Opening schools

The Quarantine Zone
962

We’ve been planning to send our kids back to school (kindergarten and preschool) in a week from Monday. We just got word that my daughter’s kindergarten teacher retired this weekend due to covid. She has an immune compromised kid and my wife and I were just talking about how we wouldn’t go back if it was us.

Based on what I’ve read I’m not worried about sending our kids back the benefits certainly outweigh them being at home while we try and work but it seems crazy for a lot of the teachers to be around the little germ magnets.

963

New study showing a 22% child to adult transmission of Covid-19, higher than in previous studies.

The CEO of a hospital says that there is new research showing that schools should not be reopened. He says that the new research shows that the transmission of Covid-19 is via airborne transmission. I didn’t realize this was news, but according to this CEO, this is a new finding.

He talks about a study where the air was tested where people with Covid-19 were placed in isolation rooms where the air is circulated frequently. The air from 6 feet away and 27 feet away still contained the virus. So social distancing is not enough to stop the spread.

Swedish researchers say that children should wear masks to school. Sweden’s public health authority disagrees and will not mandate the wearing of masks. Tegnell, the head of the public health authority doesn’t believe that masks reduce the transmission of Covid-19.

964

This sounds very helpful. A teacher has decided to create a database with all the school closings, illnesses and deaths that she has seen articles about. I have often wondered if I’m seeing the same articles again and again. She wondered the same thing and started tracking. She found that there really are a lot of cases out there.

965

Well, luck may had run out in one district I work.

They decided to start with remote classes; no students present, doing work at home, but teachers and staff had to in the office to monitor the remote classes.

We all had tests done before coming to work and masks and temperature checks were done.

Unfortunately, as mentioned before, testing is taking long times in the poor neighborhood we are located. Pharmacy testing places are taking 5-10 days to give you results in Arizona.

And one staffer just got the notice, a positive corona test. Now all are being separated and being tested again.

We had been working already for 3 weeks. I hope the sore throat I’m feeling is just the usual allergies I was getting for weeks before.

I will say it again, testing was important, but for schools quick testing is essential. And if that is not there, a lot more help is needed for teachers and staff, even if schools are starting with remote classes.

966

Sending positive thoughts for staying safe and well. I’m sorry to hear about all the stress that the staff in your school is facing.

967

Sorry to hear about this result, and I hope your sore throat is only a sore throat. We start up with students in two weeks, and I’m not looking forward to it.

968
969

A couple weeks ago, I read an article about universities starting before K-12 schools started which is backwards, particularly at that time. The reason was the profit motive of universities that had to open, or many would perish.

But now, even many universities have decided not to open to on-campus learning due to the spread of Covid-19.

Even the wealthy schools that are opening are seeing declining enrollment for this school year.

In a poll about parents wanting to send their kids back to school, there was a discrepancy in income of those parents who were most likely to want their child to go back to physical classrooms.

I wonder how this will play out. Using the Georgia camp as a template, even with new air filtration systems, doctors on hand, testing before allowing anyone in and sanitizing of the facilities, they still saw an outbreak. Even schools with a lot of money may not be able to keep out an outbreak.

970

Boy, that article is some piece of work. It is citing a study from early June and does not even acknowledge that maybe things have changed a bit since then. Quite the opposite, actually, as it says “the study comes while school districts across the country are grappling with” a decision. What’s more, here’s how it characterizes these response rates:

38% - most likely
29% - second-most likely
27% - on the other end of the spectrum (italics mine)
21% - in a distant fourth

God, reporting is so bad these days.

971

The study is dated as published online on August 14, 2020. The data for the study was collected June 2-5, 2020. The article was published on August 17, 2020, 3 days after the study was published.

972

Another hypothesis is that lower-income parents are more likely to be concerned about the cascading effects of a COVID-infected kid. It’s hard to quarantine a sick family member from the rest of the household in a two bedroom, one-bedroom apartment. Furthermore, lower-income families are more likely to be intergenerational and to rely on grandparents for care-giving. Having an out-of-commission parent or grandparent is a bigger deal for a lower-income family than a well-to-do family. Health risks also increase with decreasing income. Well-to-do parents probably have more confidence that they would be OK if they got infected because they tend to be healthier than lower income parents. Children in wealthier homes also tend to be healthier than children from less wealthy homes.

Also, I’m guessing lower income folks are more likely to have distrust of the medical system than well-to-do families. Well-to-do folks know that if they or their kids get sick, they will get high quality care. Poorer folks don’t tend to be so confident.

Finally, I suspect that wealthier parents’ decisions are also driven by the joint concerns of financial investment and status. If your kids go to prestigious private schools with pricey tuition, you’re going to want to maximize how much you get out of those institutions. The online option won’t seem all that great to you, especially if the campus is going to be open and receiving students anyway. And if everyone you know is planning on sending their kids to school, you’ll probably feel weird about keeping your kids at home. What if by keeping them home, you’re depriving them of opportunities that keep them from getting into the Ivies?! Oh noes, we might as well have sent them to public school! Poorer families aren’t as likely to be worried about stuff like this.

973

In my teacher-group chat, we were discussing this a week or so ago, before this article. We’d noticed in the community that plans to come back/not come back were not nearly as income-driven as the news made it sound: it wasn’t all “poor people need to get back to work”. For example, in my high-COVID area, the only person really pushing for schools to open 5 days a week ASAP represents the wealthiest area of town.

We concluded it’s really because relatively affluent parents . . . need to get back to work. Lots of them are working from home, often two parents working from home. Working from home is pretty intense–it’s often really not feasible to be keeping your student on task and focused on school while in and out of zoom meetings all day. That kid in your lap was cute the first months of quarantine, but now it’s unprofessional. There’s also the issue of WiFi: we had really wealthy parents request hot-spots from the district for their kids because 4 people using Zoom all day just wasn’t what most household internet is designed for (though, frankly, I think they should be asking their jobs to provide THEM the hotspot, but whatever). This is why affluent people are forming “pods” and splitting the cost of a nanny/tutor: they need someone to watch the kids because they can’t.

Low-income households are sometimes surprisingly more flexible about this. If you work shifts, your shift can be moved. It’s more culturally acceptable to ask an older sibling, uncle, aunt, grandma to watch the kids every day for months. A surprising number of our working poor households have a stay-at-home mom: in working class Hispanic families, it’s pretty normal for dad to work 70 hours a week, and mom to do everything else, so that he can. Mom may clean a few people’s houses or watch neighbor kids, as well, but that’s flexible. Working class people may also be more comfortable leaving a middle-school aged kid on his own during the day, because it’s objectively safe, even if he may not get much work done. Also, frankly, a lot of working class households have someome laid-off and at home right now.

So I think it’s less that they are worried about Harvard and more, honestly, that they are worried about their jobs, coupled with not really being that afraid of COVID. This is reportedly why Trump was so focused on schools: polls reported that suburban women really wanted schools to reopen, and that’s a demographic he needs to shore up. But it may have backfired: I will also say that in early June, COVID didn’t look too bad around here, and it was suburban moms who wanted kids to go back to school. As it has gotten worse and worse, perspectives on that have changed, pretty rationally.

974

I think this is a big one. My former manager is well-to-do. She had a nanny for her kids when one was in middle school and the other in high school. She just felt more comfortable knowing they had constant supervision. But I do wonder how much of it was genuine worry for her kids versus peer pressure. I’m not a parent, but I can imagine it would be hard to do something out of step with what your friends are doing and not feel some kind of way about it.

975

Yes, I know. And I imagine that viewpoints are likely to have changed in the two months that have passed since the survey was taken. Hell, even two weeks feels like a year during this pandemic.

976

It’s also just one thing to leave your 12 year old at home while you go to work. It’s another to have him roaming around the house in his boxers, slamming doors and making requests while you are on a zoom call in the living room, or even trying to do creative work by yourself.

977

I’m having a hard time trying to figure out the problems you have with the article. In the last few months, we’ve had significantly more cases and deaths than in June. How do you expect the numbers to change. Also, “on the other end of the spectrum” is simply a transition sentence to describe the spectrum of income. The actual description comes after that. I can’t tell what’s wrong with that.

Anyway, I found the outcome and the interpretation to be interesting. The people in the middle of the income scale are more likely to want their kids to go back to school than the lower end. The upper end probably doesn’t need to have their kids go to school because they can hire tutors or have teaching pods (maybe taught by tutors).

978

I took the writer to mean there was a spectrum between 38 and 21, with 38 and 29 on one end and 27 and 21 on the other.

As for how I would expect the numbers to change, I imagine it would be different in different places, given what we’ve witnessed in various parts of the country during the summer (and the different circumstances in different places now). I find it a stretch that any school district would find much immediate local relevance in a national survey from more than two months ago.

979

This is one of the big reasons we’re happy to be sending our kids back to school. My wife and I both work and are well paid. Watching the kids on top of that is an exercise in self destruction. On top of that a week ago my wife had to go back to work so she is now working out of the home while I’m working from from home and watching two kids under 5 by myself.

If they close our school/preschool I really need a total lockdown too to force my wife home too. Even with school my work day will be compromised because the kids are only there from 8:30-3:30 so I’ll have at least an hour of two of work every day while they’re home not counting the time I have to spend while working getting them ready and out the door to school.

980

So a friend who teaches in my old district says class sizes will still be 25+ at the HS, even though that won’t allow for social distancing. Teachers cannot have kids on computers longer than 10 minutes at a stretch. I have no idea why. No online option except for kids with a doctor-verified health issue.

Should go great! :roll_eyes:

981

What state?