It hasn’t been finalized, but unless they are in a space with a minimum amount of airflow and space, yes, they are probably going to be wearing them all day. The catch, is that they are going to use the gyms and other areas as classrooms, so for some classes the kids will be able to more than 10 feet apart.
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@Chris that sounds incredible – I just cannot wrap my head around how the school could create cohorts of kids to minimize contact to 15-30. I think my daughter’s school has 5 different levels of math per grade; similar for language arts; many different language options… I am trying to be patient and wait to see what the town comes up with but it’s hard to imagine it working. We are in Massachusetts and the DESE (state education dept) has already given a 3 feet minimum radius rather than 6 foot, which is also giving me big pause. Add to that keeping teachers who may be older or have pre-existing conditions safe. But. I am heartened to hear that your district was able to come up with something that sounds like it could work. Can I ask where you live? Jessica
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which school district is he in? Our school district just put out a recommendation that NO ONE go back to school and they have no start date for when they would come back. They floated “Fall 2021” which to me seems absurd. And it seems clear that if they allow kids to go back virtually, they won’t do any of the work in advance to be prepared for opening school in the event that transmission is low enough for that.
It’s like they’re banking on a vaccine and don’t want to do any of the work to get the kids back into the classroom. I agree it’s a challenging task, but it’s one they could have worked harder on this summer.
They never surveyed people to figure out head count – like who would actually send their kids back – to see if distance learning/hybrid would be feasible. They never started acquiring supplies like PPE or plexiglass barriers over the summer. And they didn’t bother to train their teachers to do distance learning either.
I’m pretty upset. I may not have sent Samson back anyways, but a lot of kids will suffer if NO in school options are offered for anyone for over a year.
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Holy cow – fall 2021??? I would be upset, too. Where do you live?
Things are in motion here, they are surveying the community weekly, updating their plan, sending it out again resurveying etc. so, working towards something that will work for most, including the option for some to be remote for the school year. It is really nice to see the engagement. I do think that it won’t be as easy as I am portraying, but I do think something is feasible, because they can group kids, especially those that are in the standard offerings and not provide as many options. As I mentioned, my son is planning on 5 AP’s, so his schedule might not be possible with a group. We shall see what the final plan is and decide then if it is right, or just push my son to community college online and try and get his graduation requirements fulfilled.
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San Francisco. Our numbers are rising but they are low compared to much of the urban areas of the state. I think the fact that they’re going in the wrong direction is reason enough to delay the opening but I refuse to assume we can’t get things turned around until next fall!
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okay side note: They have AP ceramics now???
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They do, and at our school we have the most amazing ceramics teacher. This guy makes the most amazing art pieces and inspires the kids. It is one of the hardest classes to get into because they can’t expand past the current lab space. Here is an example of one of his pieces, it is about 40 inches tall.
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Latest communication, the plans they do keep changing:
High School
Based on feedback from the originally proposed alternating schedule, we went back to the drawing board, working closely with teacher and staff association leadership and school principals, to develop a new blended schedule for high school students. Students take four, 80-minute periods a day, two in-person and two online classes with live, synchronous instruction
Total of eight periods, full instructional time, for the year
Each quarter of a class equals one semester.
In-person students organized in cohorts of 20 or fewer students
Teachers in person with approximately 80 students per quarter
Packaged meals pick up during transition
We will still organize by grade cohorts, and will be reviewing best cohort groups this week.
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At least they’re trying to bring kids back. San Francisco just announced full distance learning, which okay for some kids. But for a Pre-K or Kinder kid? For kids who are in foster care or have no internet? For kids with severe disabilities that make “distance learning” an oxymoron?
I refuse to believe they couldn’t have brought back the 5% - 10% of our school kids who are most vulnerable safely.
The part that’s really getting me angry is that they said they’re also going to make sure attendance is taken.
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It’s not just about the kids safety. It’s about the teachers safety and it’s about the kids bringing back their potential infection to their more suseptible, comprimised and older family members are more suseptible to this virus. It’s an entire spectrum of things the school districts have to think about when making these decisions.
It’s tough all around to make these kinds of potentially life and death decisions. I don’t envy them.
I mean, I think if they brought back 10% of the student population and had classes 100% outdoors (we have a TON of unoccupied Rec N Park spaces and we have a huge blacktop that could be used even for kids who rely on wheelchairs, for instance) for everyone, they could even use 30% of the teachers to break those classes into a third of their normal size, space kids out hugely and the risk would be almost nil. Data suggests children are half as likely to get SARS-CoV-2 and also between slightly and dramatically less likely to transmit it. Almost all cases where they’ve done contact tracing, prepubescent children were unlikely to be the index case. There’s obviously some confounding there as we had lockdowns in some countries, reducing the odds of kids getting it first as they were unlikely to be going out to a job or to a grocery store, etc… But they also have half as many ACE2 receptors in their upper airway and data suggests they have a lower viral load on average, so there’s a biological explanation as well. So the biggest risk for teachers is actually other employees of the school, not the kids. Also, most would be masked and teachers would also be mandated to wear masks and shields in our school, as that’s what is required by our public health department.
Anyways, i get it’s a complicated equation. But here’s what’s happening now: Entire classes in the privileged schools are creating “coronapods” of 4 to 6 students who are then being taught by tutors 4 hours a day, 3 days a week. These pods are also a potential exposure risk, but because they’re not regulated by the health department and basically not under any oversight, we have NO idea how robust their infection control practices will be. And you now have a higher teacher: student ratio, which means it’s now possible you’ve taken a lot more adults and exposed them to transmission routes. It could be fine, or it could be an epidemiological time bomb. Obviously, the district isn’t responsible for those “other” adults; they care about the risk to their staff. But as a city, we should be concerned about overall transmission rates. The fact is, in this environment with rapidly rising case counts, it’s not clear there’s anything that is low risk, and decisions taken by the school district can have unintended consequences. And as far as equity is concerned, it’s horrible. 100% all the affluent parents are ensuring their kids will get educated, whether through tutoring or homeschool pods, and meanwhile the kids of grocery store workers or health aides who have to go to work are going to be left at home with minimal or inadequate supervision.
Everything is kind of a risk right now.
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Agreed. There is still a lot we don’t know - quantitatively - about kids. Lots of premature and anecdotal evidence, but this is a hot research topic right now by the medical and scientific community. Until we have actual full studies, there are still lots of unknowns about kids and the Coronovirus.
I know lots of parents WANT to send their kids to school for the reasons you outlined. To many parents, school is a form of daycare for their kids so that they can work…yes, they’re receiving an education, but parents are just happy to have someone watch their kids while they work to pay the bills. I know this is a struggle for many parents. Although not wealthy, my wife and I are “privileged” I suppose in being able to work from home. If we had to work outside the home, then I am sure I would see things somewhat differently. But I would still be very afraid for Liam’s safety…hell for my own health for that matter! There are plenty of >40 year olds that are perfectly healthy, who are dying from this virus.
Even during the height of our lock down, many of our schools continued to offer in-person instruction for some students with severe disabilities and children of essential workers (such as healthcare workers) who could not stay home with their kids all day. Things then opened up more in June and about half of students attended during that time, mostly elementary students who find remote instruction harder.
The in-person instruction was always optional, as I think it should be. And teachers who were in high-risk categories were able to request accommodations to continue working remotely, as should be available.
It’s not just a want, though. There are many students and families who truly struggle with remote learning due to circumstances they have no control over. Parents who can’t work from home, families who don’t have access to technology, students with severe disabilities who can’t access and/or understand remote instruction, among many other examples…
I understand. We have a son on the spectrum who has special instruction / classes he attends and has a teacher follow him around all day in his other classes that he shares with the other students in case he begins acting out. It’s going to be a LOT tougher for us to teach him and help him than a teacher with specialized training would be able to do. But he (and we) will stay alive. We’ll figure everything else out.