@2plustrio It’s great that your school was able to do Les Mis, it’s one of my favorites. Our entire county spent a year trying to put on Les Mis last year at a local amphitheater (seats 20,000 plus). Every high school auditioned and a county wide GT symphony was formed. It was cancelled 2 days prior to opening night.
Just wondering if any other kids have not set foot in school since March and likely won’t until next September? Our county is starting hybrid learning March 1, but sophomores and juniors can’t return until mid April. They would be allowed in 2 days a week while teachers handle both in person and virtual at the same time. Also school starts earlier and students may be in class with a babysitter being paid minimum wage while the teacher is home. Since it would only be 13 days and band students would only be allowed to play instruments virtually twins and parents decided to stay virtual.
I really hope junior year is better.
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The arctic freeze has hit DFW. There is white stuff falling from the sky…lots of it! And it’s sticking. Roads are sheets of ice. We lost power at our house.
Texans are not equipped to handle this mess…whichever one of y’all opened your gates, take it back please lol
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Temple is on my daughter’s longlist.
I lived in Philadelphia and its suburbs back in the mid- to late 90s, and two stories: (1) I heard an apt description of Temple’s North Philly neighborhood back then (from someone who was a grad student there): Beirut on a bad day. (2) My sister auditioned there (music major) in the early 90s. The drive to campus was enough to have her decide not to complete the application process.
The neighborhood has improved since then, however. If it was 25 years ago I don’t know how safe I’d feel sending my not-terribly-streetsmart D23 there, but now I’m not worried.
They are, though, one of the many school who say there are merit scholarships available but that are extremely tight-lipped about details. That approach does not make me happy.
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This is basically both of my D23s. One of them had to go to pick up a laptop loaded with specific software and another time to get the software updated. So she’s physically been in the building twice but only in the front office area for a few minutes and no other time since March 12th. The other has also been in the building twice - once when she was interviewing for a leadership position for a club and one other time when she took the PSAT a few weeks ago. School starts here in August, though, so hopefully they’ll be back in August. But yes…basically they’ll have not been in school from March 2019/midway through second semester freshman year until the start of junior year.
@Mom24boys Our high school does their musical in Feb so they got it in just before Covid (and it was awesome, Beauty and the Beast and the cast was phenomenal!) Our middle schools though had to cancel theirs. Luckily, the school was able to videotape it the day before school had to go to virtual so although they didnt get their audience as expected, parents and families still got to see it. They did refund tickets purchased but many of us (myself included) donated the cost to the schools arts funds anyways.
I know we are truly blessed to have the opportunity this year when so many others dont.
@nichols51 Interesting they let the kids in the building. I have had to do drive-thru textbook pick-ups and drop offs. And SAT/PSATs have all been cancelled.
I’m very hopeful schools will be able to open by August, I am even somewhat hopeful that any of our kids who are over 16 will be able to be vaccinated.
600k positives, 6k deaths in my state.
Yes I know we are an oddity in being open since start of school. In our school district the last 3 months we are down from about 150 students/staff positives a month to about 50-60 staff positives a month (includes 3 elem, 2 middle schools, 1 high school totaling about 5k persons).
Mine have not been in school since March. Our district just announced plans to bring the HS kids back in mid-March for hybrid. My senior was signed up for hybrid but now says he doesn’t want to since none of his friends are and the only reason to go back is to see his friends. My D23 was going to try it but DH is feeling really anxious about covid and now doesn’t want her to go. So, we’ll see. It’s looking like neither will be in a school building until the Fall.
Mine goes back in person full time next week. I am not happy about it but at home school clearly is not working either. It should be interesting. We decided to just get rid of all the metrics and wing it. Seems reasonable (read with sarcasm).
My kid has been back and forth to his boarding school like a yo-yo. It’s been seriously draining on him and us.
They were gonna open like normal in August, they moved it back for boarders but let the day kids in, then they said they needed to reassess for boarders and it’d be October before they were done, then they changed their minds in Sept and he moved in, then someone tested positive and everyone went virtual for a while (so he was trapped in his room) and then everyone left for a supposed Thxgiving break, they pivoted back to virtual during the break, then stayed virtual until mid-Jan., and by the time there was an actual real chance of being able to attend in-person, he’d washed his hands of the whole thing (there were several other changes-of-plans amid all this) and is staying virtual until at least spring, maybe the rest of the year. He’s so done with the back and forth.
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Where I am, the schools are open, and parents choose whether their kids attend or not. There isn’t a hybrid option - families choose 100% in person or 100% remote for the entire semester. Our schools were closed from mid March through the end of the previous schoolyear. But for the 2020-2021 schoolyear, the schools have been open all but 3 weeks (started with 2 weeks remote for all and then did 1 week remote for all in January). I think our high school had about 40-50% go to school first semester and more like 60-65% now, but we opted for 100% remote for our kids, given the options. In fact, our school just announced in in-person indoor prom in 4 weeks…even with schools open, that took me by surprise.
Kiddo hasn’t been in school since March and likely won’t return to in-person learning until fall. Our HS reopened under a hybrid model last October (2 days/wk) but S continued with remote learning. The school closed two weeks later when the number of staff quarantined caused teacher shortages. It reopened in January and teachers are being vaccinated, but S23 isn’t keen to return until he’s inoculated. Hopefully, that will happen by this fall for our kids. I want S23 to have a normal junior year with friends and prom and all the other fun parts of high school.
We’re hunkered down here amid the arctic blast. One of the things I love about Colorado is the sun usually shines no matter how bitterly cold the temp is. Currently, it’s a cold and clear -6°. Our projected high is 23° which will be downright warm compared to yesterday’s high of 3°. Stay warm everyone!
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every school district in our midwestern state has opened fully except one – a low SES school district which started remote, went hybrid; now will open fully this week. the newspaper published a chart of districts with kids failing 2+ more classes doing remote, and its huge; it’s mostly low SES kids. the gap is just going to widen, and summer school plans are coming out now. I can only imagine how tired those teacher will be though.
My D switched to a private school held in person. we are so so so thankful. While the activities and social interactions have been very stilted, the in-school teaching has been excellent for her. she’s told us many times how much more motivated she is to learn compared to last spring. Not sure what school she’ll chose next year.
We already had today off for President’s Day…Tuesday the District will use a Snow Day that we had banked and Wed-Fri will be remote learning from home…that is if we have power. Rolling blackouts started last night. Some people have been without electricity for 6 hours. It’s 5 degrees here right now, feels like -15, and we’re under 6 inches of snow. Texas is woefully unequipped to handle this.
Schools in my district have been 100% virtual from the start of the pandemic, but elementary school students have been back in person for a week now, and middle and high school kids are slated to go back for fourth quarter immediately after spring break (i.e., 15 March).
However: The state just let all pandemic-related orders end (not, as in some states, due to political positions, but here mostly due to the legislature simply not being able to get its act together and pass any legislation at all, no matter how uncontroversial), and the local worry is that cases will spike as a result and kill in-person learning, since that’s more or less what happened in the county-equivalent immediately next to us that went all-in on in-person learning months ago and has been very light on adherence to masking and such, and has had an ever-increasing number and severity of covid flareups in its schools since winter break.
Both my D23 and D25 have done very well academically with virtual learning, but are desperate for the social interaction and feeling very worn down from its lack. I’m personally ambivalent on which would be better for our family, except that the worst possible outcome would be going back in person on 15 March only to have to pull back to fully-online like three weeks later.
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Started our scheduling for next year and was curious how other schools are running their AP courses. My D23’s school runs block scheduling 8 periods. 5 Credit classes are 2 periods a piece and 2.5 credit classes run for one.
For most of the AP courses they run a 5 credit class in the fall then follow up with a 2.5 credit class in the spring as a seminar to prepare for the test. Does anyone else have a similar experience.
7 50 minutes classes is it regardless of courses chosen
Our high school has an 8 period day with an optional lunch period and block days on Wednesday (odd periods) and Thursday (even periods). All classes follow the same schedule: 50 min on regular days and 85 min on block days. Much of the spring semester is dedicated to AP/IB test prep.
We have only 4 classes a day…90 minutes long. A full year course is completed in one semester (18 weeks long, 2 nine week grading periods). Next semester is 4 all new classes.
AP Chem, AB Bio, Band & Athletics are the full year long classes.