@Empireapple - there’s no such thing as “adjusting” to the coronavirus. If they’d announced remote learning for the fall, a lot earlier than now, then yes we could have been ready to start that. Any other plan is necessarily subject to all kinds of revisions. I don’t know where you are a tenured teacher, but unions play a crucial role in protecting the health, safety, and academic freedom of teachers and professors from everything I’ve seen.
Unions used to also protect even more workers, until they were gutted as part of a strange new economics a few decades ago. Demonizing organized labor is sadly becoming common, but is no more reasonable than it ever was.
My career began with eight years of teaching in private school until I was certified. There can be no comparison as far as how much safer and better a job we have with union protection (in public school). Keeping it on topic, my friends who teach in private school are flocking to public schools as of this spring/summer because of fear for their lives with half-baked safety plans and no teacher voice in the process.
And frankly, since teachers are free actors and choose better jobs if they can get them, you can rest assured that in a given city, public schools will thus always have more choice of the best teachers (more than privates will) with tiny exceptions for HADES or similarly ranked schools.
As an educator, what would you suggest needs to be done to make that happen? Do HVAC systems need to be updated? What do you think school should look like in the fall? Some people want business as usual with a regular 5 days/week in person schedule. Others want a modified (half day or 3 days on/2 days off) schedule. Which do you prefer? How do you envision social distancing working? Is it necessary in the classrooms, cafeterias, and auditoriums?
Localities that have the virus under control should have some sort of in person plans for the fall, even though there are states (localities in states, actually) that should not go back in person, YET. We can’t go by national numbers in regards to local decisions.
If we think things are decisive and bad now, wait until October when small children in local areas with little to no virus are sitting home and parents are required to go back to work. How can these schools be already writing the ENTIRE semester off? Localities in states (like MA and Maryland) that are announcing online education with very little circulating virus are doing a disservice to their residents.
Washington Post reported the following this morning:
“The University of Florida, which has more than 50,000 students, will re-open it’s Gainesville campus without a universal testing mandate. Instead, students will be required to answer a health screening questionnaire and get tested if they have Covid-19 symptoms. The University has set up a 10 station drive-through site for those who need or wish to be tested. ‘The Gator Nation will not be deterred’, the plan states.”
50,000 students, many of whom might go home or off to the beach on weekends, living together in the midst of state where the virus is raging? With no mandatory testing unless you feel sick?
U of Florida’s student population is 80% off campus housing, like many large state universities. Whether classes are held f2f will have limited impact on transmission levels compared to the presence of 40k students in off campus apartments. I believe most flagships are not testing unless symptomatic.
Everyone needs to be tested within 14 days before returning to campus.
Can't come back to move into dorms or attend classes without a negative result on file.
48-72 hour test turnaround after the testing company receives the test.
"A resilient curriculum plan, which combines flexible face-to-face and online instruction, is being developed to ensure students who must be isolated because of COVID-19 don’t fall behind on their studies."
More information about the specifics will follow. Purdue continues to get slammed for redirecting tests and processing away from people who really need it. D thinks it’s a 50-50 chance that they’ll dial back on requiring testing for everyone. We’ll see. She’s supposed to get her finalized schedule and move in time for housing tomorrow.
This is an informative graphic of K-12 plans in central Ohio showing current plans. Local school district decisions with some broad guidelines from governor.
The red, orange, yellow colors of the counties reflect the Ohio Public Health Advisory System. Red level requires masking in public through state order. Other levels masks required for employees and recommended for others. Businesses can require customers to wear masks and local authorities can also have mask mandates regardless of advisory level.
Given the very strong possibility that some schools will be faced with having to close their physical campuses when an outbreak occurs, I would be recommending that a student pare back to mostly the bare essentials for their residence rooms with very minimal decorating.
Well, I agree this is very worrisome and doesn’t sound like they have a great comprehensive plan to prevent outbreaks (!!! much more testing would be a good start). But I also agree with @roycroftmom that with most students having leases off-campus that they are paying for, they’ll be there anyway, making it tough to manage. I mean, if the students are paying rent there, for all intents and purposes they live there this year–it’s their home and I don’t see how the school or town can ban them from living there.
BUT, I am hopeful that Florida is past its peak in cases (fingers crossed, fingers crossed). If you look at the NYTimes graphs of daily cases and deaths for Florida, it seems last Sunday the 12th was their highest case count at 15,300 (!!!), but it has been steadily dropping in the past 9 days. Yesterday was 9,440 new cases. Let’s pray that decline continues. (of course deaths are lagging, so they will likely continue to rise for a while regardless). So hopefully by the time the students arrive, things will have calmed down.
Looking at the graphs for New York, they had 5-6 particularly awful weeks total for daily new cases, including climbing up the mountain and coming down. NY’s highest count was only 12, 275, but Florida’s population is 2.5x larger than NY’s, so it is still much lower per capita in FL than what NY went through. If Florida isn’t acting as responsibly about sheltering in place, maybe it will take them 8 weeks (??). I have heard though that they are getting better in terms of shutting down bars, beaches and other safety measures. Anyway, even if it takes FL 8 weeks to get it under control, that would imply 4 more weeks left to go down the mountain if they take a similar path as NY. So maybe by Labor Day, Florida will no longer be the “hot zone”??? Just hoping…
Just popping in to say as a Floridian that things are not improving. Trust me. Countless people can’t get testing (-and if they can, several days delay.). Tempers are flaring between those who wear masks and those who don’t, our K-12 school system is not prepared even if they had the monies to try (they don’t), and I see countless people on social media I know or am acquainted with who have no qualms posting the ways they are not social distancing. They either downright mock the need to socially distance, or they claim plenty of excuses for not social distancing. Teachers in my county are considering sick outs and our school board has no solid answers.
Thank you for seeing my words for what they were. I appreciate the effort that many teachers put forth. I wish the reigns would be removed. I totally agree with your desire to provide kids with the same level of work and give some leeway to those that have issues.
Thank you for attempting to look out for our kids. I certainly hope this fall is handled differently.
I don’t think it matters if a university is in a hot spot or not. All of those students congregating together with little testing will result in more positive cases. Even in states where the virus is low now, college towns are worried about students coming back and causing spikes.
@EmptyNestSoon2 If your school has a one parent rule, it’s likely one parent period and not one parent at a time. The reason schools have this rule is to limit the number of people who might be shedding virus to be in the dorm. If your H goes in and then you go in, that’s two people who could be positive entering the space instead of one.
Next up from Purdue, live stream for students with allergies and special dietary requirements and how the university will accommodate for that in the food courts this Fall.
After watching the TWiV podcast on YouTube that featured Michael Mina I’ve come to believe plans like this are window dressing and a waste of resources.
It’s especially frustrating as Maryland had come out with recommendations regarding schools based on our opening phase. Every state is obviously different regarding their phases but Maryland allows schools to open in a hybrid model in phase 2 which we have been in for a while. I can certainly see some urban counties with more active cases holding back but for rural areas with much more limited cases this virtual learning only option just seems like an overreaction. In the end our kids will suffer.
I have to agree, @GKUnion. There is not an infinite supply of tests, and expending them on young people who are extremely unlikely to have virus complications, and who may be quite unlikely to alter their behavior regardless of result, seems inefficient.
I have heard interviews with Michael Mulgrew (President of UFT NYC), and Randi Weingarten (President of AFT). They are in synch in sending strong signals that they will protect their teachers and not let schools open in NYC. Given what they are saying, school will not open in all the boroughs of NYC.
I personally wish schools developed plans months ago to have high schoolers learn remote, and arrange for youngers to dedensify in all the available schools. Also, society must fund for air conditioning in school. Who thinks it is acceptable for teachers and kids to work in sweltering conditions?
I have a hard time believing that. Cuomo fought school closures tooth and nail early on (because of concern over daycare and healthcare workers and students not getting lunch, etc). With the numbers where they are, I’m not sure he’ll allow a blanket elementary school closure for fall.
@EmptyNestSoon2 Boy, I wish you could talk to my sister who had to go into her son’s NYU dorm in a tyvek suit to clean it out back in the Spring. In NYC, people were dying by the thousands that week. The dorm was on the 5th floor, it was very hot and only 2 people were allowed per student. No elevators could be used and kids had nominal time to remove their things. Many kids just left their excess belongings. My sister said the only reason they went back was for her son’s passport. All this stress does not even include having to drive, worrying about bathrooms etc. I think it’s fair to say that if things become dangerous at any of these schools, the last thing you might be interested in are the drapes ( which would need to be put in a plastic bag and cleaned anyway).