Relying on temperature checks is fool hearty. Waste of time and human power, both scarce resources. Kids are far less likely to be symptomatic and presenting with a Covid fever, plus kids do show up with fevers due to all those colds, etc, much time and effort would be wasted chasing down and sorting all this out. Covid testing every kid’s cold fever would eat up tests and the kid would have to be sequestered while awaiting results, which can take many day in many locales. Adult staff passing through a temperature check makes only marginal more sense but isn’t as wasteful. Temperature checks, because of presymptomatic and asymptomatic spread, mostly provides a false peace of mind benefit versus cost. IMO
Lol. Yes, pointing a thermometer at a kid’s forehead for 10 seconds is such big waste of human resources. Temp checks would keep parents honest about “keep your child home if they’re sick” and keep out most symptomatic kids. Should be good enough.
10 seconds a kid, times 2500 kids. And, according to a training I had last week, the no contact thermometers give a lot of false positives if the students have been outside in the sun. So we will need to have a place to sort of semi sequester the kids until their skin cools down. And they will be hot, because we still have to line them up (socially distanced) so that we can search their bags. Because that’s still a thing.
You search the bags of 10 year olds? Sweet lord.
I’ve been a school nurse. Parents have been doing just this for decades.Won’t work, parents have driven off before that temperature check can be done and then the school has to run them down and drag them back to pick up the kid with a running nose fever. Nope, wont work.
Parents haven’t been in a pandemic like this for decades.
Because people who haven’t been inside a classroom since they went to school know much more about the realities of it than the professionals who have been in classrooms all day for years? And for the record, every single teacher I know–and I know many, as I taught for so many years–is itching to get back into the classroom. So many of the things that make teaching satisfying are more removed with online programs. And nobody’s more aware or more motivated by student needs than teachers.
They’re not wrong.
Apparently the prominent scientists and specialists–people whose fields are public health and infectious disease, in other words, the experts–haven’t interpreted the statistics you cite the way you have or found them as compelling as you do. Perhaps you should call this to their attention.
I am not pretending to know more about the realities of the classroom. I don’t think I’ve once in this thread questioned a teacher’s concerns about how certain solutions would work in practice. Anything I’ve objected to has been more around the merit of specific health concerns and mitigation methods.
Doesn’t change the fact that a lot of parents are incredibly stupid.
Very few are stupid, many are desperate. Cut them some slack, after all, they have given us a fabulous next generation.
And we’ve left them such a wonderful planet.
Stop with the high jacking. Start your own thread for that.
← most subtle confused smilie evah.
Has it been decided what the plan is for when a student gets Covid-19? In my country, schools are open, but if a student gets sick, the whole school closes for a day or two to get cleaned, and then the student’s class and teacher go into quarantine for 14 days, though other classes can go back. It seems like if there is widespread community transmission, schools will be closing down, and sending people home all the time. Or will it just be that student who has to stay home?
There is no universal plan in the United States (some would call this a bug; others would call this a feature). Each state is run by a governor independent of the President (and he has done everything in his power to distance himself from these type decisions); most school districts are making decisions independent of the Governor. The Centers for Disease Control have put out some very vague guidelines that can be summarized by “It’s important psychologically for kids to get back to school in person; You shouldn’t open the schools until it is safe.” Yeah, I’m over summarizing, but there’s some guidelines on what to do without being definitive, and it leaves all of the actual decision making down to the local level.
A new version of American exceptionalism?
To the best of our ability to know the biology of the bug and of the kids is not much different across the world. No, I am not confident that opening all grades, in all areas, with minimal precautions is “ok” … for that matter depending on the values of “ok” and “minimal” not confident it is not either. And I am sure that in the context of extremely fuzzy guidance some schools will err to less mitigation than is likely prudent and some to degrees that are excessive and cause major harms, throwing the kids under the school bus so to speak. Fear of the first does not justify the second.
Don’t have to. They know.
That’s why the AAP and the CDC both (and other groups) state that decisions should be made with consideration of local facts on the ground. What they failed to do is to give some guidance on what sorts of facts on the ground should justify what actions, but the reality that different regions, different states, different portions of states, different districts, are dealing with different specifics that may in some cases limit being able to get students in for in person education to some degree or another, is understood broadly by “the experts”.
Yet more international results. Regardless of what schools do, it is clear a significant percentage of teachers, parents and health professionals will be unhappy. Things probably work better in countries where there is high confidence in government.
If by “they know,” you mean they have access to those statistics and reports, then of course they know, and yet shockingly, they still came to different conclusions than you have. How could that be? Someone had better alert Harvard, Yale, Columbia, et al that their faculty and research scientists don’t know what they’re talking about.
We organized a call this afternoon between our county and city school staff and our county health director.
Excuse me, interim director.
Some highlights:
-She reviewed stats and trends for our county and city. Virtually all of them are going in the wrong direction. (ICU beds are still open, so yay).
-When asked what metrics would be used to determine when schools should open or close, she said she didn’t have any, there are no clear metrics from the federal or state governments, but that another county in the state was putting some metrics together, and the state was gonna take a look at them to see if they’d be a good model for other districts.
-When asked what it’d take for her to tell school districts to close or open, she just said she doesn’t tell anyone to do anything, she just makes recommendations.
-When asked when we’d see more robust contact tracing, she said that in most pandemics they wouldn’t be focusing on that at this point, they’d be shutting everything down until things got back more in control, and only focus on contact tracing at that point.
So I’m like, if everything is going in the wrong direction, and in most pandemics you’d be shutting things down right about now, and there’s no federal or state guidance, and you can only make recommendations, why the hell aren’t you recommending that things shut down right about now?!
Meanwhile our county voted a couple weeks ago to open up all the hotels in our tourist town, and bars are open until 10, and GAAAAH!
If everything shut down for three weeks, I’d be a lot more sanguine about reopening schools. After this phone call, I’m a lot less sanguine.