Teachers will have their entire rooms to themselves. That’s not safe?
I don’t think you’ll see a lot of teachers leaving well paying jobs just because they have to pay more for child care.
There is no “solution”. We can only try plans that seem to have the fewest drawbacks and adjust them as we go. Even with hybrid plans, child care is still an issue for the days and times that are scheduled for home learning.
The hybrid plans are the worst of all worlds.
The question is whether supposed extra “cohesion and administrative control” is worth dragging teachers into the school.
They don’t all have their own rooms. Lots of teachers co teach, float, or otherwise share space. They will share restrooms and other common spaces. They will have colleagues who are not careful, who barge into their space, who don’t wear masks. They will have custodians and others through their rooms.
They will have to travel to work and back, which may involve public transportation.
And it’s not a matter of paying more for childcare. It may not even be available. They may have school age children will need supervision while they distance learn. Lots of teachers can’t afford to quit, but like any job, some are second incomes and can afford to. If even 3% of teachers quit over this, that’s not nothing.
For high school, hybrid has a lot of advantages: if I had half my students each day, they could be spaced out. They could eat in the cafeteria*. There would be enough sinks in the restrooms. And seeing them twice a week each would be enough to make sure they were on track and engaged: I could teach the things that really need in-person instruction, and give them enough instruction that they could do the rest on their own.
*Our cafeteria already doesn’t have enough seats for kids, even with 4 lunches, even with them sitting right next to each other. Current plan is to stagger lunch release times and push the first half of each lunch outdoors after 15 minutes so that the second half of the group can have those seats for the last 15 minutes. No plan for wet or cold days. This is what I mean by schools being utterly unprepared to social distance.
Who cleans the tables and chairs between groups?
I doubt anyone will. There’s no time for that.
Look, it’s a crazy plan. It’s crazy plans all the way down, because it’s just not feasible to make a full school safe. We have 2500 kids, and a cafeteria that seats about 450. Even with 4 lunches, we depend on a lot of them eating in the hallways around their lockers, sitting on the floor. That’s not a super socially distanced format, and we can’t monitor them. So they have to go to the cafeteria. But there just isn’t room.
Ultimately, they may end up eating in classrooms, but that means a solid year of truly awful cold sack lunches and teachers potentially causing a fuss over not having a lunch break of their own.
All it takes is one sick person to cause an outbreak in a community, let alone a school.
Advising school districts to open when there’s a <10% positivity rate sounds great and everything, but this presumes there are no localized hotspots and that the cases are evenly distributed across the land. You don’t have to be an epidemiologist to know this isn’t how infection works. County X might have a 7% positivity rate while simultaneously neighborhood Y within County X has a 30% positivity rate. But we won’t know that neighborhood Y is a fucking hot zone because surprise-surprise the test results are on a 2-week lag. A two-week lag on top of a 2-14 day incubation period. By the time the county health department knows what’s going on, the whole school could be infected. Unless, that is, the school shuts down every time a student, teacher, staff member, or immediate family member of the aforementioned comes up sick for any cause. Which really isn’t sustainable when your school is in a hot zone.
I saw a tweet on Reddit that has stuck with me. We shut down schools when there’s a little snow and ice on the ground because we don’t want anyone to get hurt/killed unnecessarily. A school bus can skid on ice and not only injure/kill the kids riding inside, but also hurt/kill the people driving on the road. So if we reopen schools, are we going to do away with snow days? Would it really make sense to shut down schools to save a few necks from breaking on the ice and snow, when every day a lot of people are getting hurt/killed from a school-sourced infection? No, it wouldn’t make any sense.
That’s the plan where I teach. Which also means lunch supervision. Every. Single. Day.
This is an idea I would not have thought of. It’s interesting, to say the least.
I can only wonder at your “argument”.
You are basically saying that, in a school district that can house 1300 people, 30 people cannot safely social distance. In addition, your sentences that begin with, “They don’t”, and “They will”, are baseless assumptions. ALL staff are required to wear masks and, as educated and compassionate people, they don’t “barge in” on anyone.
I have never known a teacher who has taken public transportation to work but, if there actually are any, I agree there is some risk involved.
I live in Chicagoland. There is daycare EVERYWHERE because virtually everyone needs those services. It’s a great at home business that never runs out of clients.
Look, no matter who we are or what we do for a living, we ALL must fact the inevitable decision. Do I go back to this? Can I afford not to? That’s how it is.
No, what I am saying is that the powers that be need to decide whether blocking WFH for teachers will lead to losing personnel that will be hard to replace. It’s not about me. I won’t quit over any arrangement. Heck, I will go in to work even if WFH is an option.
But I know people who will quit. We have a really high rate of infection here. There are people on the edge of retirement. Why risk your life for an extra 2% a year on your pension? There are people with underlying conditions. There are people who don’t need the money.
Look, there are lots of offices that are pretty safe, but opt for WFH because it’s safer. I don’t see why teachers should be treated as lazier than everyone else, or more in need of direct supervision.
Any big city will have a large number of teachers who commute to work via train/bus. Teachers aren’t known for making crazy bank, especially those who work in urban areas, for one thing. And for another, big cities tend to attract people who rely on public transportation as their primary mode of getting around.
So I find your skepticism hilarious. Of course there are a lot of teachers who use public transportation to get to work. In addition to the even lower paid custodians, substitute teachers, and administrative staff.
What about hot climates? We’re talking 100+ degrees. What about sunscreen?
Hmm, I guess we’re stuck then until a vaccine or some method of producing shade is invented.
Shade doesn’t much help when it’s 98 degrees and 70% humidity.
Sometimes your judged not by just your actions but the actions of others.
In my area of suburban Kansas City all the neighboring districts managed to pull off an in person graduation while ours did not. They just made a crappy video.They forget how important that graduation ceremony is for parents and seniors. They didnt care though. Other districts did.
And yes, they are asking us to give money.
An interesting quote from that article:
Something that strikes me about the AAP recommendations is that the 2 reasons I’ve seen them give for returning to school is the mental, emotional and social well-being of the child and getting parents back to work. Neither of these areas are their specialty. Getting parents back to work is in the realm of economics and the emotional well-being of children is more in the realm of psychologists. The recommendations seem less concerned about the physical well-being of the child, concluding that children will get sick, (although maybe not as sick as adults) but that IS their specialty.
Things probably work better in countries where the government has actually done something to reduce the rate of infection.
The article, AFAICT, doesn’t say anything about teachers, parents or health professionals being unhappy. From what I’ve seen, some teachers, parents and health professionals are (rightfully IMO) unhappy in areas where the infection rate is high, there’s no guidance or support and they’re directed to “open schools” but not even told what that entails.
From the linked article in that post:
I think this would exacerbate inequality. The places with the most temperate climates usually have the richest people because there’s a premium for living in a place with a good climate. Places with more inhospitable climates would fall further behind the curve.
Other assorted headlines about schools opening.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/coronavirus/fl-ne-broward-schools-covid-status-20200727-aiaawky5hbdv3ipvc65at7s2uq-story.html?int=lat_digitaladshouse_bx-modal_acquisition-subscriber_
This is just a weird story that has left people to wonder about the motives of the school district telling employees not to reveal their Covid-19 status while not saying anything about revealing any other health-related matter…
Cognitive dissonance is just killing me right now. We have a popular thread where people are seriously discussing whether or not it’s sufficient to hand disinfect each item from the grocery store, or if an additional quarrentine time for each object is called for, as well. Here, right next door, we are discussing opening schools at full capacity.
@MandaJo
A little off topic - but something you said is irritating me…
Why must “sack lunches” be “truly awful”?
Round here, sack lunches are the norm. Kids eat in “the quad”, on the field, in common areas or on rainy days in designated classrooms or gym.
Lunches can be any number of things from “sticky buns” through to sandwiches. My kids regularly take last night’s leftovers in a thermos - things like chicken casserole with rice, stir fried noodles, roast lamb with vege, roast chicken sandwiches…is that so “awful”? Or is this something that can’t happen where you’re at?
As a P.S - I have seen both sides - the kids used to eat in a cafeteria / cooked lunch scenario with a 600 seat cafeteria for 2500 students and now in a 2500 student school there is only a “tuck shop” for snacks.
What ever. No one expects all schools around the country to go open air. “Some places are hot” is a lame objection to the idea. Don’t forget everyone! It also gets cold out some places!