Has your school district started school yet? If so, how has it been? Are you satisfied with the covid mitigation strategies your district has or will have in place? Do you have any particular concerns? Discuss!
CDC page mentioned in another thread about an incident of infected teacher spreading to students who were too young to be vaccinated.
- Students masked.
- Student desks are 6 feet apart.
- Teacher masked only part of the time, read aloud unmasked. (School required indoor masks.)
- Teacher not vaccinated. (Teacher is one of two school staff not vaccinated – all others vaccinated. County has a high COVID-19 vaccination rate.)
- Indoor classroom, doors and windows open, air filter used.
- Thu-Sun: teacher social events.
- Mon-Fri: teacher teaching.
- Wed: teacher feels symptoms, initially believes to be allergies.
- Fri: teacher tested for COVID-19.
- Sat: some students feel symptoms.
- Sun: teacher test result COVID-19 positive.
- Sun-Wed: 22 of 24 students tested. 12 positive for COVID-19.
- Students seated closer to the front where the teacher usually is were more likely to test positive.
- Delta variant found.
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We started 3 weeks ago. Masks are mandatory. Not a lot of push-back from parents (unlike neighboring districts). Kids are supposed to be 3 feet apart. They eat in their classrooms.
Community daily case rate was around 35/100K when school started. We are now at 60/100K. Percent positivity ranges from 10-25%. We are at 40% fully vaccinated. Kids 12-18 are around 25%. Our hospitals are not overrun if you count beds. I think we are around 2/3 full. However, we don’t have enough staff to serve 2/3 (according to someone in charge of staffing)
We already have 66 known student cases and 5 staff cases in the school system (5800 students). H’s school had 3 cases friday. Very few are quarantined because the party line is that no spread can occur if everyone is masked and 3 feet apart. The only exception is one football player was positive. The team practiced unmasked so the whole team was considered exposed. If you subtract those students, <10 are considered exposed.
Am I happy? I would feel better if they were virtual, but I don’t see that happening unless things get really bad. Our test scores are always horrible but last year was scary. We are talking about 10-30% pass rates. What is really bad? I don’t know. We never have subs even pre covid. H loses his planning periods pretty much every day covering classes. But I am very thankful that he is in his district. I think they are doing the best they can. The abuse and drama everywhere else is just awful.
K-8 just finished week one and 9-12, week two. We’re in a high vaccination area, masks mandatory, distancing rules, and the district invested in better ventilation for all the buildings. So far so good.
Our old district in another state is mask optional, with mediocre vaccination rates, and their covid dashboard is not good. 50+ cases within the first week and 500+ needing to quarantine.
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CT is requiring masks at least until the end of September. In addition all staff are required to be vaccinated or have testing done at least weekly.
I’d like to amend my statement. I appreciate the school district doing what they can to keep kids in school. However, their contact tracing system blows. Just found this out through the grapevine. H needed a lot of computer help on Wednesday and was grateful for the tech’s help. They spent 50 min together at a desk with the tech working on his laptop. Both were masked and in a large air volume area. Today H found out the unvaxxd tech was symptomatic that day and is positive. The tech told the powers that be that they spent a significant amount of time with several people. They didn’t care or consider it to be relevant. H has no official idea that he was exposed. It’s been 4 days and he feels fine so I’m hoping he’s fine. And I am soooo thankful we didn’t help the in-laws move into SIL house yesterday. If it gets in that household, there could easily be 4 funerals. This is the part that makes me beyond angry. And my workplace is exactly the same way
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ABQ Public Schools just finished week 3 of in-person classes.
Covid dashboard for this past week reports 139 cases (125 students, 14 staff at 68 school sites). There are 75K students and 148 schools in the district. No school closures due to reaching a covid shutdown threshold.
Masks are required for everyone on campus regardless of vaccination status. Masks required on all school buses. Elementary school students eat in their classrooms. High school and middle school students typically eat outdoors. Teachers and other school staff must be fully vaccinated or present weekly proof of a negative Covid test.
Context:
County vaccination rate: 58.5% full vaxxed; 69.1% with at least 1 dose
County positivity rate 6.4%. 27.5 cases reported per 100,000 residents
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Our state does mandate masks indoors. Just met with two teacher—one teaches 1st grade, the other 6th. Each has had an infected child in the classroom (not infected at school) but no one else was infected. Masks make a difference.
The 1st grade teacher does not have A/C and has his windows and doors open. He says the kids are great about masking. They do take it off to eat and then it blows to the ground and another kid will pick it up and give it to the kid. They made mask lanyards but took them home so none at school.
The 6th grade teacher has A/C so they have to keep doors and windows closed but have some special infrared(?) filter that’s supposed to kill viruses.
NYCDOE public schools - masks are mandatory
Our district - Williamson County TN - had a mask mandate for elementary, just expanded to all. Had an opt out for religious/medical reasons without question and over 25% of the kids had such an exemption - and already a school has closed.
Nashville has a mask mandate and don’t provide a religious exemption and no one claimed a medical one. Not sure how the #s are.
Our state has a parent opt out required - but not all school districts are following.
I’m bumping this up because I do think it’s a worthwhile discussion. Curious what other states and schools are doing…and now that school is opening, how it’s going?
I’m in Southern California. My D23 has not started classes yet, but her preseason sports practice was disrupted when the coach and a teammate (both vaccinated) tested positive. Practices canceled, rest of team tested twice at school (day 6 and day 10), everyone negative. Practice resumed yesterday. My guess is that the two affected individuals did NOT catch the virus at practice, as both were engaged in riskier activities elsewhere: the student as a restaurant worker and the coach, who is a part-time school employee, as a coach and fitness instructor at other venues. Of course, I don’t know.
In this instance, practices had to be canceled because the coach was positive and there was no one to replace her, but generally school exposures are subject to modified quarantine rules. If an exposed student or teacher has no symptoms, they continue to attend/teach class and test twice within 10 days.
I’m still unclear if students under modified quarantine will be allowed to attend sports and extracurriculars. California has still not issued updated guidance for youth and school sports, which is odd.
California has a statewide mask made for schools, indoors, regardless of vaccination status, whenever students are present. Some schools are going further and are requiring outdoor masking, either for everyone or for the unvaccinated and/or are requiring indoor masking even if students are not present.
Indoor or outdoor sport, and how close contact is the sport?
I’d rather not name the exact sport. They’ve been practicing indoors and outdoors, not a contact sport, and they wear masks. Also, it’s a private school that’s requiring vaccination for all faculty, staff and students, medical exemptions only. So, much more likely the exposure occurred at the restaurant, where the vaccinated student would be exposed to unvaccinated and unmasked coworkers and patrons. Not sure if she herself has been wearing a mask at work. Same with the vaccinated coach: she might mask while teaching a fitness class, but very few if any gyms in this area are requiring masking during workouts or proof of vaccination.
There is supposed to be an indoor mask requirement for unvaccinated people now (all people in some counties). But even if everyone is masked (with typical masks), working for several hours indoor in close proximity to others is likely to result in an infectious dose of virus if one of the others is contagious. Putting masks on everyone may make the time needed for infection 4-5 times more, but if the time needed for a breakthrough infection is an hour or less without masks, four hours or less with masks would be similar in risk.
Covers public and private schools.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf on Tuesday issued a mask mandate for all K-12 school and child care facilities to protect against the spread of COVID-19, three weeks after the Democrat said he would leave the decision to individual districts.
The order, which goes into effect Sept. 7, comes amid a surge in COVID-19 cases due to the highly-contagious Delta variant of the virus.
Since July, Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 case load has increased from less than 300 a day to more than 3,000 a day, according to the state’s health department.
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I checked our school email to see if anything has changed with us. Not yet. Masks are currently optional and at least some students definitely won’t wear them, plus complain to their parents if teachers even breathe a word about it in a way they perceive as negative (had an email chiding teachers about that the first day).
Don’t know what the plan is. I guess they have until the 7th to figure it out.
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I’m glad he’s made it clear. I’m all for local decision making for most things but not for this. Unfortunately there will still be lots of protesting and complaining.
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Our news (PA news) said various school boards and one particular political party are looking into legal challenges to the mask mandate in PA. Nothing at all yet from my school shared to staff or the public. I’m guessing they want to see what the lawyers say first.
The county next to mine that was opposing our governor’s mask mandate has announced they will move to virtual learning as of Friday. 20 total districts in our red hot infected state have gone to virtual or are going to virtual by end of week. Our legislature stripped our governor of his emergency powers in their legislative session earlier this year and claimed for themselves. Because of this, the governor’s 30 day mask mandate was overturned by our state supreme court about a week ago, but the state department of education’s mask mandate remains in effect until fully litigated. Never a dull moment.