If you mean this thread, I’ve read every post in this thread. The evidence is not as definitive as you make it sound. For every cite you give, there are other articles giving way more cautions.
If the evidence was as cut and dried as you’re making it out to be, there would be no hesitation on anyone’s part to declare that opening schools is right in every situation. But here are 132 epidemiologists who have differing views from opening now to waiting for a vaccine.
They were interviewed at the end of May. There’s a French study that says that children are not transmitters in an article from 2 days ago, but I didn’t see you quoting that. I haven’t read it yet.
The word “much” in your sentence might give some parents pause. Not spreading disease much only counts when it’s not you that got the disease.
Speaking specifically KG here. Really? Yes that defeats the educational work that is KG and then why bother sending?
High School I see. Just as there is nothing magical between preschool and KG there is nothing magical between High School and college aged. Where the transition becomes steepest has to be determined and stating that HS classes need masks almost always with either 6 ft or dividers in circumstances like a classroom all sitting together for 45 minutes and more at a crack seems reasonable as more data comes in. Yes we know that they will be on top of each other as soon as they are off of school grounds but still the school should be a lower risk place.
H and R I cannot help you read what the actual evidence has been nor help you with your strange level of going to “every situation.”
Indeed any parent whose level of risk tolerance is a promise of that attending school will provide complete protection from catching COVID for the child and the family and the staff will be disappointed. Whatever the risk number is, however low, it will not be zero. Maybe less than the risk of driving to school, likely less than owning a backyard pool, but not zero.
I will have to go pull it up and see: it’s a draft document, not released, and I am sure it’s been updated. But I think a lot of people in education these days think the point of kinder is to learn to read and to instill a strong academic foundation. I also disagree with this, but that’s where we are. And the rest just want to have kinder so parents can go back to work.
What would you recommend for my kid? He’s a very bright rising 3rd grader. I really send him to school for the social, not the academic, advantages. If it’s all plexiglass and masks and limited specials and lunch in their rooms . . . would you send your kid? Or do I keep him home a semester or a year, teach him at home, and maybe try to find a small circle of like minded parents for regular social time?
He’s really well-behaved but really empathic and it already drives him crazy when he perceives teachers giving kids a hard time for stuff that wasn’t their fault, or collective punishments. I am so worried that a whole new set of rules, with the implicit pressure that they are “life or death” will create a really toxic environment.
Obviously every child and family is in a unique circumstance. I know that neither my wife or I had the skills, or patience with teaching our kids, that our kids’ teachers had … most of them anyway. My WAG also is that even under those circumstances kids will manage to develop socially, and the sharing in the experience with peers will I think be important. I’d send. I also suspect that some of the approaches will be relaxed along the way, if, as I expect, the evidence continues to build that the risks of schools functioning less restrictively are indeed much smaller to the students, to the staff, and to the families, than the risks typically accepted every year with seasonal influenza.
That said some will opt out because the restrictions are so onerous and some will opt out because they are fearful they are not enough. I fault no one for deciding based on their own risk tolerance informed by their own unique circumstances. I’m just dreading all the requests I expect for letters to support why a specific little Jonnie or Jennie should be excused from wearing a mask …
Just had my kid and grandkids over for lunch. Apparently (for now) their school plans facemasks, attempting social distancing, and don’t send kids to school sick. My granddtr is fine w/ wearing the mask and following rules, but I know some kids for whom it will be impossible to keep a mask on them. That’s a heck of a lot to ask of teachers.
My district just sent out the proposed three plans:
Regular school with social distancing. I’m tentatively in favor of this one, given the science, although viscerally it scares the snot out of me.
Staff go full-time, K-6 students go 1/2-time but are expected to sit at home in front of computers from 8 am until 2:30 pm every day, and 7-12 students stay home every day.
Staff go to their workplace full-time students stay at home full-time.
Options 2 and 3 are – well, a lot of educators have young children. Including me. If I’m at school all day, what is my seven-year-old supposed to do on the weeks when she’s not at school?
Option 3 could be easily fixed for educators, by not requiring us to be at school; that requirement strikes me as RESPECT MAH AUTHORITEH nonsense in contravention of our governor’s recommendation that employers let employees work remotely whenever possible. But option 2 is going to mean a lot of teachers taking emergency family leave, which is going to stress the system even further.
Subs are also going to be a nightmare. If we have to stay home if we have any sort of potential symptoms (like a cold), absences will be way up. But we won’t have subs, because half or more are old retired people: they aren’t going to come into schools for sub pay. And we can’t just spread the children around if there is no sub: classes will be full.
I feel like it’s a nightmare. Every plan bumps up against a non-negotiable.
Our school’s database manager brought this up, and I 100% agree. Not only are a lot of people old and retired, but some people with young children may be deciding to take the year (or semester) off rather than pay for full-time child-care. I’ve already heard from two different families contemplating that decision.
My husband just retired from 20 years of teaching. It had been his plan to be a sub when he’s eligible to do so (in our state, all K-12 public school teachers are considered state employees, so after retiring you need to wait 6 months to apply), but in this environment he probably won’t be doing it. Since he’s 65 I’m glad he’s out now. Too much uncertainty at this point.
Here is one idea I had: The problem is that the littles really really need to be able to go to school and it needs to be safe for them and faculty/staff. One plan floating around is to move HS to home and use the buildings to “spread out” the littles more. But to do that. you need a lot more teachers: it’s not enough to have the space if you don’t have the adults.
So to make that option work, you’d really have to cancel HS for a year. Design some sort of on-line program that requires a quarter or less as many teachers to supervise. It would be far, far inferior to real school, but it would be something. Then make high schools (including their teachers) 7-8th grade centers, and move the top half of elementary schools to middle schools. I think that’s the only way to actually have classes small enough to maintain social distancing.
That’s super, super not fair. Not to HS kids, not to HS teachers. And it would be highly imperfect. But COVID is a natural disaster–unlike a hurricane, we can decide which houses we want to knock down: but some are going to go.
Or we could follow what the CDC was recommending even before it became apparent that children are not a significant vector, and just open most schools. Yes, there’s still the issue of staff-to-staff transmission, but it’s not all that hard to keep school staff distanced from each other.
I agreed with you more a month ago. But now my city is sitting at the knife’s edge of having our hospitals overwhelmed and hitting new records for infections and hospitalizations every day. There’s a lot more CORONA out there than there was a month ago, so the chances of someone having it are far, far higher, and the chances of someone who would have lived dying in a hospital hallway are likewise much higher. Those recommendations pre-date that sort of situation.
My wife works as an aide at a lower grade school (k-4). They already have rules in place for “if your child is sick,…”. If the child has a fever over 101 (I think), you have to keep them home; if they throw up, they have to stay away from school for a day. NUMEROUS times each year, they’ll have kids throw up on the bus; get to the office, and say “I threw up at home, then on the bus”, or they’ll take a temperature (normal) and the kid will say “Mommy gave me aspirin.” There’s lots of reasons this could happen, but if the parents were sending the kids sick before, they’re going to send them sick now.
My dtr said the same sorta thing - something like, “We all know how good parents are at THAT!” I’m not saying the proposed rules are good - or even workable. Just reporting what my kid’s district is proposing.
I’ve heard the suggestion on public radio that schools maintain six feet between students, but as I remember the classrooms from what I was in school, that’s not possible given the number of students in a class and the size of the rooms.
The current thinking in my district, at least, is to use plexiglass dividers to help. But even with those, it’s going to be tricky to fit that many in a room.
One suggestion is to have half the students at school each week, so that distance can be maintained. This sounds hellish for parents trying to figure out work/childcare schedules.
I’ve mentioned before that my wife is an elementary school teacher. We also have a son going into 5th grade this fall (in a different school district).
We are really struggling with what to do. My son’s district has published some tentative plans. My wife doesn’t believe any of them will work. Elementary school kids will simply not do as their told. At best, they’ll be miserable because they have to stay apart from their friends.
She herself has been hinting that she won’t go back to the classroom even if it costs her her job. “No job is worth your life”, she’s been saying.