Here is an example:
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@ucbalumnus yep, feels like that would be a health exemption for sure. A new definition of remote instruction.
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@msdynamite85 - you are opening the political football of that part of the discussion. Florida has been open all year. I live in CA, where most schools have been closed. Case rates in both states are similar (per capita basis). Do you need to spend big $$ to open again? I donât think Florida did. There are other states that have kids in school with limited or no impact on their case rates compared to states that have schools closed. I am sure there are many on this thread that will counter my assertions with a number of reports. My sense is that you can open schools safely without much investment.
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I am picturing a future where tenured professors are given the option of a fixed income over a specific period of time for themselves, and their partners and children, in exchange for post retirement and death use of pre recorded lectures.
Imagine a child getting regular deposits into a trust fund years after their professor parents died.
Sometimes things change and need to be updated. Growing up we had the Book of Knowledge encyclopedia that my father and uncle had, copyright 1935 or so. Some of the info was still good, but âAdolph Hitler is a rising figure in Germanyâ? Not so much.
Case rate numbers are only reliable if there is regular asymptotic aggressive testing of the population. Otherwise they are not getting the full correct figures, only the worst cases, where people are sick enough to firstly think to get tested and then meet the eligibility criteria by the health care facility to receive a test. Is that the case in your state? Do all test sites accept elementary age children? Are all test sites accessible to low socioeconomic populations?
When antibody blood testing became available in my workplace at least 2 young twenty and thirty something colleagues in my team turned out to have had Covid and it was a complete surprise to them, they never felt stick.
Itâs disappointing to me they many of these studies have gapping holes in its methodology. If you want to really test Covid rates in a school then the baseline needs to be every kid and employee getting a test at least twice a week for several months.
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And some schools are doing just that.
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And our public K12 schools wont be doing that, anywhere.
Thatâs EXACTLY part of the reason they SAID they were doing it ! Incidentally, that written policy ( found here⊠Your Mail | Living at UMass Amherst ) has NOT been updated to match the reversal. Smh
Thatâs GREAT to hear !!! I tell you, those folks in Pittsburgh are doing something right cause Duquesneâs numbers are also extremely low. And when I went to visit for my sonâs birthday, I saw not one, single, student without a mask on. Not a one !!! ⊠even walking outside. I canât say the same for UD students which is right down the street from me 
I see them every day not doing what theyâre supposed to be doing. Anyhoo⊠Also one of his teachers ( currently teaching one of his only remote classes) seems to think that the staff and faculty will be ârequiredâ to be vaccinated (sometime this Spring) at which time he will come back. The implication in the email my son sent me was that students will be required as well. Weâre cool with that !!
Iâm glad you mentioned this. Any studies do not have this very important data. In my district, it turns out contact tracing was being done incorrectly. Kids arenât being tested unless they are symptomatic. You donât find what you arenât looking for. So when the school systems are proclaiming âno transmission here!,â they are leaving out a lot of information.
Regular covid-19 testing of students and staff isnât being done at most public schools.
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Our HS is doing pool-based saliva testing of the whole population after every vacation break and random testing of 25% of population every week. So far, numbers have been low relative to the state. I do think that broad based testing has worked to keep them in school at least aprt-time (hybrid model).
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And contact tracing isnât really done properly here either. If the kid sitting next to yours all day comes down sick, you will not be notified. According to the schools, since the desks are 6 feet apart and the kids are supposed to wear masks, there is no way that they can transmit the disease. And since then nobody comes down with it from another student/teacher, the website doesnât reflect those cases as being present in the school. Itâs very misleading to say the least.
But I will say they did update the website to show when the entire cafeteria crew was out last week for illness/quarantine. So they are catching a few, but by no means is it an accurate representation. And the school is only operating at 50% capacity 4 days/week.
I will be glad when H is fully vaccinated. Teachers/staff should have been much higher up on the list, since opening schools is so critical to so many. Oh, and in my sisterâs district, the downtown office staff gets vaccine priority over the subs. Thatâs a head scratcher.
When community transmission is high, contact tracing is of limited value. I think there is a lot of manipulation of the numbers. My district has just made a change so that there is even less transparency now.
Even now that the CDC has said clearly that it should be 6â between desks in areas of high transmission, my district has decided to ignore that. 3â between desks it will remain. CDC only issues guidance, and my district has arrogantly and recklessly decided that they can ignore the public health guidelines that they find to be inconvenient.
My district has decided to mostly ignore the CDC guidelines (including our local public health director) and to instead rely on some local pediatricians who proclaim NO spread amongst kids! Kids MUST be in school! And one of them said he didnât think testing should be done!
You may disagree with it, but most European schools are open, use a 3 ft (or 1 meter) distance, and do not test.perhaps they are simply following Swiss guidance.
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That article is misleading. The dead professor was not teaching the course. The course instructor was using his recorded lectures as instructional material. The course had itâs own lecturer and teaching assistants. How the student wasnât aware of that fact I donât know.
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The key is the community transmission in these schools in Europe that have supposedly been so successful. Turns out itâs not comparing apples to apples when people cite these studies.
Some districts will do anything to supposedly show that âthe science saysâ it is totally safe to have schools open when there is high community transmission. I am convinced that it is NOT safe, and that the new CDC guidelines give a lot of detail about just how schools can open safely in differing degrees of community transmission. The only thing the CDC should have gone further into is the ventilation issue.
The WHO guidelines differ. Take your pick.
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AndâŠI expect we will see CDC move closer to WHO guidelines in the near term, whereas WHO is unlikely to ever move toward CDC guidelines 
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Regarding the three feet v. six feet issue, my School District is the reverse. They go by the 6 feet and are now only in the planning stage for 3 feet to open to full in person (we are in hybrid now) if the high transmission level keeps going down 3 consecutive weeks. The opening of schools at least here has been the most ugly issue ever. The parents pushing for full return to school completely lost their minds over the School Board meeting last night where the Admin did not specifically have a plan to fully open with 3 feet ASAP. Itâs still under consideration and they are going to stay with the 6 feet guidance for now. The âreturn to full time schoolâ parents are talking about protesting in front of the Superintendentâs personal residence with YARD STICKS to make the point somehow about must open with three feet. I want the schools to open fully (but safely), but this has gotten way crazy. Then there is the other side who hate the âopen schools parentsâ. There are dueling yard signs in the community. People are threatening to withhold SD/property taxes unless schools open and want everyone fired. I would not want to be on any School Board or Administration right now!
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