WOW SCHOOL PLANNING IS A GIANT MESS RIGHT NOW! UNDERSTANDABLY!
Our school district recently released a 40+ page document about their plans for partial in-person schooling. They did a really good job, under the circumstances, and you can see a LOT of people did a LOT of work to come up with these plans; but it is clear to me, after reading the whole thing, that this can’t work. I could be wrong! Maybe it will work beautifully! But. The first part that made me yell out “What are we DOING???” was the part where it said that if a teacher becomes ill mid-day, they will open the door to the adjoining classroom, notify that classroom’s teacher that they are ill, ask that teacher to take care of both classrooms, and leave with all their possessions by the nearest exit. BY THE NEAREST EXIT. WITH ALL THEIR POSSESSIONS. AFTER JOINING THE AIR OF TWO CLASSROOMS. AND ASKING ANOTHER TEACHER TO TAKE CHARGE OF THE STUDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN SHARING AIR WITH THE TEACHER WHO IS NOW ILL.
(This is all assuming there is enough staff to even start the first day, let alone take over each other’s classrooms. The entire document is full of “*assuming adequate staff,” and that’s understandable, and I’m glad they seem to be aware that that could very well be a considerable issue. Already our district was very short of substitute teachers, and now they are even more short of substitute teachers and also short of bus drivers. It appears there are not many people who want poorly-paid part-time hours with no benefits and lots of people-exposure during a pandemic. And as we approach the scheduled start of school, I suspect more and more school employees will opt out. UNDERSTANDABLY.)
There is a LOT about how the school will be cleaning the living hell out of all surfaces, all day and all night, which I guess is supposed to be reassuring, but is less so with a virus believed to spread predominantly through shared air, and we are going to put the children and teachers in closed rooms with shared air, and they will have lunch in their classrooms and will have to take off their masks for that. TELL ME LESS ABOUT HOW YOU PLAN TO CLEAN THE SURFACES AND MORE ABOUT HOW YOU PLAN TO CLEAN THE AIR.
Then I got to the part where we learn that if someone in the school system is exposed to someone with a positive Covid-19 test, they and all their family members and “everyone they have close contact with” must leave the school system for 14 days, and/or until they’ve had a negative Covid-19 test. Well! So. Let’s say a teacher’s spouse has a positive Covid-19 test, so the teacher will be out for 14 days. Also the teacher’s two children will be out for 14 days. And then, what does “close contact” mean in an in-person school environment? The students in the teacher’s classroom? (That might NEED to happen, if there are no subs.) The students/teacher in the teacher’s children’s classrooms? The bus driver and other students on the teacher’s children’s bus? How many people are out for 14 days for each exposure?
The gist, which was in the 40s of pages when most people might have stopped reading, seems to be that one single positive Covid-19 test in the school system will likely mean closing down the entire school district. Maybe not! But probably. So what we are doing is spending a lot of time and effort to create a system that is expected to collapse, in order to make everyone feel that at least we tried.
I’ve been going through my university’s plan (I’m staff) as information is released and I’m feeling the same. I do believe there is a slight chance things could go well. And SO MUCH really good effort went into this. And yet we’re talking about space in quarantine dorms, testing each student as they arrive on campus (honor system I guess unless they live in the dorms) and our labs will have 24 hr turn around time and will have capacity to test all students. Currently processing 100-200 per day but will ramp up. Um… All instructors have 1 or 2 backup instructors listed. OK but there are so many places where this can and will just fall apart.
The whole thing is madness and I don’t see how it can work. I’ve spent weeks stressing over school and finally just signed them up for virtual because I can even though i REALLY don’t want to.
I am in the same boat. I really, really, REALLY didn’t want to sign my kids up for the virtual learning, but given the plan that my district put out, I couldn’t continue having my parents in to help in the 3 days a week that my kids will be at home doing virtually nothing and still send them to school.
Our school district hasn’t announced officially what they are going to do, but their 5 Phase framework only allows for kids to come to school AT ALL in Phase 4, and then it’s only the little kids + special ed students on an A/B Day rotation. My kids are middle school and older, so our kids wouldn’t be slated to go to school until Phase 5 under “Fully Open Schools”. Hybrid options exist in the realm of allowing special tutoring and English Language Learners, and “supports”, whatever that means. Our superintendent said in an interview on our local news that, and I’m paraphrasing, “There is no f*@king way Minneapolis Public Schools can manage anything like safety practices during a pandemic.” I can’t tell you the peace that has settled on my life after hearing him say that, even if it is outside an official announcement.
Our district did the same thing about 2 weeks ago. People went absolutely nuts pointing out obvious holes (only 2 masks per kid per year, kids responsible for cleaning the classrooms because there is no extra money for custodial staff, insanity if even one person gets sick) and within 3 days they backtracked and we were shut down for the entire first semester. It was a massive blow to know the kids will be home til (at least) the end of January but, well, of course.
There just seems to be no way around the fact that you are shutting however many people into a closed room sharing the same air for seven plus hours a day. It just can’t work.
This. Exactly.
I’m hoping that my kids will get back into a classroom before the year is over, but who knows? Our middle school is a charter school, and they are anticipating only 75% of the student body will be in classroom, with 25% doing online learning. They have also built a new building that will double the square footage available, so hopefully students will be spread instead of in classrooms.
High school? Who knows. They’re online for the first semester (I picked up the laptops earlier this week). If infection rates keep going up, it could be online for two semesters? The entire year? It’s too hard to judge at this point. My oldest was supposed to be in dual enrollment, and taking college classes as well as high school classes, adding that to the mixture just seems to be even more confusion.
It’s a 40-page document explaining why they just can not open at all. It’s covering their collective behinds and explaining, clearly, how impractical it is to expect them to open.
My county’s school district has already decided that they are going to be entirely on-line for the entire year, or until there is full vaccine coverage, whichever comes first.
All it takes is one parent to give their feverish kid Tylenol before school and tell them not to tell anyone, and the whole thing collapses. Or someone to come to school while they’re waiting for test results; we have all heard stories of people attending parties or gatherings while waiting on test results, I personally know one person who did that very thing and SURPRISE they were positive.
When you combine:
1. parents who need to work and cannot do it from home and don’t have backup childcare,
2. selfish people who think THEY won’t be the one to spread the virus or get sick, and
3. idiots who still think it’s all a hoax and the media is hiding the One True Drug to Cure Us All,
you get a school full of virus-laden students and teachers. I don’t see any way out of this until we have a vaccine.
Youngest’s SD just announced yesterday that they would be online until at least November 5 and I was relieved. I mean I’m mad as hell that our government has screwed our COVID response up so badly that we may never recover BUT I just didn’t see how even with the SD’s 40-page plan it was going to work for any kind of in-person schooling. Our SD has some very old buildings with highly questionable HVAC and class sizes were already large and the district has been underfunded at least since we started in 2008. In short: the plans they had even if they would have worked in a best-case scenario (questionable) had a lot of underlying suppositions that simply were not true (high-level HVAC, funding for PPE, etc). I’m not thrilled about online schooling but at least now Youngest will hopefully not accidentally kill a teacher or classmate this Fall…
Why would they open a door to another classroom? We have these things called “phones” these days, frequently in pockets. (intense sarcasm intended)
We have the most flexible options that I’ve heard – they can stay home full time, go in to class full time, or a mix. However, the teachers weren’t consulted on this plan at all (I’ve heard), so that seems like the wrong plan too.
I think that’s because the other teacher needs the door open to watch both rooms.
About half of the districts around us are going virtual through at least Nov. Our district chose a hybrid of sorts, with full time elementary. They moved some grades around to theoretically make more space in the buildings, but are not decreasing class size (other than losing those who go to cybers). Their virtual plan looks like you just log into the classroom, and…follow along? We are going with a cyber school. I’d say 85% chance they have to close before Oct.
I am a teacher and I absolutely HATED distance learning last spring. HATED. But, we had a meeting (online) yesterday with the district that outlined how a hybrid school year would look. Like you, I could tell that a lot of work had gone into it. But. Elementary kids would have an A group and a B group and would spend three days at school, then two at home, then switch the next week, meaning working parents would have to find care for different days each week. Secondary would do only hours 1-3 for half the trimester, then 4-6 in the other half, two days a week at school. There were no answers to questions about buses, cleaning, subs, what happens if a teacher has exposure or has an immune problem, how we would check kids for fever, what we would do if a kid came on the wrong day, or how I would teach in person and online at the same time. It did not make me feel better or confident about the fall. I really, really want to teach my kids in person, and I really, really want my son to go to school and have social interaction, but I just don’t see how this will work.
My nephew, who is 20 and working for the city mowing lawns learned today that his co-worker tested positive. My nephew is now home for 14 days, then heads to college for his sophomore year. Sounds great.
I work for a school that has the privilege/curse of making some decisions separately from our sponsoring district. Can confirm, none of us have a FREAKING CLUE how to make this happen, we are releasing written plans because parents are slaughtering us, and people won’t be happy no matter what we decide. Thankfully our powers that be just declared we are fully virtual so at least now we can pivot to try to figure out how to educate kids online as effectively as we can without worrying about dying at least.
It’s a cluster.
I’m in Iowa and the governor came out and basically said that schools have to be in person after a few big city schools said they wanted to start 100% online. The district my mom works at says that parents have to do temperature checks each day. Well….considering plenty of parents will not do that, it doesn’t seem like that will work.
The plan is for my daughter to start school in September – we’re in the UK. The plan – again, I use the word plan because I’ve got no idea how this will pan out – is for each year group to form a bubble. So my daughter’s would be the 54 kids in her year, plus 2 teachers and the teaching assistants. They’ll eat lunch and have breaks at different times, start and finishes are staggered alphabetically and school will end at lunchtime on a Friday to allow teachers to do their planning.
What that effectively means is that if one person in that bubble tests positive, everyone else has to stay home for 14 days. And ditto for any sibling of that person. It’s… logistically challenging for sure. But here in the UK rates are currently fairly low so I’m content it’s the best situation for the moment, and we’ll just take things one day at a time.
You have summarized this nicely.
In my district, we spent a ton of time creating a schedule for a “red” model (all online) and an “orange” model (hybrid). Then the superintendent looked at our orange schedule and was like… wait. The kids get LESS class time with a teacher and MUCH more exposure in this model. This is a bad model.
Yep.
So we are in red until further notice. Which is the RIGHT CHOICE.
Our school board said the same thing- the increased risk is not justified by the reward of one or two days with a teacher and the rest on their own.
I feel as though our school district is also doing “at least we tried”. SO many parents here want kids to go back, so they are going to allow that and then someone will get sick and a lot of people will get sick and then the schools will close down. And they can say “We did what you asked! We tried to keep it open like you wanted.”
Well. I suppose that is a better option than a lot of people getting sick and the schools continue to stay open.
I am a school adminstrator in The South. You can imagine the joy that is my professional life right now.
My goodness. Sending all love and patience and wisdom your way. Hang in there.
You have my heartfelt sympathy. Leadership is a thankless job. 😕
I am a middle school principal in the midwest. Solidarity! I hope you are taking great care of yourself because this is truly awful.
Solidarity! I’m at the elementary level. It often feels like choosing between the better of the worst possible options.
Thanks for the sympathy! I really do LOVE my job and around 99% of parents/stakeholders are amazing and wonderful and we are all just making the best decisions we can in the moment. I think the hardest part is that while my job is a lot of planning, big decisions, and revising said plans and decisions, classroom teachers truly are having to bear the brunt of almost all of the ramifications of this while doing the hard work of actually managing students. It kills me to see them continually have to rise to the occasion as best they can while making do with very little–all of that before you throw in a pandemic.
I am a teacher and feeling a little sorry for myself but I definitely feel for administrators, too. Admin are going to be the complaints department for everybody and they will have next-to-no control over whatever the complainer is screaming at them.
And the SOUTH. I am flabbergastered at what I’m reading. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, even though I am not in the States I will donate very generously to support a US-wide teacher strike in solidarity with the teachers in the South where it is often illegal for teachers to strike. My God.
This is the time to send kind notes and chocolate to any teachers and administrators you know. We are so sad and so anxious.
After much hand wringing and anxious days, we decided to do virtual. I’m scared poopless, but here we are. I just didn’t see how this could work. And I’m home already. We can do hard things, right?
YES. We’ve got all the hard things, and we are DOING them.
I also signed my children up for all virtual, all year…. And if we (I) hate it, I’ll pull them out and go the homeschool route.
I appreciate the “in person can’t work! Or hybrid! Let’s just go virtual!” sentiment. My kids will be fine on all virtual. But it just seems…not great for districts to give up on in person for ALL KIDS. Couldn’t we try to have some limited subset of full time school for kids & families that really need it? Special needs kids. Kids who literally have no parent at home. Kids with no internet so that chrome book you gave them is a paperweight. It seems like many cities/counties are setting up day care options for these types of kids, in small groups, socially distanced, etc. Why can’t that daycare instead be school? I saw an article (can’t think where) the gist of which was kids who really need it should go to school and those who can do virtual should do virtual.
(The better option would be for the U.S. to get its transmission/infection rate down so we are not a world embarrassment and all kids could go to school, but hey, maybe that’s asking too much.)
Our school district told parents to say what they wanted, but then it didn’t provide an option for “no one in my household is immunocompromised and my high-schoolers would follow procedures for reducing the risk of transmission, but don’t you effing DARE make teachers come back to teach in person until they’re ready. We can cope with virtual until it’s safe, and we’re not a priority for in-person instruction.”
Also, I am looking forward to the day that someone does the math on cost of paying people to stay home for awhile vs costs of trashing the economy via a long slow half-asssed approach.
It’s taking a surprisingly long time for someone to step up and do that math, isn’t it :( ? What a mess.
I “love” the false dichotomy that has been set up: stay closed until we get our numbers down and the economy will collapse or open things without getting out numbers down and the economy will be GREAT! Every legitimate economist has said unequivocally there will be no economic rebound/improvement until we get COVID under control. Pretending like if we just open things up everyone will go out and spend money and be just fine is untrue and just draws out this whole mess. Lord, I can’t wait until I can stop feeling furious every moment that I stop and think about things.
https://medium.com/@shaylargriffin/some-students-should-go-to-school-most-should-stay-home-8a57894b8487
Not sure if you’re referring to this one, but the gist is the same and I wholeheartedly agree with this article.
Oops, I just commented with the same link.
The best thing I’ve read about schools reopening echos your sentiment here about not applying one-size-fits-all solutions. Article in link, if that is allowed.
https://medium.com/@shaylargriffin/some-students-should-go-to-school-most-should-stay-home-8a57894b8487?fbclid=IwAR2xHV8MLYGeU5LEMjGMJw_-qEhbdUTyYMcQ8ueoxKYURr2ETmbJX4YARFg
In case anyone is wondering how they dealt with school a hundred years ago, here’s an article about it with some of the BEST photos!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-schools-reopening-outdoors.amp.html
But in 2020 we’ve basically thrown 40 page nonsensical documents at the problem while knowing it won’t work.
I’ve been saying for awhile they they should at least try outdoor schooling while our climate allows it. Where is the creativity? I’m sure it would be a huge hassle, but they could have reopened school outdoors here around July 1 and run in-person outdoors until about November 1. Then we’d probably have to do online because it rains here all the time. However, we could probably start back outdoors in April. It’s not a full year of in-person schooling but there’s no way on earth we’re going to have anything like a full year of in-person schooling here as it is. We’re likely to get none. No one has proposed even thinking about something like this. Every school seems to be in lock step with the same unworkable ideas and it’s making me bonkers.
Our school district did a similar thing. A month ago they released a plan implying that we would be able to choose “virtual only” or “hybrid”, which would have had kids going to school on either Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday, then at home the rest of the week. But the plan for hybrid had so many details that didn’t really work (buses, PPE, no plan for what would happen if someone tested positive, etc.) that the teachers unions and more than half of the parents went “What?! NO.” And even under the hybrid model everyone would have started out virtually and nobody would have gone into the school buildings until October at least. It was definitely a “well we tried” plan that I don’t think was ever intended to be put into action. Now we’ve been told we’ll be online only until the beginning of February.
I know this is the right decision, but I have a 3rd grader and a kindergartner and a 2-year-old with two parents working from home and no childcare. We were barely hanging on by June and I am dreading another 5+ months of this, but what are you going to do? We will make it work somehow.
I’m in South Korea, my kids went back for two weeks at the end of the school year (our school follows an American calendar) which basically seemed to be a dress rehearsal for how the fall would play out. Korean schools have been open since May but I hear most of them are now on a split A/B schedule, and aready districts have had to close due to student transmission–even at the elementary level.
From my friends and family in the States it seems like a lot of people who want schools fully open assume that they will just…stay that way? Even if someone gets sick?
A friend of mine is actually enrolling her youngest (who has several immune issues) in a private school because private schools are allowed to open full time and her district’s public school is going virtual and she doesn’t think she’ll get a good enough 2nd grade education that way. There are so many things about that decision that strike me as wrong.
As of now my kids will go back at the end of August still with distancing and masks and a temperature scanner set up at the entry to school. Korea has done a great job of keeping cases low but they have started to creep back up again in some areas so I’m not entirely confident we will get through the school year without having to go back to virtual at some point.
Our school district will be online-only for the first semester at least. The older kid’s college is going to try a hybrid system, with most classes running in-person and online at the same time, with only a fraction of students allowed to attend in person on any given day.
Annnnd this is among the reasons why I am going to homeschool my daughter Kindergarten this year. Privilege check: We can afford for me to stay home with the kids! We have room for an “office” for hubby AND a “classroom”! I can throw them out in the yard when I just can’t stand it anymore! *Deep breaths*
I had registered her for public K, but the local district has already changed their plans from “choose in person or online” to “everyone online for the first two weeks,” so I’m happy I chose to withdraw her. The stress of the back/forth in/out on/off is just too much on top of EVERYTHING ELSE.
Our school district is having the first two weeks be online only as well. They say there “could” be in person learning after the two weeks but doubtful.
Our district said virtual for August, then a series of phases easing back to normal school. The parents protesting for inperson school were placated. Then the district announced the criteria for activating the in person phases – 14 days of declining positives and a 5% or less positivity rate. So essentially we will be virtual all year. I’m happy with this but have some anxiety about my kid that needs daily speech therapy, which is hard virtually and can’t be done with a mask. I was hoping we could get a weekly 1:1 appointment behind a plexiglass screen but that’s not happening. Oh, but outside sports and band are happening (but not therapy? Priorities I guess).
Also for those that don’t have Internet the district is setting up hotspots in school parking lots. What? How is that helpful?
On the plus side free/reduced lunch is available for weekly pickup. I was worried about hungry kids.
One of our districts did this as well.
The kids have to remain in a parent’s car at all times to use the hot spot and there’s no bathrooms available. So if you have no internet, you drive there, expect your ten your old to sit buckled in their seat and do school work for a couple of hours, and if they (or the parent) have to use the bathroom you have to drive home, use the bathroom, and come back 🙄. No idea what the parent is supposed to do in the front seat the whole time.
Our school has handled this really well. They announced this week we are fully digital (no surprise as the cases in our city are skyrocketing) and they have facilitated internet and device access for each child. Necessary because it is a very underserved population. Some children with IEPs will spend some time in the school building for necessary services. There is a staged and sensible plan for returning to campus. Now all I have to do is find a new job so I can work remotely. I resigned my teaching position today. I’m a little terrified.
Woohoo! Good for you, refusing to work in an unsafe environment! (Want to convince my husband to resign?)
Congratulations doesn’t seem quite the right word but I’m glad you did what you need to do. You were put in a very difficult position. All the best for your next steps!
Should have said my children’s elementary school has handled this really well. I teach preschool and have been back in my classroom for two months. Hence the resignation.
I am a teacher. I am not okay.
The plan includes a multi-million dollar ‘investment” that they are bragging about but it amounts to about a 1% increase in edu spending. Like less than inflation. But they are claiming that “they will spare no expense.”
Effectively, the elementary plan is business-as-usual-plus-mandatory-masks-for-grades-4 to 8. For secondary it’s half-time-in-school-half-time-remote for students and both full-time-in-school-and-full-time-remote for teachers. Oh, but they ARE hiring 1 custodian for every 5 schools! Won’t it be clean!?
As far as I am concerned, they are trying to scare enough families out of the system that distancing will be possible at no extra cost. Setting up a giant game of chicken. Who will pull their kids? “If enough of you all pull your kids, then I don’t need to pull mine.”
It seems like at least one shool is implementing something interesting: https://kstp.com/news/minnehaha-academy-turns-to-high-tech-solution-amid-pandemic-july-31-2020/5813389/?fbclid=IwAR3XnzzGAcpHhhFqfB06CjXg_RRZTwfXX91HyHc47dmpRO6tRYx3_ymFYsk#.XyTL7Avc5T4.mailto
We finally got the school’s plan last Friday. They are offering an online option and a full time in school option. The school is a small charter school and the high school is only about 200 students (daughter will be a 10th grader). The school sent out a survey to parents in late June asking them about their preference for school in the fall. I’m sure they are hoping that enough parents will choose the online option to make the social distancing requirements from our state for re-opening feasible. The irony here is that the school is marketed as focusing on environmental science and the kids spending a lot of time outside. We didn’t start at this school until 7th grade. I don’t know how much the elementary kids get outside but the secondary school kids really don’t. However, a main part of the school’s reopening plan is to “utilize more of their outside space”. They have 62 acres to play with. So while I feel like we should probably do online, even though my daughter didn’t like it, another part of me wants to send her because she would finally be getting the outside time we *thought* she would be getting when we picked this school. I really hope the school administrators and teachers continuing taking classes outside even when the pandemic is better controlled.