Are you sending your kids to school next month?

[amylevan]

@palavra said it’s a societal problem. If ever we were going to reconsider the two parent income model, now is the time. If one parent was home, this would be a non issue. Schools would not feel the pressure to open because the kids would already be taken care of by a parent. People will scream that it can’t be done, but it can be done.

And are we just throwing single parent families out? All families are 2-parent models where someone should stay home?

Nevermind that we are in the 21st century and there are plenty of families where both parents WANT to work. How dare those ladies want to get out of the kitchen...

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

In NYC, they are creating day care for 100,000 children whose parents will have to go to work.

 

[quandrea]

And are we just throwing single parent families out? All families are 2-parent models where someone should stay home?

Nevermind that we are in the 21st century and there are plenty of families where both parents WANT to work. How dare those ladies want to get out of the kitchen...

I didn’t say mothers had to stay home. Many of my friends’ husbands are the stay at home parent. And of course we are not throwing out single parent homes. Those families would need special consideration, but they’d be a minority and therefore an easier cohort to manage.
Why is the notion of staying home to raise one’s children so abhorrent?

 

[palavra]

Our American society is going to have to change from the rugged individualism we have so revered to one in which we make policies for the greater good. Our sue-happy society is going to be the death of us, maybe quite literally!

I live in Florida, and I know that families in some school systems and for some sports teams are being made to sign Covid death waivers, essentially absolving the school systems and sports organizations of wrong doing in the event that their child dies from the virus. Is this really the sort of society that we want to live in?

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

In NYC, they are creating day care for 100,000 children whose parents will have to go to work.

Obviously there needs to be a place for children of workers to go, but how is this really any different than school then?

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

Obviously there needs to be a place for children of workers to go, but how is this really any different than school then?

You can employ more caretakers taking shorter shifts because they aren't certified to teach? They don't have to interact as much with the kids or get near them.

 

[HeatherC]

I don't think school boards should be opting to sacrifice anyone.
Looking out for the health and safety of students and staff should be their job one.

I saw a TickTock video where I believe was Maryland, a school district had a chart of how many possible deaths they were expecting as a result of opening schools. If we have to have charts with possible deaths maybe we should not be opening school back up.

 

[HeatherC]

Of 1,400 Israelis diagnosed with COVID-19 last month, 657 (47 percent) were infected in schools. Now 2,026 students, teachers, and staff have it, and 28,147 are quarantined.

These were schools that were using masks and social distancing.

And that is in a country only a smidgen the size of the USA.

 

[DisneyJamieCA]

You can employ more caretakers taking shorter shifts because they aren't certified to teach? They don't have to interact as much with the kids or get near them.

The first part I agree with. The second, I don't. If somebody is charge of watching kids, they will still have to interact with them and get near them like a teacher would.

To be clear, I am not advocating opening schools right now. But I don't really see this as any different.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

The first part I agree with. The second, I don't. If somebody is charge of watching kids, they will still have to interact with them and get near them like a teacher would.

To be clear, I am not advocating opening schools right now. But I don't really see this as any different.

It allows the vast majority of kids to be schooled at home, and provides care for the kids who have nowhere else to go.

 

[Tinijocaro]

Ok, you guys may be correct that the virus isn't as bad for children, though their have been some obvious exceptions. The problem is that it will not be so for teachers. This year will be a disaster. Ok, so little Johnny has it. He gives it to a couple of other kids and his 2nd grade teacher. Now, do you quarantine just the class?? Oh, but 2nd grade teacher is in the hospital and now you cannot find a sub willing to put their lives on the line for 40 bucks a day. How are the virtual classes run? By same teacher that is teaching an in person class at the same time? Way way way too much work to do both. Schools may limp along opening for a month, closing for 2 weeks, opening for 3 them another outbreak. You are going to have a huge teacher shortage I'm afraid. There are no good answers and it will be a disaster. I have a lot of relatives and friends that are teachers. I'm a former teacher. No way I'm subbing. They all believe school needs to be in person but have no clue how it can be done safely with the amount of community spread we have.

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[/QUOTE]
I share your concerns. What about kids showing up medicated to mask fevers. It happens all the time. What about notification? Does HIPPA apply in COVID? Kid in 2nd grade gets covid. Who gets notified? Whole class? Whole school? Only teachers who teach that child?

What if the teacher gets covid? Who gets notified, just that class? Other teachers who come in contact or all teachers and staff? I know there will be a certain amount of "lets's try to keep this under wraps so we don't create a panic" Like you said, subs will be scarce. The schools will pull reading, special ed, and special area teachers to sub, as they always have. I don't think our kids ever get their reading services, those teachers are always subbing. Band and orchestra lessons are often cancelled so teachers can sub due to shortages. It's going to be a huge mess. Even though we are likely going to be going in person, my guess is that we'll all be back home before Halloween.

 

[monsterkitty]

Sorry, but I find that to be incredibly dismissive and not very helpful. My wife and I are LUCKY enough to both have jobs where our employers allow us to work from home AND have set "care of kids" to be the primary decider of who gets to continue working from home and who has to come back into the office to work. I do not take that lightly though; I know there are many who are not so lucky and are now having to decide between working or caring for and EDUCATING their kids. They did factor in the kids in school during the school day and now, thanks to COVID, that is a big problem. You know, it wasn't all that long ago when parents would have been chided if they kept their kids home for some reason (other than illness of course).

Also, I keep hearing, "well now parents will know how hard it is to teach kids", to which I have to say, given what remote learning is so far, it's not all that difficult. It is that, ON TOP OF my full-time job that I find difficult.

There was a temporary rule put in place starting on April 1 that addresses the issue of parents having to stay home: "FFCRA helps the United States combat the workplace effects of COVID-19 by reimbursing American private employers that have fewer than 500 employees with tax credits for the cost of providing employees with paid leave taken for specified reasons related to COVID-19. The law enables employers to keep their workers on their payrolls, while at the same time ensuring that workers are not forced to choose between their paychecks and the public health measures needed to combat the virus. The Department’s Wage and Hour Division administers the paid leave portions of the FFCRA." Here is the entire article: Temporary Rule: Paid Leave Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act

Also, do you know how many teachers had to take care of their own children and teach at the same time? It works both ways.

OK, well, not an option where I am. We are all remote learning now. Here's the problem I have with that; let's ignore science for a minute and say the worst fear is right, everyone gets sick if schools open (evidence is HEAVILY stacked against this, but so be it). Remote learning was an unmitigated disaster in the Spring - really not worth even doing. OK, so now the school board has taken most of the summer sending out surveys and pretending they care what parents think. We OVERWHELMINGLY responded telling it like it was; remote learning was a unmitigated failure, thank you no, we want our kids back in school. The same survey was sent to the kids, same results. Now, here we are, middle of July, and do you think they spent ANY amount of time actually fixing remote learning? No way. It's going to be just as bad in the Fall - there is no question about that. So why bother with the survey then? Why waste any time on that? And if the experience is not better, why even bother with the remote learning? IT WAS TERRIBLE!! Think of it this way; say they were going to open the schools - why would they care what we thought of how CLOSING the schools in Spring went? Everyone agreed that it sucked. You don't need a survey for that.

This just leaves everyone questioning motives. Is the decision to keep schools closed based on science (where's the data?) or is it based on the whims of the teacher's Union? If schools are closed, why hasn't the school budget changed one bit? Where is the reassurance that improvements are being made to remote learning? I could go on. It just makes it look like the schools have no interest in the well-being of the kids, and really, try and convince me they do. I'm just not seeing it.

This has nothing to do with teachers' unions. Yes they are trying to keep their members safe, but they don't make the rules. Everything I did in my classroom was for the best interests of the kids. Even during remote learning. I started my day at 8 am and finished at 10 pm because some kids couldn't do their work during the "typical" school day hours. If you're not happy with how your school board made the decisions they did for the upcoming year, vote them out. Better yet, run for that unpaid position.

Why haven't school budgets changed because schools are closed? Because they still have to pay the teachers and all other staff who are working. Plus they still have the upkeep on the buildings which includes keeping power on. Actually, the budgets have changed as well. Due to reduced tax dollars coming in because of the shutdown, staff has been reduced, programs cut, and needed repairs are not going to happen. There are a plethora of other cuts that are happening due to reduced funding. Do you know how fun and unsafe it's going to be teaching in a classroom with 30-35 kids because they cut teachers or didn't replace teachers?

I'm sorry that you didn't have a successful remote learning experience. We were lucky, my district already had things in place that would make it work. Was it 100% successful? Not for everyone for reasons that were beyond the district's control. Your district has had more time to figure things out this time and hopefully it will be better. Will it be hard? yes. Will it be perfect? No. But schools are doing the best they can.

 

[monsterkitty]

Obviously there needs to be a place for children of workers to go, but how is this really any different than school then?

We asked the same questions about this when the governor opened up daycares again in Phase 2 I think it was. And day camps as well. We were told it's because they have a smaller number of kids per adult. So if they were using a school for the day care or a community center like our city is doing, they can cap the number of kids to less than 10 in the larger room. Our city is doing groups of 5:1 but has limited space. The daycare in our neighborhood is also doing 5:1 and a lot of activities are outside. They are keeping the groups apart from one another.

@Tinijocaro, my district is planning for the parents giving the kids meds to get a fever down scenarios. They will be taking temps a few hours into the school day as well as when the kids enter.

 

[godisney14]

[/QUOTE]
I share your concerns. What about kids showing up medicated to mask fevers. It happens all the time. What about notification? Does HIPPA apply in COVID? Kid in 2nd grade gets covid. Who gets notified? Whole class? Whole school? Only teachers who teach that child?

What if the teacher gets covid? Who gets notified, just that class? Other teachers who come in contact or all teachers and staff? I know there will be a certain amount of "lets's try to keep this under wraps so we don't create a panic" Like you said, subs will be scarce. The schools will pull reading, special ed, and special area teachers to sub, as they always have. I don't think our kids ever get their reading services, those teachers are always subbing. Band and orchestra lessons are often cancelled so teachers can sub due to shortages. It's going to be a huge mess. Even though we are likely going to be going in person, my guess is that we'll all be back home before Halloween.
[/QUOTE]

Regarding notification, I imagine it would be similar to what schools have been doing. (Possible could be different between schools, districts, counties, and state). For my toddler’s school, the ordinary seasonal flu/cold didn’t require a notice to parents. But, less typical conditions such as HFM and head lice required classroom notice. And anything more serious that than required notification to local health department and school wide letter. So, for a confirmed COVID-19 case, I would suspect that (my) school would notify all families.

Is a single case enough to shut down a class?
Hard to say. I have heard of work places that have shut down and some places that just continue business as usual. So, I guess it is up to individual schools to decide how to go about it. Ideally, you would want to shut it down for at least a day or two to disinfect.

Here’s the tricky part of going into the school year in the Fall and Winter with COVID-19 around us. Every student that has possible COVID-19 symptoms should be required to stay at home and isolate until they get a non-COVID-19 lab diagnosis. Since the symptoms are extremely similar, IMO, schools should not allow any child or staff with any flu- or cold-like symptoms to be on campus. Only a negative COVID-19 test result should be allowed back on campus. And, of course, a positive case should entail waiting at least 2 weeks and with no symptoms before returning.

Back to the question of shutting down, do you then shut down to disinfect after every symptomatic episode? Because you won’t know for sure whether the child or teacher is infected with COVID-19 or just the seasonal cold-flu until at least the end of the day or next day.

There’s a lot of talk about whether to have in-person school, but hardly any guidance (almost nil from everything that I’ve read) on what the responses will be in situations with children and staff who have any cold/flu symptoms, regardless of positive or negative for COVID-19.

 

[OneOftheB's]

Today, a local school system (Cobb County, GA) changed their original plan of having parents choose F2F or online. It's amazing the complaining I read on Facebook in the weeks after the original announcement that families would have a choice-everything from I'm pulling my kids and we are traveling for the next year to I'm going to create a "pod" school. With the change, now the two biggest concerns revolve around (1) will my kids be able to play sports this Fall/Winter/Spring and (2) how will the students without computer/ipad/etc and/or internet receive their education. What a hot mess.

My biggest head scratcher is the mom who was freaking out about kids going to school with the F2F option, but wanting her son to be able to wrestle because she was choosing remote learning for him to limit his exposure. Huh? Wrestling could possibly be the worst of high school sports to choose if you are truly concerned about your kid catching COVID from someone.

 

[ajanderson84]

My county school board voted today to delay the start of school from Aug 25th to Sept 8th and for the first Semester (ending Oct 30th) to be online only. They will then decide to do either a 2 day in school and 2 day at home with 1 day teacher work day (no students working) schedule or stay online. On one hand, at least we're trying to keep people safe... on the other hand it's my DS's and Adoptive Son's senior years and I am kinda bummed for them... and now I am going to build a second "office" for all three kids to do school work in where I can yell at them from my office.

 

[Bianca and Bernard]

IDk if I posted in this thread already or not, but DS (16) is doing online learning only. Our school district is allowing for 4 models: F2F, online only, online with the teachers from the child's f2f school (k-6) or split between online and f2f (7-12).

 

[TipsyTraveler]

Today, a local school system (Cobb County, GA) changed their original plan of having parents choose F2F or online. It's amazing the complaining I read on Facebook in the weeks after the original announcement that families would have a choice-everything from I'm pulling my kids and we are traveling for the next year to I'm going to create a "pod" school. With the change, now the two biggest concerns revolve around (1) will my kids be able to play sports this Fall/Winter/Spring and (2) how will the students without computer/ipad/etc and/or internet receive their education. What a hot mess.

My biggest head scratcher is the mom who was freaking out about kids going to school with the F2F option, but wanting her son to be able to wrestle because she was choosing remote learning for him to limit his exposure. Huh? Wrestling could possibly be the worst of high school sports to choose if you are truly concerned about your kid catching COVID from someone.

Atlanta/Fulton County and DeKalb are going fully online, too.

 

[godisney14]

Just got off the phone earlier with the principal for my child’s school.

(Full-time in-person schedule not even an option). For a possible hybrid schedule, if a child or staff shows ANY cold/flu-like symptom, out of caution for the situation on hand, the individual can only come back to school if s/he has a doctor’s note clearing them to return. That may require getting a test and waiting for results. With a positive case, a mandatory 2-week quarantine at home is required.
For the rest of the class, if a positive case were to happen, the school will notify ALL families (not just the particular class with the case) and the school will shut down for 1 or 2 days to disinfect. If a family member tests positive, the school will suggest that the child quarantined at home, but will not force them to do so.

 

[Lumpy1106]

Remote learning in the spring was a disaster because it was an emergency procedure with no time to prepare. Teachers are good at what they do. Given time over the summer, teachers can and will provide remote learning opportunities that will not be disastrous.

If that was the case, then they need to get out in front of it, you know, like Disney did opening the parks. Here's where things went bad, here's what we are doing to improve it. But no. All we've gotten are surveys. They twisted the survey results all they could, but the results were clear - they had no business doing remote teaching. There were exceptions - my son took a photography class this summer through a different public High Schooland the teacher in that class has been fantastic. That is the extreme exception though.

Oh, and I REALLY don't buy the whole, "we didn't have time to prepare" nonsense. I personally did a presentation to over 30 people less than a week after the shut down. It's not my forte, but it was no problem. How about my Kindergartner's teacher in private Catholic school? THAT school knocked it out of the park. We came home to a phone message Thursday night, school was shut down on Friday and Monday, Tuesday they were doing remote teaching. It was no substitute for having the kids in school, but it was impressive.

Then there was the public High School - OMG I wish I was making this up: They took 2 weeks to think about it, then took Spring Break (break from WHAT exactly?), then took another week to put together some semblance that sort of resembled instruction, then sporadically actually taught...kinda. My Daughter's guitar teacher held 1 Zoom combining all 3 of his classes, then gave up and told them to watch videos. My Son's math teacher never did any live instruction, instead assigning the kids lessons on Khan academy - this was after we personally begged her to give us a lesson plan so my Son's tutor could teach him what he was missing. The entire district went pass-fail, grades can't go down grading, so if you were passing when the shutdown started there was ZERO incentive to do anything. The School district admitted they simply lost 1/3 of the kids - they never logged into anything, never turned in any assignments, just poof - gone. THIS, T-H-I-S is what we are going back to in the Fall. Are you kidding me? I will say this - it can't get worse. Nah, strike that. They are folowing LAUSD's lead, of COURSE it could get worse!

This is to say nothing of what they are really missing. Friends, sports, band, choir, drama, Homecoming, Prom - the whole EXPERIENCE. I am so sick of the "virtual" nonsense. Oh, we gave the kids a virtual commencement and we drove by and honked, aren't we doing a great thing? In a word, NO, no you are not. You have failed the kids in every way and that's just proof that you barely even tried.