I think many parents whose children planned to attend college this fall are having second thoughts. It’s not limited to just parents who can afford residential college or those who are paying $30k or more for the experience. Community college classes aren’t any more likely to be in person than residential colleges, so I hope families aren’t planning for in person cc classes as a backup. They’re likely to be disappointed.
NESCAC has cancelled Fall conference sports. Not surprising.
https://www.nescac.com/news/2019-20/NESCAC_Presidents_Statement
Our high school doesn’t have a lot of kids take the school bus (especially juniors and seniors who the vast majority will have their own cars) but my understanding is that they will run buses in two different shifts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. They will have to add additional buses to the schedule especially with social distancing requirements limiting the amount of students on the bus at one time?
Regarding cleaning. They will have plexiglass around all teachers and admins desks; installing hand sanitizers stations and hand washing areas, electrostatic cleaners to clean classes and learning areas, touch-less thermometers, all staff will be given masks and shields. The details about cleaning of classrooms and how to handle break, lunch, and the entering/exiting of the campus is still being worked out.
I don’t know if they are making the kids wear masks while on campus?
There is a webinar next week so we should get more information.
Stumbled upon this interesting website for the current plans for all NESCAC schools - apologies if has been posted before.
https://public.tableau.com/profile/benjamin.renton#!/vizhome/NESCACFallPlansMap/Dashboard1
Yes - Amherst has a plan for air filtration improvements in buildings that can accommodate it. They briefly outlined it in their FAQs
It seems to be the general consensus on CC that it’s easiest for incoming 1st years to take a gap year, rather than upperclassmen taking a leave of absence. However, upperclassmen are more like to have had internships or research positions and therefore have connections to formulate a meaningful plan for time away. ie extend that summer internship. What meaningful things can incoming 1st year students do? They are basically high schoolers with no experience. I am also worried about the lack of academic stimulation since March, and wondering how my kid would rise to the rigor of college if they take a year off on top of this.
@curiousme2… Errrr… Stay involved with an online course. Yes. An online course. So if your going to do that then…hmmm.
I do think it’s hard to stay motivated. Kids think now sure I will do this or that. But unless it’s a concrete program with a goal think it might fail. My son’s internship was canceled so he is doing a certificate program with an end goal… Online at his own pace. He’s a senior so the light at the end of the tunnel is in site and it looks bright. Being a freshman. Can’t travel or do workaway in a different country…or get a decent job /internship. Kinda hard.
Look on Indeed and the like. There are internship for the fall on there currently. But mostly for upperclassmen.
Some are for freshman https://www.indeed.com/m/jobs?q=College+Intern+Freshman
Add athletes to the list of overrepresented subgroups on campus in fall 2021. This year’s HS juniors will have an interesting application cycle given the groups we already know will be overrepresented.
Not all schools have buses. My kids went to school in Orange County California and the only buses to their school were city buses and 3-4 that came from Camp Pendleton, which I think were paid for by the federal govt. I dropped my kids in the morning and they found a way home (city bus or friends) in the afternoon. If they had after school activities, I picked them up around 7 pm. Most of the other public schools in the district also had no buses.
That level of social distancing in the classroom is unlikely to prevent spreading of the virus, based on the restaurant example and the office example described in https://www.erinbromage.com/post/the-risks-know-them-avoid-them . These are analogous to a classroom, where the people are stationary for an hour or more in an indoor situation, so that any contagious person has plenty of time to fill the air with virus that can infect others there.
Better hope that masks are effective and everyone in the classroom wears them properly if you want to reduce the spread in the classroom.
All good questions and I think it really depends on each student’s situation and what the academic school year looks like this coming year.
For example, our close friend’s kid is a junior at Harvard and since they are all online with no on campus housing she is going to take a gap year. She has been doing some “odds and ends” research and writing jobs this summer and will probably maintain these types of activities.
For others, I don’t know if the gap year activities have to be super meaningful especially if they are taking college classes online from their parents house. If my D20 took a gap year off she would continue to work part-time and save some money for college, take a class for no credit at the community college, probably bake (hobby) and hang out with her local friends who will be taking classes online (USC, UCLA, CalPoly SLO etc.). Sometimes these kids just need to recharge their batteries after all of the hard work they put in at high school.
Every student is different and will need to figure out what is best for their situation. I know that 95% of my D20 freshman class is planning on coming to campus in the fall so D20 will be with them too. If she was not allowed on campus and no in-person instruction, she would definitely be taking a gap year.
Interesting and IMO on point
Ah…I grew up in and live in the northeast so am used to the big yellow school bus passing every day. Different perspective.
@CT1417 I grew up in the northeast and didn’t know school buses were a real thing vs a tv/movie thing until I moved away. Ha. We walked or took public transportation my whole k-12 career.
@socaldad2002 The only issue the plan at your high school solves is lowering density in the classrooms and while passing in the hallways. If they have a morning and afternoon groups, the likelihood of a superspreader event doesn’t get reduced and the germs aren’t reduced either (unless you believe they can adequately clean the entire building during the switch).
We attended an event on a Saturday back in March which was held at a high school. It was announced on Sunday that there was a student ( and family) with Covid who had been there on Friday. People were very nervous especially about who used which bathroom. Apparently the bathroom is a big source of trouble. One person in our group did get sick. Naturally, no one knows where the germs were picked up.
I tend to be in favor of back to schoo for all l. But I would seriously hesitate sending anyone into a situation with 1,000 people. How is that different from attending a sporting event with 1,000 people with distancing? Colleges at least are often set up with separate buildings. The high schools are often one huge box.
I have two college kids here. One that has a semester left at GW to graduate. Their plan so far is to have kids on campus, with the rule noone allowed in your dorm room if you live on campus. Also many of the classes are still listed as F2F, but there is an option for anyone that wants to take their classes remote. The professors were polled if they were returning to reach to F2F and their claim 80% are. The big question is if DC will approve their plans. Also complicating matters is this big march that is suppose to happen in DC (so much for Social distancing!) the weekend before classes start. The housing situation for my D got really messed up as the roommate situation fell through . She then started to have thoughts to just remain here in Surburbia and do her final classes remote. For reasons mentioned before, she feels like having a car, and mobility , and better chances for a part time job it will be less constricting than living in a studio apartment alone and unable to have her normal social outlets. So a compromise we have made at this point is that we are renting a room at the local Residence Inn for her, which comes with a complete kitchen. The cost is about what a short term apartment rental in DC would be. After the first month and seeing how things are going, and if she wants to remain in DC after graduation she could decide to then stay and lease something then. If things go bad and all online, she can easily leave , bring her stuff or store, and come home.
My second child is a sophomore at RIT. He is in a 4 bedroom university owned apartment. he gets his own bedroom. He is a hermit at home, so just by living with 3 other boys is a step up for him. he also needs to get better at adulting. Right now 4/5 of his classes are still listed at F2F. But RIT needs Cuomo’s approval, and Cuomo is not playing. Interestingly Cornell has also stated of all the Ivys that they are aiming to have the kids on campus and do F2F. Also we are coming from a state that is blacklisted to NY, so how do we do a 14 day quarantine. Move in is a few days before classes start. Will that have to change. ? Will just being on a campus satisfy the NY requirements? Will having a test before and after arrival? Also how do I get him moved in. he does not drive. His stuff is being held where it needs to be picked up by car. He needs additional stuff. and in general needs help. The only option I see right now is for me to spend less than 12 hours in Rochester (drive in/drive out) so that I dont get fined. We would self Quarantine 14 days before we leave. This is all fluid, but I suspect that in any case my son would live in Rochester instead of at home no matter what the delivery of classes. He is so bored already and counting down the days. He was unable to secure any type of summer job , except working with some other programmers to create a module for some new game. This is not an official project but at least something to put on his resume.
If I had an incoming freshman to either of these privates, my decision might be different. Likely I would have had my kids take classes at the local CC this year. But each of their positions have them both continuing their education.
They sort of said that…but if you read who has to quarantine in case of a (+) result, it’s everyone within 6’. So you could be closing a whole school from one positive test result, whereas if you stuck to 6’ that would not be the case (by these guidelines).
I’m a HS teacher and I’m on my school’s committees in planning some of this. There is a lot of concern that this reduction in spacing is based entirely on economic/political pressure and not remotely on science. Even the 6’ is not enough if you look at aerosol travel for viruses.
We’re keeping my youngest remote this fall because I’m not at all confident that even following these ever-changing, so-called “guidelines” will protect students in any serious way. And, some of the “protections” against COVID, like closing the cafeteria and having everyone eat in classrooms, makes it more dangerous in other ways, such as for multiply-allergic students like my son.
And remember, a teacher is much more likely to be able to enforce spacing around her, than a student is. Consider hallways, “mask breaks,” etc.
Agree, 100%. Affluent and/or kids coming from highly academic families that can help plan meaningful experiences and never worry that a gap year can turn into a gap college education (like parents from working class families do).
Really good catch – quarantine for people within 6’ so why is 3’ acceptable? My district has said that if 3’ is used, class size won’t have to be reduced. I don’t know what will happen on buses.
There are parents who are really pushing for fulltime school. Oh, and children can’t wear masks! I can tell it’s not going to happen. Cases are rising in my area.
As I read the evidence, splitting the students into morning and afternoon would indeed reduce the people potentially infected if a student was a superspreader. The superspreading events we know about seem to have occurred when the spreader and the victims were in the same room at the same time.
Infections can happen, apparently, when someone touches a surface recently touched or coughed on by an infected person. They can happen with aerosolization. But outside of medical settings, these do not seem to be what happens with superspreaders. What seems to be the case for the superspreading events we know about is two people being near one another.
Many caveats, we don’t have complete knowledge, etc etc.