is something that distinguished essential workers - you couldn't do it at home. You had to go in to work at a grocery store, or fight fires, or police areas.

Anyways, my county is doing virtual learning - pushed back the start of school a few weeks, and then will reassess at the next School Board meeting in September. They are using Microsoft Teams and every kid was assigned a Chromebook. Wife says they are doing for each class 15 mins of teacher lecture followed by 20 mins (or so) of students doing the work - and teachers can correct on the fly. Though I have to ask her how that works for art - as there is digital art you can do but most of elementary art is using physical materials. Maybe they show them after the time?

I know quite a few teachers and most are resentful that they are viewed as babysitters for the kids so the rest of society can go back to work. Look at the idiocy in Cherokee County and Paulding County in GA. I mean, we had one case in Indiana where the parents sent their kid to school while awaiting the results of a test. I think I said it earlier in a thread, but the percentage of parents who will send their kids to school sick is >50%.

I will start by saying there are no good options here. My local towns and our school facebook groups are blowing up about all of this as you can imagine.

My town has 4 elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. My 2 kids are in elementary, going into 2nd and 5th grade. Their school is doing 5 days a week. Early release with no lunch. You can opt in for virtual if you like and can opt out of transportation. Masks mandatory, no sharing supplies, no playground equipment, other safety measures. As of now we are sending them and opting out of transportation since the bus is basically the wild west. My buddy lives 3 doors from the school. My plan is to park at his place and walk over with him and his son.

We are lucky since we don't start until Sept 8th we will get to see what happens in other areas of the country. If there are a lot of outbreaks I may decide to do virtual, or I suspect the school will go to all virtual.

Your other points are far more complicated. I know a lot of teachers and haven't heard any of them say they are opting out, but they all say they expect to catch it. They also all realize in some respect they are babysitters.

They need to make this criminal...

I'm pretty sure that the motto for the Texas 2020-2021 school year

SI

Didn't you see? We're trying to actually grant immunity for it instead.

SI

If Bevin were still governor of KY, it WOULD be the motto here.

I think it's part parents needing the kids to go to school for work purposes, part wanting them out of the house for sanity purposes, and part knowing that online learning is practically useless from how things worked in the spring. Now, I expect the "virtual academy" we will be using will be better than what they quickly threw together in the spring, but I don't know how much. And it was useless for actual learning purposes in the spring. So if it's only marginally better, kids aren't going to learn much.

It's a problem without a good solution - although we were on track to having things mostly under control around September 1 and then threw it all away around Memorial Day.

Daughter one finishes college this semester with all online classes. Her professors are super old. PA state schools pay them a grip so nobody is in a hurry to retire. Daughter 2 is starting high school online this semester.

My daughter in college is an education major and is supposed to be spending a significant amount of time in observations/student teaching in the local schools this year. We'll see how they handle that. They had no plan in the spring, but I assume they'll figure something out so that she can remain on pace to graduate on time.

We're in such a bad spot. We have a 2nd grader and 5th grader.

Because we're not doing a great job of quarantining ourselves in our daily lives we feel like it's fruitless to take them out or maybe pointless is the right word. We mask up and try to eat at restaurants outside but my son still plays baseball, we still go to friend's homes, work in an office (while keeping 6') but it's just fruitless to think we can avoid this thing wholly. We'll pull them if someone pops but until then I guess we're riding the lightning.

Around me it's mixed. There are adjacent counties doing completely different models and everything is still a fairly steady state of flux for those who haven't actually gone back yet (i.e. either weren't scheduled back yet or adjusted their start date by a couple weeks that haven't arrived yet).

If there's a variant -- in person, mixed, online-only -- it's probably in use within 25-50 miles of me.

edit to add: And sitting in a university town, with almost constant local media coverage, I couldn't tell you wtf UGA will ultimately end up doing. The plan is to largely reopen, but between the staff protests and godknowswhatall behind the scenes maneuvering is taking place, I wouldn't put two cents on anything be a sure thing right now.

That is one of the worst scenarios I've heard mentioned -- student teachers in general I mean, I know a few in similar situations -- and she gets my sincere sympathy for having to deal with it.

If it's like NY, the state Dept. of Ed. has to make rule changes for this environment. For certification programs, colleges are largely at the mercy of what the state says they can do.

This. I would say about 20% of the conversation that I hear about wanting the kids back at school have anything to do with the quality of education the kids would be getting in the classroom. Everything else has been about getting the kids to someone else to take care of while the parents are working.

This whole situation sucks. And to top it off, NKU just let everything know that the first athlete tested positive. That's going to be another whole situation she has to navigate.

Our younger daughter plays basketball and my wife is really not loving all the practices, no masks, etc. I'm cautious but she's really trying to minimize all of our contacts as much as possible. Anyway, tonight we let her go to a teammate's house with 3 other girls to practice and they're all spending the night and we won't let Mackenzie, so she's all pissed. And it makes us look like we are strict a-holes, when in fact no one should really be spending the night while cases continue to increase in Lexington. I hate feeling like a bad parent for being responsible.

Around here, I believe most of the districts opened with a virutal option and some of them are going 50/50.

My daughter's district is one of the few that went 100% virtual and I am glad they did. All of the large districts that opened schools have all had reported cases already and most have been in school less than a week.

Are teachers' unions weak or non-existent in these areas where schools are back and in person? I dont see how any unions would allow a district to roll the dice with the teachers' and their families' lives. My employer allows employees to be exempt from returning to the office if anyone at home smokes, as they are therefore at risk.

My son is in high school, and they are strictly online. I don't think school can be done in person safely. Probably a bad parallel, but Health care workers have the equipment and training to use it, and they get sick. Students won't be diligent and some will come to school sick, knowingly and unknowingly. This just looks like a bad deal for students, teachers, and their families.

In Australia, most schools have been back for about eight school weeks. We are currently in winter (right now, this is the equaivalent of February in the northern hemisphere) and the middle of our flu season. Our national case numbers are 20,000 with 266 deaths from a population of 25 million. My school recently had a student case discovered which closed us down for two days for cleaning.

As a 56 year old, I don't feel safe nor comfortable. I have been the only one of the teachers to wear a mask for the entire time we have been back teaching even though it has not been a requirement. The students do not socially distance at all and the teachers pay lip service to it. Thankfully I am a social isolate and have been keeping my distance well before the coronavirus. We live in a reasonably moderate climate where a maximum temperature of 60F is considered cold. Even on these days, I have every window and the door open for ventilation. It is only uncomfortable on mornings that get down to about 40F but I have the reverse cycle AC on in those cases with everything still open.

As little as two weeks ago, you would think that the virus doesn't exist anymore. We have had very few case numbers in my city (population around 400,000) and certain restrictions like school sport off-site and school incursions had started again. My school reopens on Monday and I will be interested to see what will be people's reactions to this. Masks have not been a requirement in my state (NSW) but have recently been strongly suggested for shopping or public transport. I'm guessing that I won't be the only weirdo with a mask.

Our daily routine has been teachers administering hand sanitizer at the start of every lesson (BTW the spray bottles are so much better than the slow drip ones) and then spraying the desks with disinfectant at the end of each period. How effective is this? Who knows? I think it just gives a false sense of security. At home, I am not a germaphobe at all but quite a slob. At work, if I touch a projector remote, I sanitize. If I answer the phone, sanitize. Touch anything that doesn't belong to me, sanitize.

For any teachers out there, make sure that you know what your leave requirements are if you need to get tested or isolate. Does the school/department cover you or does it come from your personal leave?

That presumes that teachers are all against returning, which is definitely not the case in all places, particularly at the K-12 level.

The ones I know / see comment -- which is an unduly high percentage of my social media since probably 25% or more of my HS graduating class ended up teaching -- appear split along lines similar to the public in their area.

A few are even as adamant as I am on the subject.

This - also true of the pandemic in general.


I say no, but I would put schools in the most-important spot of the non-essential category; that is, it's what you should open first before bars, beaches, etc.

Children not being able to go to school is a very bad thing that has repercussions on parents, the rest of the economy, their future, etc. But it's not in the same category as food, electricity, etc. that is needed at a basic level to keep society functioning in the short-term. So I don't put it in the essential category. I think it's being put there right now as a emotional rather than logical decision.

I completely disagree with this. Unless you are someone who downplays mental health issues there are millions of kids suffering from not having that daily routine, structure, socialization, challenges, etc...that doesn't even count millions of kids who rely on schools for their only decent meals.

Even with virtual learning the longer this goes on the higher the number of kids we are going to see with long term emotional and mental issues.

I am lucky my kids have handled it pretty well, but even they are starting to shows signs of having some issues. Shorter fuses, lack of motivation, not enjoying some activities they used to, wanting to be alone, etc...nothing rising to the level of concern, yet, but another 6 months into winter could be a different story. I know a lot of people who have it way worse.

Serious question? Does this go away if they go back to school in the middle of a pandemic?

I'm pretty sure it's the pandemic that is the stressor (or parents stressed about it), not the lack of school or lack of a routine?

And it's not like the teachers are robots- they are also going to be stressed, because of the pandemic. And your kids will know.

Never mind that this false normalcy is going to be shattered as soon as classmates start getting sick or teachers or parents.

SI

I honestly don’t have an answer to that but my opinion is they need that routine and time with other kids that aren’t siblings. We are on vacation and just the change in scenery has done them good.

I'm not downplaying that, I'm saying it's not in the same survival category as the others. School is not the only place children can get routine, structure, etc.; parents can provide that in other ways. They've done it for most of human history. If that weren't the case, homeschooled children would all be basketcases; in fact the studies I'm aware of show that more homeschooled kids graduate from college than those who aren't.

The bottom line is these are things that can be overcome. Not having food isn't.

I guess my experience with teachers' unions is that they aren't truly democratic when it comes to determining policy. Sure there are votes for strikes and such, but posturing with school districts and state leadership seems to be entirely within the realm of the union leadership. Stereotypical Union leadership don't fall into the same stereotype that youve painted yourself into. So there must be something else there.

On I side note. Something I've noted about myself is that I've found your Covid posts to be much more personally provocative than other positions you've taken over the years. I usually. Just chuckle and move on while your usual adversaries fire volley after volley. So maybe I skew liberal on Covid.

If you want to break society down to basic needs, sure, but mental health is every bit as important as physical health.

As for homeschooling, I have never met someone who is homeschooled where both parents are also trying to work full time while homeschooling.

This is true, and yet this is compared with going back to school as normal. When I see images of schools that are taking harm reduction seriously, with reduced class size, spaced out desks, no students within 3 feet of each other, mask wearing, eating lunch at their desk, no interacting in the halls, I have to wonder if that will help at all with the mental health needs of kids. If a school went from normal to this, we'd all be outraged at the disruption to our kids' natural needs for socialization, interaction, closeness, play, etc. I'm honestly not sure if this helps enough to be worth the risk it still entails.

I finished my Master of Arts, Teaching degree last year. My student teaching was cut short in March. They just gave us some extra reflection assignments to make it up.

The county I got a job in is doing all virtual instruction, but is having the teachers still come in to the school and lead lessons from there. It's been a crazy way to begin my career as most of the people who would normally be helping me get situated and ready are just as confused as I am. Part of the problem is that the county waited so long trying to make in person lessons happen that when they switched, they didn't really have time to fully prepare for how it was going to work.

I actually agree with the mental health issues. Not only that, but online instruction is useless for kids in SPED programs or with specific IEP's. But there are ways to work around that. Allowing small class pods to meet for SPED/IEP instruction, allowing in person appointments for counseling services, etc. are all reasonable adjustments that can be made, just like the meal service programs that have been created. These can be done without shoving 2,000 kids into crowded hallways and classrooms.

This is what I am worried about. Our district is pushing forward with 5 days in person, early releases with no lunch. We don't go back until sept 8th and I am really worried they will see other parts of the countries have issues and pull the plug and go all virtual with no plan.

I said last year they should have shut it all down in May, virtual learning was pretty much useless at that point, and start working on contingencies for all scenarios.

In other news did you change careers to go into teaching?

The Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools has recommended online learning only for the fall and that proposal will be voted on by the board on Wednesday (I expect it will pass).

As one half of two full-time working parents of two grade school kids, this is frustrating. I completely sympathize with teachers being scared about this and feeling like they aren't in the same category as emergency medical professionals. On the other hand, there's this which I have a hard time disputing:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...-i-did/614902/

My wife and I are fortunate that we have been able to work from home since this hit, and so the kids finishing up their spring quarter at home was possible. But any parent of kids that age can imaging just how difficult that could be and how disruptive it is to the parent(s) nearby that are also expected to be doing their jobs. We're not teachers. We can both provide some guidance and help, but even in the best of situations (kids fully engaged with the topic and wanting to complete the assignment) it can be a real time sink to work with them. We were both counting the days until the school year was done so we could actually be closer to truly working full-time from home again and not splitting time trying to also be teachers.

This summer they have been attending the usual day-camp they do that is put on by the after-school care program at their school. The camp has been following social-distancing protocols, mask-wearing, screening each morning before entering, etc. and other than one false-positive scare with a counselor, has had no issues with COVID.

We are also fortunate that this after-school program at their school is preparing to offer part-day and full-day care including support for the kids doing their online learning. This will take place in the school buildings, same as their normal after-school care and the same as they've been doing this summer. Which raises the obvious question: if this program can have a certain number of kids in the school buildings, using school equipment to access their online learning and providing support for their online learning, why the fuck aren't they just doing this with their actual teachers?

It's a failure all around that something couldn't have been worked out here. Seattle Public Schools had initially suggested that for elementary school students they would try for a schedule of in-person learning 2 days a week and online learning the rest of the time as a means of limiting the number of students in the school each day to meet social distancing protocols. That's effectively what's going to happen now with this after-school care program, only the "teachers" will be minimum-wage college-aged counselors instead of highly-trained teachers.

Bigger picture, yes, schools are effectively day-care. Our society has gravitated to an economic model where, in most decent-sized cities, both parents need to work in order for a household to bring in the income necessary to achieve a middle-class lifestyle. And so for younger kids that can't be left home alone, schools provide the additional role of day-care. When there is a disruption to that routine such as this pandemic, we need to prioritize finding solutions to this issue. My wife and I are in a position to where we can work from home and keep an eye on the kids (though it's a severe hit to our work productivity), but I think about other families where they can't work from home, and those that are much closer to poverty level (which in Seattle doesn't take much given our insane real estate market) and how disruptive this has all been for them.

I think the other bigger-picture issue here is understanding different needs and approaches for students depending on their age. There's a different between a 2nd grader trying to learn online vs. a 7th grader vs. a 12th grader. While the structure and set-up of schools isn't the only way to teach kids, it's the way our society chooses to do it and a sudden disruption without a well-planned substitute is a recipe for real problems for these kids and their education. What long-term issues are we going to see from these significant curveballs these kids have had to endure in their academic careers? How many will be thrown-off in a way that has lasting damage?

So, yes, I'm sympathetic to teachers that say they didn't sign up to be front-line workers. Except, they actually did whether they were conscious of it or not. I'll avoid getting overtly political here, but I'll just say I don't think we had the leadership necessary (at many, many levels, not just the President) to adequately address this.

Only issue is that the evidence we have indicates that reopening schools can cause spike in cases, even if protective measures are put in place. Look at Israel.

Isreal Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster that Wiped Out Lockdown Gains

This isn't like grocery stores, where distancing is easy to do. You have seen those pictures in North Georgia? Paulding County schools were people are shoulder to shoulder. And it came out that 9 people in that school have tested for COVID, so we'll see how far they spread that.

It seems to indicate that schools are superspreader events.

Our district has a special board meeting Monday. The local NEA sent the board a scathing letter. I imagine we go to a blended schedule 2 days for the students and 2 days for the other half.

We have to make a choice for our teen boys by the 17th.

The regular plan for high school is 2 days a week in person, slightly shorter days. They've switched to a block semester schedule so the kids have only 4 classes at a time and less switching, will have only half the number of kids in class, masks on, etc. The rest of the week they work remotely.

Alternately, we can choose to opt out of that and go full remote learning. Here they clearly don't really have a plan. They're waiting to see how many students do it, how many teachers refuse to teach in-person and then winging it from there. It seems obvious to me there are severe logistical problems with doing this at a high school level, but no real plan to address them.

My oldest wants to go to school because he recognizes he did poorly on his own. My youngest wants to stay home because he can't imagine having to wear a mask all day in a stuffy room (he's always been very sensitive to fabrics, sensations, etc.).

I am torn. On the one hand, remote learning sounds like a mess because they have not prepped for it. On the other, chances of everyone being sent home within a few weeks of school seem high, so why run the risk of getting them exposed? Teachers will have a couple weeks to plan for this hybrid learning, students are spaced out in desks with masks and can't really interact, I'm not sure how much better that will be than an admittedly half-assed remote plan.

My wife and I mostly work at home, and these guys are teens, so we can afford to keep them home if we want (though it wasn't exactly easy even so). So I also wonder if we should just do that and reduce the population in the school for those who have to go. This is tough.

Yeah, I was the director of a tutoring center. I was doing well, but the lifestyle was terrible, as tutoring has to be done after school so lots of late nights and weekends, not to mention the constant sales pressure. Also, we were a high end company and could only help a wealthier clientele. I had always wanted to be a teacher, and when I got engaged, we decided to bite the bullet and have me go back to get my Masters so I could have a better work/life balance.

There isn't one spot in my classroom that is 6 ft away from where any student would be sitting.

I don't doubt that they could be, but I'd like to see breakdowns of what kinds of set-ups lead to what frequency of problems. I'd also love to see data from all the various summer day-camp set-ups that have been taking place across the country and how they've performed.

Specifically in Seattle I think it would be instructive to see how the ones in the region have done. As I said (and obviously this is just one small example and not necessarily predictive of the idea as a whole) the day camp my kids have been doing this summer has been free of any positive cases.

It wouldn't surprise me if the school situations that have been more prone to problems are for older grades.

Looks like our school district is going to be on-line for my daughter until at least November, and because of that we decided to opt out until January. At least this way we know what we're getting for the first half of the year.

One other comment on this issue:

Like seemingly everything in our world now, this is something that is heavily politicized which is unfortunate. I suppose it's inevitable given how polarizing President Trump is, but it's too bad that battle lines were quickly drawn between "open schools = supporting Trump" and "opposing Trump requires opposing open schools".

It's not for lack of effort that this hasn't been framed in a bi-partisan/non-political discussion - I've seen multiple thoughtful think pieces about the need to open schools and ways to do so that would minimize risk from folks that have zero interest or desire to be supportive of Trump, but those battle lines are hard to erase.

The Atlantic has been all over this issue:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...chools/613939/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...y-part/612046/
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...chools/614605/

I can't speak for all day camps, but there was an infamous one in North Georgia which resulted in over 200 Covid 19 cases.

CDC report: 200+ kids were infected with Covid at Georgia camp | 11alive.com

Now this camp didn't require the wearing off masks nor did they open all the windows and there was singing and cheering. But why should we expect GA schools to be any different? I saw those Paulding County pictures - 25% of kids may have been wearing masks as they were elbow to elbow.

‘Fox & Friends’ Host Ainsley Earhardt ‘Shocked’ to Learn Kids Can Get COVID-19

What? You mean kids are like, human or something?!!?

Well sure. But if we're trying to get an idea of whether in-person instruction using social distancing and other safety protocols works, then looking at other similar situations (like the day camps in the Seattle area following those protocols) is what would be instructive, not looking at ill-advised attempts elsewhere that ignored common-sense guidelines.

The thing is that they were following state guidelines. Which is the level of what the schools will do. That's the issue here. A lot of these states don't have strict mask or distance guidelines and it may be almost impossible to do it at schools - where students have been jammed in overcrowded schools for decades. So then you just gamble on how many people get it.

Right. I guess the disconnect here (if there is one) is I don't give any shits about what another state - particularly one that hasn't exactly shown the wisest of actions regarding this pandemic - is doing in terms of guidelines. I care about what my state is doing and whether the situation here could (have) support(ed) some kind of in-class approach for grade schoolers. I guess we'll get somewhat of an answer with the day camps that will host kids inside the school buildings.

I'm a school psycholgist in a management position and have been practicing for about 10 years now. As someone said, there are no good options here unfortunately.

There are a lot of factors that really are not being considered here. My responses are primarily for areas who are not in stage 4 of opening. In my case our county is on the watch list and already has a significant rise in cases. There may be areas where some of my points do not apply.

What happened in the spring was crisis learning, not remote learning. I can only speak for my district, but our planning, and training is significantly better now than it was then. As usual there will be variance but we have some teachers who are going to be doing a great job. Now will even a much improved remote learning experience be as good as pre pandemic normal schooling? Not even close. But is it on par with what school will look like with in person learning under these conditions? Possibly and in some cases in person could be worse. I can tell you some of our more talented teachers doing remote learning is much better than whoever we'd get in for an in person sub. .

Some practical considerations. There are huge sub shortages. We couldn't get enough sub coverage pre pandemic. With in person learning its due to a number of reasons its quite likely many teachers will be out and using their sick days often and we will likely have many classrooms with no teacher. And a lot of teachers who are not new have a lot of sick day. Not to mention time out if there was possible exposure.

Teachers are not health care workers. They are not trained in this. Teachers are scared, really scared. Scared teachers do not provide quality instruction. This isn't making sure a patient lives, its creating a learning environment for kids. Schools are not set up to follow procedures like hospitals. My wife works at a hospital directly with covid patients. But they have strict protocol. Not kids chasing each other threatening one another with covid. And along the previous point, starting on in person school where cases are high is just going to lead to shutdown and emergency response again, resulting in poorer remote learning. And for my county it currently takes a week to even get a test and a week to get results so again your going to have classrooms and potentially whole school sites shut down for weeks at a time to even know if someone was negative.

Mental health is a very real concern but this is true regardless of the learning model. Being at school 6 feet apart from everyone, not being allowed to play with classmates, do collaborative learning, play on the playground, having to wear a mask, not being able to come near your teacher, or having them back away from you etc.. these are not therapeutic conditions for mental health. Having more people get sick and or die are not good for mental health. We have many many kids who have their older grandparents as their guardians. Them getting sick or dying isn't good for mental health. Counseling services can be provided remotely. As a community we need to step up in regards to mental health, not just the schools.

Now remote learning has some major issues too. Some primary ones being equity and special education. Remote learning is really difficult for students who had school as their safe place and home is not a comfortable or safe place for them. These kids are suffering, though based on the polling we did, almost all of them chose remote learning for the year anyway. And while I do think kids with specific learning disabilities and speech or language can still benefit from remote support services, kids with autism, intellectual disabilities, significant emotional and behavioral difficulties and others in special day classes are the most affected.

All the options suck, but I am seeing teachers work their butts off all summer in prepping the best they possibly can for remote learning this go around.

This whole mess was caused by irresponsibility in the first place. We should have the virus largely contained and testing and tracing to a degree that in person learning could work and specific cases quickly isolated and dealt with. Back when we to crisis learning in the spring and shut down I was hopeful wed have the virus response managed and be back in to in person schooling now as when safe that really is best for kids. But were not even close.

This whole crappy situation is the result of our societal failings.

That's a great response Danny, and I get all those points. What's left unsaid though is what are the options if in-person learning isn't going to happen? We can tiptoe around it all we want or tut-tut about this reality in our society, but working parents count on school to act not just as the way our kids learn, but also as a de facto child care for younger kids that can't be left alone at home.

Here's what's going to happen: in communities where local health guidelines allow (such as my county) and organizations are able to secure space and have the staffing to do it, after-school care groups will offer full-day care and where possible will try to provide opportunities for the kids to access their online learning. For working parents that can't be home to watch after their younger kids or who are working at home but need to be able to focus on their work and not get interrupted constantly, this is the next-best option to "normal" schooling...if they can afford it, and if they secure one of the limited spots available.

But what if these parents aren't able to get a spot in one of these day-care options? What if they can't afford it? What if there isn't one of these options close enough to where they live to be a viable option? Are they going to have any other options to A) watch the kids while the parents work and B) be able to provide access to their online learning and C) be able to help them in any way with that learning? Or are some of these kids going to get shuttled off to whoever can watch them and if learning doesn't happen, oh well, at least someone is watching them? What if that means one of the parents has to quit working because they can't find any way to take care of their young kid(s)?

Even if a community has some day care options, what happens when access to the online learning isn't working? The WiFi is down or there's not enough connections or come to find out the facility just can't support workstations for every kid, and so they are cared for but aren't keeping up with the expected learning?

I get the concern teachers have about in-person instruction with the pandemic going on. I know that we can't just open schools as we normally would, and the best-case scenarios (for places that aren't Phase 4) are probably going to mean middle-school and high-school kids are still remote learning close to 100% of the time and even grade-school kids aren't going in to class every day.

But any discussion about this that isn't also talking about how remote learning is supposed to actually work given that so many households rely on school as a de facto day care while the parents work is an incomplete discussion and isn't productive.

Cherokee County schools currently have nearly 900 students, faculty, and staff in quarantine from exposure to positive cases.

Some I know, suggested in the abstract, what if we just paused education for a year?

You were in 6th grade last year, you're in 6th grade refresher this year. You can receive the base level of instruction to not decay learning but keep things pass/fail, etc. However, the job is to just do that "daycare/working parents" task not the education task and instead use that time to ease pressure and focus on the metal health aspects of the pandemic.

You wouldn't need the same level of teaching to just maintain so you could get substitutes who don't need the same level of expertise. You could shield older teachers and those who are willing to risk it for a job in a tough job time could help out. Would the level of instruction be the same? Of course not, but it's not going to be with the situation as is so we need to stop pretending it's going to be.

Yes, there will be students on crazy advanced tracks who want to get ahead, but that's not going to be the bulk of students. And those will likely be the ones with more means who don't need the other functions as much.

It kindof sounds crazy but what we're doing with the "status quo" is similarly crazy because it's not the status quo.

SI

Here in Rhode Island, the word is out that the school year will be pushed back a few weeks, so there's more time to prepare (and perhaps gauge where things are). A formal announcement is expected tomorrow. I'm still expecting to report to my school on Monday to start prepping, but I guess we'll have more time to be fully ready as a school.

I'm already seeing people make noise about wanting refunds on their school taxes. How well you think a pause would fly without some significant rebates?

That must be really tough. Are you also expected to have a plan in place for remote instruction?

We just finished out first day of in person school. I challenge anyone that wants to bitch about schools, school taxes, or whatever to come in for a couple days and see how it is. Just spend some time with the kids and the staff and understand why this is so difficult.

For college kids it's not a big deal. Maybe even make the case for high school. But at young ages, losing a year is such a huge loss.

I have no clue how to do any of this but I've read a lot from experts that point out how much it would fuck up kids to just not learn for a year.

For the schools that are delaying an opening to better prepare, what the fuck have they been doing the past 5 months?

How did it go? We start in September and I am still weighing our options

yeah, especially because a lot of parents would use TV, video games, Ipads, etc...as substitute for the missed time. Kids would be totally fucked up and I am about as liberal with screen time as you can get.

Thank you for your perspective. If you allowed to say, when did the staff receive the actual plan for how the school would operate for in person schooling. My wife's school is still waiting for guidance for the school board and as such does not have an actual plan for how the school will operate if/when they are open for students.

we are opening under remote learning. The board voted initially to start in person but that quickly changed due to feedback, governor recommendations and a surge in cases. That was early July. Since then all the planning has been going into remote including an extra week of training for all staff

My wife started back to work no kids, but prepping for remote instruction. The staff are wearing masks when venturing out of their classrooms and figuring out their tools. Everything is very new, and will be for the students as well. I expect a few weeks for the kids just to learn Zoom.

Keep in mind I'm a school of about 240 PreK to 5th.

The kids really handed it well over all. I had more mask issues with MS and HS students on the bus in the morning and afternoon than I did with our kids.

Recess was interested. We were told that masks could be down for "vigorous play" but we had to police a lot of the ones that wanted to stand and chat without masks. We had them put them back on. Reality is the kids will be all around each other at recess, but not for more than the 15 minute proximity guideline.

We sent one home with symptoms. That'll be the kicker once we hit flu season. We'll have kids out right and left.

Overall, not a bad first day if you step back. However, the staff is exhausted. I really feel for the support staff, especially duty aides who have to be really on to not just watch behavior but social distancing as well and the custodians who now are busy constantly between normal duties and sanitizing areas when kids use them.

Nice to see a school teach a valuable workplace skill!

Thanks for your insight Danny, this is very informative.

Our school board had a meeting last night where they outlined their plans (distance learning to start the year, re-evaluate after Q1 ends in October), which were summarized in a 19 page document. One thing that was mentioned during the meeting that Danny alluded to above is that in a survey of teachers, over half of them had someone in their households who have complicating risk factors if they were exposed to COVID-19 and expressed concerns about working in person as a result. I am sure that was a significant factor in deciding to start the year with distance learning.

From what I've read regarding Rhode Island, we don't have the supplies, and the federal government is dragging its feet. Also waiting to see if we can get increased transportation from the National Guard (which I thought was interesting).

With the cases going back up here, they decided they are not at a point where they can make a decision. So they pushed the decision date (this week) back two weeks.


No idea. We're in the dark. I can't even speculate on what's going on. The plan from the Governor is full in-person. But even before the announcement is made later today, one of the towns has already annouced they're starting the year with distance learning. And they aren't a town that has been hit overly hard with the virus. Where I live (Pawtucket and Providence) are the hardest hit areas in the state currently. There's no way we can be in-person, probably even in a month.

Our administrators are scrambling, because there was no indication on this until yesterday.

To be perfectly honest, as someone who gets sick really easily, I'm terrified of going back. And as someone who deals with severe anxiety...well, this is already ripping me up pretty good. So...yeah, not a great time for me, emotionally speaking.

Wife starts teaching again this Mon. For the past week, she's gone in to prep. It's all remote learning for the forseeable future where teachers come in and teach from the classrooms. Tough enough as is but she is special ed and they need more attention/care to make it work.

IMO kids are being short-changed with remote learning but it is what it is. Definitely better than having kids come to school right now.

Anybody have advice for a school who was already short two paraprofessionals now has half of its special needs teachers in quarantine with two of those in the hospital for breathing issues?

Asking for a friend.

Close

This definitely won't be playing itself out over the next 2 months all over the country.

SI

Our digital learning has been a disaster so far. The teacher, who is one of the better in the school, is older and has no idea how to work zoom. Took her about 20 minutes to figure out how to share her screen, zoom keeps telling us she has low bandwidth and she is choppy, and none of the parents can seem to keep their machines on mute (and she does not know how to set it to mute all). Kids are totally disengaged (he is in 2nd grade). It's going to be a long digital month (and more).

My 6th grader is going to an art school and they are slightly better. She had a joint session with two of her teachers, who apparently argued about volume for the first 10 minutes of a 30 minute session. It's almost as if people who do not get training and time to learn tasks cannot do them.

At the risk of asking a glaringly obvious question ... what the fuck have they been doing for the past 5-6 months?

I get that there are going to be some who simply aren't going to be able to figure out Zoom (et al) but it's not as though there might not have been a notion that getting a handle on the basic stuff might be a good idea.

Yeah, there's really no excuse not to be familiar with Zoom, or something similar if your school is using it, coming into this school year. Getting good at distance learning is tie consuming and requires institutional support, but you can get pretty comfortable with Zoom with just yourself and a computer.

My wife's school uses TEAMS. I've helped my wife out in prepping for classes (e.g. how to project on a second monitor, some TEAMS configuration etc.) and know other teachers are less tech savvy and don't have the support I've given my wife.

TBH there is fair amount of confusion not only about tech but also processes in this new normal. But yeah, no excuse for not able to do the basics considering remote learning done already back in April.

So my wife’s school district has decided to jettison Microsoft Teams and go to Google Classroom starting next week. Apparently MS told schools they’d put in features to help with learning - this week teachers found out that they can’t force mute the class or disable the chat features (which are things they specifically asked if MS was going to address and they said they were). So kids were unmuting themselves and chatting with each other during learning time. Apparently Google Classroom can do those things.

Considering that the virtual learning decision wasn’t made until recently, training wasn’t really done for most of those months. Add to that school districts would have to pay teachers for training days and they are currently figuring out how to furlough days instead. So most districts just had 1 week of training before students started.

Then those districts are ineptly run,and those teachers don't seem to have much interest in remaining viable. Even as a fairly vigorous opponent of shifting to online in most circumstances I recognized the significant chance it was going to come into play this fall.

But I've long understood the usefulness of acquiring skills that would come into play professionally, at least at a basic level.

My wife hypothesized (not confirmed) the reason why schools in her district are pushing for students to come back in Sep is so they don't lose any federal funds (e.g. maintenance of school). Anyone know if this is true?

If true, this seems very short sighted for public schools.

Really don’t like what my town is doing. There are 4 elementary schools. If you opt for virtual you can’t come back until the end of the marking period. Ok. But they put in a disclaimer If you opt back in they can’t guarantee your kid will be able to go back to their school. That’s horrible for the kids.

Does it have anything to do with Trump's treat to do just that if schools don't go back in person?

Have you been ignoring my complaints? ;)

Here is an example. My wife’s school district is transitioning from Edsby to Canvas. I guess it was planned prior to the shutdown. They just allowed the teachers access to the live system on Monday after a four hour seminar (through Zoom, no hands on) about a month ago. She is one of the lucky ones as she has access to what the student would as well as what the parents see. Those teachers who don’t have kids in the school don’t have those views or at least have not been taught that. They are also supposed to be transitioning from Zoom to another platform because of some complaints about the platform That’s right, they still don’t know if that’s happening as yet. School starts Monday.

TEA is basically playing this game of chicken with the school districts about that here in Texas. They only gave the option of temporary online waivers about a month ago and that was after posturing that everyone needed to be in school in August before cases started their post-Memorial Day explosion in the state.

SI

It is never a bad idea to follow the money if you're hoping to get to the truth about just about anything.

That tends to make for a solid lead in most scenarios.

It's Dekalb county, so yes. They did not have a superintendent until late July and no plans as of early August. You have to pay the thousands of teachers to do the training (they are only on 9 or 10 month contracts) and the state (and likely county) budgets are slashed due to the pandemic. They should have just delayed until Labor day or something but gotten those teachers in there for a month of training. Or let them come to school and teach on camera so there are no bandwidth issues.

The school board agreed to open with the first four weeks online before opening back up brick and mortars. The state objected. Here was the threat.


That’s $23 million per month.

Allow me to borrow this to make something clear (in case it wasn't)

Get down into the nitty gritty of specialized software, a certain amount of training (and moreso really, time hands-on) is going to be necessary to become truly proficient. I get that.

I've been through multiple changes in music scheduling software, commercial scheduling software, accounting software (including two instances where systems ran parallel for 9-12 months, requiring double the normal amount of work), ratings & media buying software. A couple of those were custom builds too, just adding to the fun. You get to be end-user, customer, AND unpaid beta tester all at the same time. All of which had their own unique quirks, etc and so forth.

But that's not the level of issues that set me off earlier.

That was about not knowing ass from hole in ground about fucking Zoom, which has been at the forefront of discussion since the planet first lost its mind.

On the technology front, this time last year, no one was using Microsoft Teams and Zoom was an easy to use conference app that no company would let within 10' of their support base because of all of their awful security holes. That said, Zoom is basically WebEx so if you've done video conferencing, it's not new. But teachers would have had to learn it on their own over the summer without any support (certainly doable but not guaranteed) because it's not like they had a lot of time last school year to learn or adjust on the fly.

EDIT: Looks like JiMGA was posting as I did so this is a bit redundant.

SI

I hear you, I was just giving you an example of the level of ineptness. I agree teachers should be semi experts with Zoom by now. I have to also acknowledge that based on surveys and polls in July, half of the community did not believe we would be doing any online schooling at all. So I could see teachers if they were a part of that half not giving Zoom a second thought since logging off in May.

You're good (afaic anyway).

There were multiple posts with their own specifics going at the same time, was easy to get posts/replies/comments crossed, tangled, threaded & unthreaded.

I've mentioned previously (in some thread or another) that I've got an unusually high number of K-12 educators among my social media friends/follows. (a function of having a crazy high percentage of my HS peers end up in that line of work). So I see stuff just in the normal flow of living my digital life.

I've watched a cousin who is a ... wtfever his job description is. He's basically what I'd call a digital training lead or similar, for a top-ten sized school system in Georgia. He's not their IT lead, he's kind of the go-between for policy/implementation side and the boots on the ground employees. (in addition to teaching a full class load himself)

All summer he cranked out specific short videos about one topic or another, offering practical daily use level info about multiple softwares and other tech stuff. Numerous times he did those based on specific requests about some topic. I don't know how many horses showed up to drink but there was water for 'em regardless.

I grew up in a relative backwater (that still hasn't exactly soared above that) but spent July watching a whole batch of K-12 teachers get dragged into engagement with their digital setup after some basic human behavior manipulation.

The way they got them engaged in significant numbers? They got a couple of people gung-ho about decorating their "digital classroom" ... and like moths to flames a sizable portion of the rest followed suit. Basic human behavior.

I dare say the vast majority of the FOFC understands the value of getting people to be hands on with any sort of new tech, getting people past the fear of "I'm afraid I'll break it" or "I don't have the slightest clue what to do". It frankly impressed the hell outta me that anybody back home thought about how to encourage that, especially since the majority of instruction there is taking place in person not online.

We're 2 days in-person, 3 days virtual here with the students split into two cohorts to halve the student population. Teachers are in-classroom all five days (one day is a virtual-only day), which I'm perfectly fine with. It'll help students to see the normalcy of the classroom, I think. Of course, the politics of this area mean that's only in place until mid-September, after which the school board will reassess. I have a hunch we'll be switching to five days in-person at that point, unless something happens.

Side note: I have my very own classroom, it turns out. I nearly cried when my mentor (who is an awesome, helpful, skilled person) informed me that no, it wasn't a shared room, but all my own. Years of sharing a desk with multiple people (if that much at all) and going to that... It was incredible, and I wished I could call Mom and tell her all about it (and get classroom makeover ideas).

Oddly, I'm not as nervous about it as I otherwise would be. This is a rural community that hasn't been majorly affected by it. The last time I saw any numbers drilled down to that level was 13 active cases, and that was a few weeks ago.

Masks and social distancing will be required, and all of the staff I've seen has strictly adhered to those policies. So I'm cautiously hopeful we'll be able to ride out the storm.

Congrats!

SI

QAnon already. Good to see the rural life having its effect. :)

Purely anecdotal -- kid got his second test results back in time to be able to attend class on Thursday. The school administered test results back within 24h. The state health administered one still no results back after six days.

edit to update -- Orrrrr, not. HE'S fine but tomorrow's class is online only now, thanks to a university crackdown on a large chunk of his section classmates (freshman law cohort is divided into three sections, who then all have classes with the same subgroup of people).

Last week he missed a socially distanced restaurant/bar outing because he had to be home for his landlord to come by and check a couple of minor repairs. The following day about half those who attended went to a private bbq function they'd planned the night before. Somebody ratted the group out to the university and they've all been placed on quarantine, meaning there weren't enough available to justify the in-person class. So all the extra rigamarole he went through to get the test stuff done turned out to be pointless.

Which, frankly, is how I'm starting to feel about him bothering to go to Miami :(

We have had 3 schools switch to completely Virtual due to outbreaks in the building. Our district had its first teacher test positive on Friday. We have several kids out now who are getting tested. If we switch to virtual, I suspect it will be due to lack of staff. Subs simply have no desire to come into the building. I am the most rural school in the district, so I've got some local, loyal subs keeping me afloat, but even then I've had to go out and cover recess a few times.
It's coming. It's just a matter of time I'm afraid.

Also to your and JIMG's point, there are a lot of oldest teachers who simply have no interest or desire to know technology. And generally they could get away with it, but not now. However it isn't like people are breaking down the doors to be teachers, so it isn't easy enough to say they should be replaced.

Though for my wife's school the main problem teacher, re: technology, is the PE teacher. Who basically needs others to hold his hand to do the simplest of things and he's in his 30s!!!

Every district just has to learn this the hard way, I guess

SI

Truth!

Got my covid test back at my university within 12 hours yesterday. So far they are turning them around fast. Next week more students are added so will see how that goes.


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I am participating in our school's Zoom intro session. I am pretty confident that those kids that are going to back to brick and mortar will be properly socially distant. The principal said the split has been 65-35 in favor of e-learning. Evidently, many of the local churches are setting up areas for the students to "go to class".