Can we be ready to open schools in the Fall?

IMO, much of the government's power could be transferred directly to the productive Americans by simply transferring the funds to vested individual accounts directed toward meeting fundamental needs like education and healthcare. Transfer the much of the money, power and responsibility to individual Americans and government will be transformed back into a friendly watchdog we can live with.

 

Sadly, this is the case with many opposing parties. I wish people could stop fighting and start actively listening to one another. Much of this nonsense could be avoided and even possibly healed.

 

Update from IL

Middle schools were set to open on a hybrid program.
High schools were to open normally.

Both were scratched and they are back to online learning until further notice.

 

First few weeks have been disastrous.

 

How so? Where are you (not exactly ?

P.S. This is like a really bad movie script.

 

I was thinking more about North Paulding high school

 

Well, that didn't turn out well. I don't get it. We've had almost half a year to get a workable plan in place.

What do you think? How could this have been handled better? I don't have all the answers but I think we all know what is NOT working.

 

I don’t buy the the story were the schools can’t require masks, only recommend. My daughter can’t wear a pair of jeans with a tiny little hole in it without being sent home.

 

Me either. They like cherry pick what they can and cannot enforce. One would think they were take an overprotective approach and lax the rules later. Throwing them into the deep end of the pool at the onset was clearly a bad idea. I'm ramping up to homeschool mine if their respective school leaders don't come up with some kind of logical and responsible re-entry plan.

 

Ours got pushed back a few weeks. They are doing hybrid stuff with the option to elect virtual from the get. Youngest kids go 4 days a week. Middling kids will basically be stuck in the same small group a couple days a week with everything in the classroom and teachers rotating. High school will be reduced to 4 classes twice a weeks with 3 virtual/remote days. All sports moved to spring.

 

Are they doing the 4 days so they are cleaning on the 5th day? What do you think is the rationale for 4 days?
The idea of teachers changing classrooms seems like a good idea. I wonder how that will work in practice.
I think the HS kids are the most at risk because of they are more mobile.

Overall, I hope somebody figures out a plan that helps ALL the students and adults that work around them. There has to be a better solution out there somewhere. Or, am I just engaging in wishful thinking?

 

They clean on wednesdays. So it will look like A Team kids (for lack of a better name) classroom monday and tuesday while B team kids do online/remote stuff, they clean schools on wednesday and on Thursdays and Fridays B Team classrooms while A team does online stuff.

As for the middling switches, my understanding is that the teacher pairs or triplets will switch around and they will bring others in to cover lunch, etc. So our 5th graders usually have two teachers and 7th graders 3 so instead of kids changing classrooms, teachers will. Of course, "classroom" may not be a classroom. They are limiting class sizes to less than 10 so they are going to have to put some groups distanced in the gyms, cafeterias, auditoriums, etc.

 

We only have about 3 things that seem to work.
Social distancing
Masks
Clean hands and surfaces
Two are easy and don't cost much.
Arguably the most important, social distancing costs money. Money the States don't have.

 

It sounds like your school district has a workable plan. I like the idea of 2/2 with a midweek cleaning. It sounds promising.

I also like the idea of the smaller classrooms. While that may mean more work for the teachers (they have their hands full already), it seems like the best solution for minimizing risk for everyone.

I would like it if you come back and tell us how those models are working in your school district. They just might be on the right track!! I hope so.

 

What do you think can be done with those three "knowns" that will help school reopen and keep everyone relatively virus-free?

 

Yep. The original plan was to do it all online but they have backed off that. The upside is they are fully equipped and prepared to switch to all online with no notice since they already wired up all the classrooms and amassed tablets and laptops in anticipation of being fully digital if there is an outbreak. Kids with no internet would still need to have someone pick up and drop off packets at the school until they could be brought online.

 

Well, I guess the goal is to keep us safe and restart the economy. Once you do that 2 days a week goes out the window. So we need to get them all back at once.
Masks are about $.20 a day. So 10 million a day.
Hand sanitizer maybe a $1 a week. 50 million a week
Clean wipes $50 a week.
So all in all these would only cost about $6 billion a year.
The hard one is the distancing. You couldn't find twice as many teachers if you wanted to.
But if you could that would be 65 billion.
Another 10 billion for buses.
So maybe the best effort is to spread them out as much as possible in the existing space. Stagger start times somehow to allow 2 bus trips.
The other essential is to get the percent positives low to start with.

 

Why would the 2 day/week go out the window? It would allow the groups to be spread out and a midweek day for cleaning. Faculty and staff would not lose any hours on that plan.

From what I've been reading, it seems like the biggest challenge has been getting parents/guardians back to work. How to do that with kids at home with online learning (even two days a week).

I was in the hospital recently and all the staff wore masks. One day, I asked one of the nurses why she had stickers (days of the week) on her badge. She said that they have to have their temp taken when they come to work. What shocked me is they are expected to wear the SAME mask for three days. So, if hospitals don't have enough to go around more frequently than that, how can we make sure the supplies to schools can be handled?

I wonder if they could get some teachers (regular and substitutes) out of retirement. That might be hard considering they would probably be in the "higher risk" age groups.

Maybe teachers could get more hours to help pick up some of the slack. That will be more with overtime though.

And, are there enough drivers to handle all the routes and what is the plan to keep the buses running should a driver become sick?

Other posters have mentioned the staggered schedule. I think it may be too early to know if that is a workable option. Hopefully, more information will come in to let us know what is working and what is not working so a cohesive plan can be put into place for all schools. I haven't heard too much about our govt. looking at other countries to find out what is working for them. Maybe we need more international exchange of information that can be of global benefit.

And, there's the kicker. How do we do that especially when just about everyone is bracing for a second wave?

Thanks for your post. You made me think about it more.

 

"Georgia high school SUSPENDS two students who posted photos of kids crammed into hallways while not wearing masks amid COVID-19 pandemic, on social media"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ents-posted-photos-kids-crammed-hallways.html

they said nothing they could do to force the kids to wear masks, but they could try to do something to stop her from telling the world I guess

 

looks like the school is backing down

"Student No Longer Suspended!!!"

https://www.tmz.com/2020/08/06/georgia-school-hallway-pic-suspension-covid-19-coronavirus/

 

not sure why Trump issued guidelines to shut down, some say it was because the economy was crashing and it was the only way he could infuse trillions into the economy, while at the same time blaming the Trump crash on the virus

 

I'm really glad to hear that. Good for whomever put enough pressure on them to make this right.

 

remember this - back when Trump thought he was gonna handle Corona better than Obama handled the Swine flu

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1259450328048709633

"We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls - didn’t have a clue!" - Trump tweeted

seems it was Trump that did not have a clue!

 

I'm almost at the point of burnout reading things he's said. I would think it was a really bad horror story if it wasn't real life.

 

It's not the teachers it's the parents. If you can't work from home going to work 2 days a week probably won't cut it.

It's not like masks are hard to make. Given enough money I could do it.

They are having a hard time getting the teachers they have back in the schools, though I'm sure that would get better if there was a really good plan.

A lot easier to get drivers than teachers, especially with unemployment so high. But it's the same problem. They need to feel safe.

Other posters have mentioned the staggered schedule. I think it may be too early to know if that is a workable option. Hopefully, more information will come in to let us know what is working and what is not working so a cohesive plan can be put into place for all schools. I haven't heard too much about our govt. looking at other countries to find out what is working for them. Maybe we need more international exchange of information that can be of global benefit.

That's the problem. The kids back to school will kick it up a bit, but if you look at what happened in Israel, we could have a mess by doing it wrong.

When Covid Subsided, Israel Reopened Its Schools. It Didn’t Go Well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel-schools-reopen.html

We missed the boat by not getting it down before we started reopening.