Your lack of confidence is not particularly unusual either. No reason to assume he’s a moron just because … whatever reason you assumed that.
Sometimes superintendents are political creatures and know that setting expectations very low may soften the ground for families to accept various inconveniences and disappointments.
Many superintendents and those above them are and will be brainstorming together and putting together options which can be implemented based on what will likely be changing guidelines as more information comes in. Some what the CDC currently recommends (really of major benefit or not) is business as usual, some not hard, and only some more of a challenge.
Have staff and students stay home when sick. Okay.
Encourage good hygiene and cloth masks when feasible. Okay. I see only a minority of adults wearing masks correctly and enforcing this with kids will be a joke, but okay.
Have enough soap and good signage. Okay.
Clean and disinfect daily. Fine. Limit shared equipment and if some has to be shared clean it. Alright.
Then a bit harder - sitting six feet apart when feasible … harder to pull off. Some districts have already come up with plans from alternate day in person for older grades with the other half “zoomed” into the class, to the Khan Academy model for those grades, the presentation of the material is by way of the Khan type and in person classes more when homework (and evaluations) are done, on alternate days in smaller and spaced cohorts, with more individualized teacher attention. Youngest grades tougher yet though, and they benefit from real life experience more. but yeah the professionals will share all sorts of ideas and options if the guidance does not change more. Determining if this is really necessary is a big deal. Other countries’ experiences will inform.
That “when feasible” gives wiggle room depending on state guidance too.
I touched on this before, but there needs to be more guidance about “stay at home when sick”. I mean, I wake up with a touch of a sore throat pretty often. Seasonal allergies are a thing. Lots of people have a touch of the runs intermittently. Colds rip through schools, and its 7-10 days before people are symptom free.
Stay home if you have a fever? Easy. Stay home if you have any of the symptoms of COVID? This would lead to massive absentism, which is, in itself, incredibly disruptive. If we can’t get subs, do we send kids home? If I burn through my sick leave, do I have to take unpaid days while still teaching from home?
by that reasoning you assume someone is a genius and therefore afford them confidence by title. You accept what they tell you without question.
My perspective is a little different. When I need something and someone tells me they can’t do it I look for someone else. title does not confer a level of skill within the scope of the title. A good manager knows when to seek outside help.
Oh, I didn’t realize I accepted everything they say without question. Thanks for the pro tip.
What does re-opening schools mean? It feels like elementary, middle, high school and colleges are all sorta lumped together but they all have different challenges.
For non-college schools, in particular, we have a lot of activities requiring parent involvement and interaction. How will those be handled given the chance of parent-parent covid spread? These range from helping in classrooms to fundraisers to plays to musical performances to athletic events. Will those all be cancelled or modified? I’m a parent and most of Magiver’s ideas don’t seem to work. Our HS can’t even keep soap in the bathrooms on a regular basis. Masks during PE on days over 90F? Masks for band/orchestra? What does being sick mean? Is the risk of getting sick/transmitting COVID the same for those in HS as those under 10? These are the types of answers I’m looking for; I understand that we might be 100% sure on the science but somebody should be discussing these items.
Several classes require group projects - will those stay, be cancelled or modified? One HS teacher tried to keep the syllabus where a group of students had to act out a scene of a play via distance learning. It couldn’t be done - too many students didn’t show up and, the ones who did, had to learn a ton of video editing. This is all fine IF it had been part of the syllabus but it’s not.
Distance learning has been a disaster for us. Our MS has mostly done okay but not great but our HS has been terrible. A lot of that has been due to extremely poor administration leading to a lack of a cohesive plan. Some of it has also been due to a district that has made no plans for distance learning and both insisted and planned for schools to be re-opened in 3 weeks and then in 5 weeks. And the district was forced to close- first by widespread absenteeism and then by state decree. With teachers expecting students to maintain both the normal classwork and HW while many of them did almost no teaching (I understand their frustration; I have no sympathy for those who kept insisting on the normal syllabus and being jerks about the whole situation) for that period of time. Our district fought really hard to keep letter grades for these 2 quarters. The sudden dumping of responsibility onto parents has also not been good;we both are working full-time with increased workloads. This seems to be an aberration with many parents having more time.
I’m fine with the kids losing this bit of time; they’ll catch up in a year or two. I’m more worried about what happens in fall if this recurs.
I think making elementary school kids stay apart from each other and wear masks all day long is simply impossible. That’s the crux of the issue.
And that is a real concern because a second wave (and very likely subsequent waves) are statistical near-certainties. The CDC guidance is all well and good but even if school districts had an unlimited budget to implement them in addition to all of the other costs that are going to be bourn from the delays and extra effort, it just isn’t practicable to assume that students will follow these guidelines very reliably; young children won’t remember to do so, and many teenagers will be defiant because that defiance is a hallmark of being an adolescent. Any plan for reopening schools needs to account for the fact that schools will concentrate uninfected people with asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic carriers and this will result in some increase in contagion, and thus monitoring of students and staff, protecting vulnerable cohorts, and providing alternatives for students and parents who do not wish to be subjected by the additional contagion.
One thing that is clear is that school district administrators should not be left to their own devices to interpret ‘guidelines’ as they see fit; epidemiological support and infectious disease expertise needs to be made available to all school districts to help track infections, provide guidance on when and how to operate from an infection control standpoint, and to evaluate what measures are working and those that aren’t. Experts in pedagogy cannot also be made experts in infectious disease (and vice versa) and there is a need for working groups with that combined expertise to ensure that school reopening do not result in catastrophic increases in contagion and uncontrollable epidemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (by that, meaning that spread that cannot be traced and that results in mass hospitalization or mortality).
BTW, the assumption that children do not suffer from the disease needs to be tempered by more recent discoveries that many children who have been exposed are showing some degree of “late multi-system hyper-inflammatory phase” described in TWiV 614 (starting at19:46) including subclinical presentations that are only being discovered due to other apparent morbidities and the appearance of small vessel vasculitis in adults at about 4 weeks out even without serious presentations of COVID-19. There is still a lot that virologists and infectious disease specialists do not understand about the pathology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in vivo, and should we discover longer term impacts of the virus we may reevaluate the dangers of infection even for those who do not experience serious symptoms.
In other words, as a society we need to be flexible about reopening schools and other institutions and willing to reduce interactions or close down again if it appears the contagion flares back up to uncontrollable epidemic proportions or the impact of infection is more deleterious than once believed. As Dr. Fauci said early in the epidemic, the virus has its own timetable, and it is not concerned for the impact upon education or the economy. We are, and so we need to balance the risk of wide scale contagion with the negative impacts upon children and business, but we also need to consider that an out-of-control epidemic will also impact those institutions, so we need to think about alternatives to just opening everything up or locking everyone down.
Stranger
“Many”???
Once again, of course a single case of a child having a serious disease, let alone dying from it, is tragic and one too many, but from the big picture perspective the number of kids getting “Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome” (PMIS), is extremely few … triple it, quadruple it, and then add those numbers to all other children with serious illness related to COVID-19, and the number is still a small fraction of the numbers of children seriously ill/dying from seasonal influenza every year. (Which is in itself a very small number compared to the adult numbers.)
No, not “many”. It is something that is occurring extremely rarely.
The reality has never, from this germ’s onset, been as some have imagined it, “that children do not suffer from the disease” … and the reality remains that children rarely, very rarely, get significantly ill from the disease directly or from associated syndromes. The number has been non-zero, remains non-zero, and remains very very very small. Odds are great that many more children will die of drowning in backyard pools in the next three months than of Covid and related disease in the next year.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to misstate. In absolute terms, you are correct that the incidence is still very low, but the number of recognized cases is rising rapidly as more signs are being recognized, and it is apparent that some amount of subclinical vasculitis is present even in many people who did not have serious presentations of COVID-19, which suggests that there is yet more that we don’t understand about the long term effects of the virus. There is the persistent assumption that the virus isn’t actually all that deadly except for the elderly or co-morbid and/or that exposure producing mild symptoms is akin to just having a bad cold, but neither of these is necessarily true, and any plan toward reopening has to include the possibility that as we learn more about the pathogenesis of the virus we’ll have to reevaluate the risks of letting it spread and infect people.
Stranger
Re-opening the schools in the fall scares the fuck out of me. I’m torn. I could retire any time I like, but we are headed into a depression the likes of which we have never seen before and I have such a high degree of seniority in my district that they’d lay off the Superintendent before they would look at me. Retirement would be safer, but pensions are the first thing a state goes after when they’re broke. Even in California, where CTA is NOT to be fucked with.
Decisions, decisions. I’ll probably wait until the first kid coughs in my classroom, then retire on the spot. 
Can anyone share what is the latest data on HS school age children being carriers of COVID-19?
ETA: Sincere thanks, by the way, for all of those who have been providing good information through this. It’s really appreciated to have a good source of information (and updates). I started out having time to look into these items myself but I just don’t have the time these days so sincere thanks.
Of course everything boils down to how one perceives risks. There is a “persistent assumption” that some groups are at much less risk of serious disease and/or complications than others and some much more. Except that it is not an assumption. It is a clear documented fact.
A small percentage of America lives in nursing homes, yet deaths among nursing home residents are a huge share of Covid-19 deaths, maybe a majority.
Of course they are not the only ones dying but it seems to me that we are failing them with a horizontal interdiction focus.
PMIS is showing now because very very rare things only show up with very very large Ns, which we now have. Most kids with PMIS resolve and do well. Which does not diminish how ill some with that get before resolving nor the death of the very few. Those with transient subclinical vasculitis? Get better with never have been notably sick. No reason to believe any significant risk of long term impacts. Anything else serious that shows up in a typical post-infectious complication period, if something else does, will be, by definition, be rarer yet.
No debate that monitoring IS important to do now and WILL BE as we go forward. We NEED to pin down how contagious kids are with this, when symptomatic, presymptomatic, and when persistently asymptomatic, if for no other reason so that people like silenus can make decisions based not only on uninformed fear but on a rational informed decision making process, appreciating what their risk would be in the workplace compared to a lived life outside of the workplace, based on their own personal circumstances and risk profile. (Most kids who cough btw won’t have Covid, too much else more commonly symptomatic.)
Will that individualized risk analysis get more granular? Will there be advances to be able to identify which younger adult is actually at high risk and which 80 year old at low? Maybe. Meanwhile recognizing the very low risk that children are at from this and the very very high risk that older individuals, especially those in residential facilities are at, is important.
Amara_ To what degree they are contagious carriers even if asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic is one of the still unknowns. One assumes non-zero but what value of non-zero? Same as a 30 year old? Does it matter if they have younger siblings or not?
The article cited in the o.p., as circumstantial as it is, is the best you’ve going to find right now. Virologists aren’t even in agreement about the pathogenesis of the virus in host tissues or the most probably route for transmission, much less able to determine who the most prolific carriers are, but it does appear that while children are infected at comparable rates as adults, they appear to be less effective spreaders for reasons unknown although probably related to more effective immune response. However, even if children aren’t spreaders, the adult staff that is teaching and supporting them are, so there is the need to weigh the significant downsides of shuttering schools for another semester against yet another avenue for the contagion to expand.
I would argue that of essential services education ranks just below utilities, grocery stores, dentists, and (non-COVID-19) medical practice, and far above nail salons, bars, and golf courses, and so a cautious and well-monitored opening of schools is recommended but there also needs to be protections for those vulnerable people (who, regardless of whether they “would still have had many decades ahead of them” or not, still deserve consideration. And we need to consider teachers and staff as part of the group of “essential workers” who are due financial compensation and guaranteed health benefits even if they do have a pre-existing condition, because having to go to an occupation where “social distancing” is a virtual impossibility should qualify them as deserving the respect that they (and other essential workers like firefighters, EMTs, and grocery workers) are rarely accorded.
Stranger
That would be nice. Unfortunately just about every school district has indicated they will have to implement layoffs and pay cuts because of the drop in tax revenue.
I know a lot of teachers, and practically none of them are willing to go back to the classroom in the present circumstances.
I don’t know what to say to that. For sure, school districts are entirely dependent upon tax revenues, but if state and the federal governments don’t make this a priority to make up the shortfalls and more, that is going to have pronounced and potentially devastating long-term effects beyond what many have already experienced in recent years. This just underlies the lack of long term thinking to this issue, and that was understandable back in March but not going on June when the nature and indefinite duration of this problem should be evident.
Stranger
One thing I haven’t heard mentioned anywhere, but seems wise to me, would be requiring flu vaccines for school the way we require the other. They could have clinics at school to make it easier. This wouldn’t stop COVID, but assuming it’s a good vaccine, it would really help limit flu cases and the dreaded double whammy.
Requiring seasonal immunization of influenza, and especially children, would be a good idea anyway. Less than 30% of the US population gets the flu vaccine, and while it has been overshadowed by recent events, influenza slightly exceeded the P&I epidemic threshold even before SARS-CoV-2 was introduced to North America primarily due to the low levels of voluntary compliance with the CDC recommendations.
However, for children whose parents do not have health coverage and are indigent the cost of the vaccine may be prohibitive. This should really dictate a state-level program to immunize children and willing adults. But in the current polarized political environment I can only imagine that it would become another divisive issue notwithstanding how cash-strapped states would pay for it.
Stranger
Sure. That’s why I suggested in-school clinics. Mosy kids have some sort of coverage, even if their parents don’t, and pretty much any insurance covers flu shots. And in any case, more shots would be more better. It’s not a binary thing.
But I also don’t know how much flu vaccine is even available. I assume they usually make enough for about as many as they sell. Did anyone think to ramp up production in January?
I am sympathetic. But sooner or later, they are going to be told to go back. Just like people in other professions. It’s not an even burden, but I don’t know what to do about it. Kids are at low risk of transmission with COVID-19. Teachers may need to protect themselves more from other teachers. Maybe that would be the best use of the time in the interim, negotiate for the best circumstances you can get.
The older school employees should look into retirement if they can manage it. A year away, I’d certainly think about accelerating any plans if possible.
I have children. Online is okay for now, but it’s clearly not the same level of quality. And I will say this. None of this is EVER going to be made up to the children involved. We’ll just turn the other way and kick the can down the road. So punting the 2010-2011 academic year, people have a right to know what that means. For some, the parents are going to work and the seven year old is going to sit at home, unattended, learning absolutely nothing for an academic year, which is never going to be made up for. That is reality.