School in the 2020-2021 Academic Year & Coronavirus (Part 1)

Parent Cafe
7402

@silverpurple If parents came to care for their sick students, then they would need to be quarantined and isolated as well. IMO, that would be adding to the problem. If parents took their students home, then they are exposing everyone in their homes to the virus (and possibly along the route home).

If a student has severe complications, they will need to go to the hospital. How would that be different than what would happen at home? If my child starting having trouble breathing at home, 911 would be called immediately. (And yes, I realize that then I wouldn’t be able to visit my child in the hospital). Would I worry? Of course! But I think my presence would be a hinderance, not a help.

7403

@silverpurple I would definitely ask that question. Could they keep you from taking your kids home? For many, this really isn’t an option because college is so far away but that brings up other issues about not being able to get to them at all. I do worry about it a bit. I think about how we could FaceTime S19 if he got sick but, if he felt really sick, I don’t know that he’d answer his phone and we’d be so worried until we could get in touch with him. Would there be someone we could call to check on him for us? I mean the questions for all of this just seem endless.

@roycroftmom I don’t know if we would fly out to be “with” S19 if he got sick. I suppose so? Would we even be able to see him and where could we bring him? It’s not an easy question.

7404

I would expect it would be like any other contagious disease. If he is very ill, he will be hospitalized, and if he has signed the right forms the nurses will apprise you of his condition. If he is not that sick, he will remain in the special college quarantine accommodations and be in touch. I expect he could leave to return home or to a rental accommodation to quarantine, with or without you, just like any other adult. Readmission to college accommodations might require proof of health or further qurantine. The college is providing quarantine accomodations as an expensive convenience for its students.

7405

Sure, plenty of students commute and make it work, and in exchange they save money. However, a huge benefit of a higher-cost residential college is that there’s no need for students to spend an hour or two commuting and finding parking. If that now needs to be done for the expensive private school while costs remain the same (since they’re not living at home but in a distant hotel), a very large advantage has been removed from the cost benefit equation that reduces the desirability of the residential college over a commuter / local public for us. I am not saying I don’t understand the necessity of the decisions being made during a crisis, or that I have or expect a different solution. I am merely stating that such a change would motivate us to find an alternative educational option, if possible–especially as a freshman.

7406

IMO we should all be prepared to have our kids attending college 100% online this fall. Sure, they’ll start out on campus, but I foresee many colleges having serious outbreaks. I think the schools are showing us a confidence they really don’t feel.

7407

I think colleges risk more kids taking gap years if they aren’t careful about the rules they intend to enforce. So far, we’ve only seen a few specific plans like Purdue’s and William and Mary’s. They both seem more strict than what will expected in their surrounding areas. If that’s something that will be the norm, more kids will take a break. I understand that students need to be flexible and that things could get worse and virus protocols could move up or down stages but, to say kids have to do things on campus that they do not have to do just steps off campus, doesn’t make a lot of sense.

7408

And be prepared for K-12 to be fully online as well. Our HS is leaning toward a hybrid schedule where best case it’s one week in school for each kid, two weeks remote.

And that’s predicated on other schools opening up for in-person, because if they don’t, some teachers won’t be able to work because they will have to take care of their own kids who aren’t in school.

7409

I think you can say the same then for the spring, and next fall… etc. Everyone is so confident we will have a vaccine and this fall is the end all. I don’t feel so confident. We will need to learn to live with this virus and improve testing and tracing and quarantining. If colleges move online for multiple semesters, they are done for.

7410

I too doubt we will have a vaccine administered widely by fall 2021. Eventually, we will all learn to live with this virus or give up on our children’s education for the foreseeable future.

7411

Rice announced plans for fall schedule and classes. For my D it means only 1 online class and the rest will take place in person. It’s possible if they change the course schedules if it will force her to change any classes. She hasn’t had a chance to really see this because she was heading to work as we got it but her first comment was: “No one is going to go home on 11/20. They are all going to want to stay and party”. I hope the school does what it did this spring and only allows those who’ve been approved to stay in the dorms.

The first set of decisions relate to the Academic Calendar:

Instruction will begin as originally planned on Monday, August 24, 2020

Instruction will end on Friday, Nov. 20, 2020

Labor Day will remain as a holiday with no classes scheduled

The 2 day midterm recess in October is cancelled

The week of Nov. 30 – Dec. 4, 2020 will be an “independent study” week – work such as papers, homework assignments, and similar materials that are currently allowed by the General Announcements (GA) to be due the last week of classes may be made due on Thursday or Friday of that week (Dec. 3-4) but there will be no class meetings during the week

December 4, 2020 will remain the official “last day of classes” for the Fall 2020 semester

Study days (Dec. 5 – 8) and final exam days (Dec. 9 – 16) will remain as originally scheduled

Final exams will be conducted in a remote format

Election day (November 3, 2020) will be a regular class day; however, no assignments can be due that day and all instructional material covered on that day must be available asynchronously

Ending instruction on the Friday before Thanksgiving will allow students who can to travel home for the holiday and not have to return to campus for in-person meetings after Thanksgiving. Maintaining December 4 as the official end of classes and maintaining the schedule of the study days and final exam period prevents potential negative impacts to student financial aid. Additionally, this schedule will provide ample time to wrap up end-of-semester work. The special handling of election day is required because of uncertainties around the ability of members of our community to be able to vote in a safe and timely manner caused by COVID-19.

As a result of the calendar adjustments for the end of the semester, additional considerations apply to assignments and exams at this time which balance pedagogical needs with the desire to not have an excessive amount of time pass between the end of instruction and when final exams are taken:

The last week for in person class presentations will be the week before Thanksgiving. Any presentations required after November 20 must be handled remotely
As was the case this past Spring, instructors are strongly encouraged to give take home, open book, open note final exams that will be governed by the standard GA policy; furthermore, instructors are encouraged to make their take home exams available by Monday, November 30, but such exams will not be required to be available until the normal time (December 4 or December 7 at the latest)
As per the Rice Honor Code: Proctoring software for exams and finals will not be allowed except in programs where they are already used (e.g. Online Master of Computer Science)

Finally, the calendar adjustments described above combined with the need to meet contact time requirements for accreditation as well as the classroom space issues caused by social distancing, a number of other measures will be put in place that affect the normal daily schedule. These are:

Class durations for most courses will be increased by 5 minutes per class in order to meet contact time requirements for Fall

Courses with enrollments of 100 or more will be offered only online

Courses with enrollments of 50 - 99 will default to being offered online only; however, a number of instructors have expressed a desire to accommodate these larger classes and still preserve a significant in person experience. For these courses, the instructor should make a request to their chair to offer the course in dual format utilizing a plan that caps individual in-person class meetings at 50 persons. If the chair agrees with the plan, the request should be forwarded to the Provost. Such requests should be made as soon as possible, but must be made by June 30, 2020

ARC will shortly provide a set of guidelines and suggestions on how to handle dual delivery for courses with enrollments between 50 – 99 which will include the possibility to teach two sections of the course if desired; however, individual faculty will decide exactly how to deal with their specific course. Some of the suggestions may be useful for those teaching courses with smaller enrollments; however, teaching multiple sections of courses with fewer than 50 students which requires additional classroom resources will not be permitted

Other than large classes that are moved only online, all courses normally assigned a room will be assigned a room so students can gather even if the instructor is present remotely in order to better facilitate student interactions

The daily class schedule will be reconfigured and classes assigned times and rooms in order to provide a sufficiently large space to operate under the guidelines described above.

The daily schedule will include 20 minutes in between meeting times in order to accommodate potentially longer walking distances between classes, allow for less congestion in halls, and entrances/exits

Instructors must be prepared to deliver any class in a dual format on any given day; however, in person class meetings in which every person is actually present are not required to be held in dual delivery format

7412

@homerdog wrote:

Really? You would put that much trust in what out-of-state officials are saying as opposed to what the scientific community at your own kid’s college or university (for which you are paying a ton of money to support) is saying?

7413

“Other than large classes that are moved only online, all courses normally assigned a room will be assigned a room so students can gather even if the instructor is present remotely in order to better facilitate student interactions.”

This from Rice is interesting.

7414

@PrdMomto1 fabulous. If Rice can pull that off, then I’m making D21 apply! I’ll be curious to see what their Covid rules are and how it goes in the fall. Please update us when you get those.

Fingers crossed for TX. I think I’ve heard there’s not a lot of compliance with masks, etc. It’s going to be very interesting to watch colleges across different states this fall.

7415

Right. Hopefully they’ll be allowed to turn their heads unlike the kids at PSU.

7416

Not true. I drive by the 405 everyday to get to work and it’s already starting to get busy as the businesses are opening up. By September it will be it’s usual mess from 6am - 10:30am and 3:00p to 7:00p.

With that said, most freshman classes will be online anyways at UCLA so maybe these “live with parents freshman” will only have to commute 1 or 2 days a week?

7417

I think UCLA is in a bind - they don’t have enough housing, and it’s not like kids living in FL could commute, so they have to pick that the kids living “locally” will commute. But it’s not really set up for that to be quick or easy.

It’s different for families living in Boston or NYC (or also more rural areas like Urbana/Champaign where I lived as a young girl). All three of these places, at least, have a pretty robust bus and/or train system. Granted, that opens up even more exposure issues. But those three places also have local families living in some cases walking distance from Universities. I think that’s likely a lot less true of UCLA.

Although I consider us walking distance from MIT, we were not really walking distance from BC when I went there for graduate school. I drove, and it was the pain in the neck described above. I had only 2 classes per week because I was a working adult - on the other hand, it might be fewer trips than that with the mostly-online model.

Again, this is another reason that online education is probably going to be what happens.

7418

We’re supposed to hear the full plan very early July. We haven’t heard anything about housing or dining.

I suspect they will try to take advantage of their warm temps and do as much as possible outside - I’m envisioning lots of large tents where kids can eat, etc. BUT, the first month or so of school is pretty darn hot. D was outside yesterday with a mask on when it was about 90 out (we were at a farmer’s market) and she commented that there is no way she could do that for a long time in Houston.

Texas is not doing great right now number’s wise. I suspect rules on campus for wearing masks will be stricter than in the surrounding area.

7419

We are in Canada. DS19’s school announced back at the end of May, before incoming students had to accept their offers, that the fall semester would be online except for a very few select programs (like nursing). They increased the number of offers due to fears of decreased enrolment by international students and ended up with acceptance numbers up over 800 students. The other more selective schools, many who have also made the same decision regarding classes for the fall, have similarly seen greater enrolment numbers. Now it is possible that a student accepts their admission but doesn’t actually end up enrolling, but I expect the percentage who do that will be small. The reality is if they end up deciding to take a gap year, most won’t be able to defer and will have to reapply the following year, and there won’t be many opportunities to engage in other activities (job, travel, etc.) during the gap year anyway. Most students seem committed to attending in the fall regardless of format.

7420

My son’s high school is offering an “online academy” for any students who want it but they intend to bring all students back to campus in the fall (albeit with a modified or block schedule). I just think that too many parents need to work physically at their jobs and will not be able to stay at home with their kids another 9 months while their kids are doing online learning. This would be especially problematic for families with elementary and middle school students.

My SIL is a public teacher in a NY (Long Island) in low income school district and she said that she has not heard from a couple of her students since March (3 months) when they went to remote learning. This is one of the big problems not bringing these kids back to school, many will fall through the cracks and not get the education that they really need.

7421

School is 2 months away and let’s keep in mind that so much can change in that time. For instance, 2 months ago, NY State was recording almost 800 Covid deaths per day. Yesterday it was around 20. That is huge!
There are states and regions that definitely seem to be on the right course, while others risk a downward spiral which will change college plans. So what’s true today is not necessarily the reality for end of August, so expect modifications as we go forward