In the state where I work…social distancing is required in all buildings, masks are required in all buildings, plexiglass has been installed, AC has been updated, etc. IMO the conditions are as “perfect” as possible for workers.
Why can’t teachers have the same? As I mentioned, it will be very difficult with masks. Without masks? It will be all about…sit down sit down sit down, keep your distance, keep your distance, etc. There will be zero teaching.
Teachers have a right to the same working conditions as other essential workers…and that includes masks. That seems to be easy enough to fix…but I guess not?
@twogirls Reread my post. I said teachers should have access to all reasonable precautions including masks. It also includes social distancing, regular cleaning, etc.
Required and doable are two different things, especially by August. Some things like infrastructure changes will take time. They also cost money. Something not all school districts have.
One of the reasons that businesses aren’t reopening or keeping workers at home is because they can’t reasonably comply with all the requirements in a given timeframe. Imagine all businesses, schools, etc wanting all the same materials and supplies at the same time. We still can’t find Clorox wipes at the store. My wife’s hospital is still rationing PPE’s and some meds are very low stock and hard to get.
Have to say, I can’t imagine school without masks either. Not sure what info these schools are reading about the virus that makes them think that’s a safe option. Every other country that has opened schools in any way requires masks. What is wrong with our country?
@ProfSD , you clearly have never been in the urban title 1 schools near me. For many kids there, it is the only safe sanctuary in an otherwise brutal world. We may have to remove that sanctuary, but at least acknowledge what that condemns the kids there to. If 50k kids in LA alone didn’t login once to distance learning this Spring, what would possibly make you think it would be any different next month? You know, or should those kids aren’t sitting in their apartments all day, and that the streets surrounding their residences are indeed filled with drugs, gangs, and crime. Be honest about the tradeoff you are making for those kids, as the cost is very high.
We’ve lived in both Baltimore and Chicago and there is always a spike in crime in the summer the months. Part of that is more people being outdoors but part of that is young people not having anything to do.
One of the things mentioned that has been proven to help is:
“Summer-specific programs reduce shootings by giving at-risk youth alternative activities in the hottest months. Chicago’s One Summer program provides summer jobs, while LA’s Summer Night Lights offers free events and activities in public spaces in high-risk areas.”
If school isn’t back in session next month, these kinds of program, which I don’t think happened this summer, need to be considered.
@roycroftmom with words like “feral” and blanket statements about “ no learning” going on in poor neighborhoods, I think @ProfSD was on target with his criticism of your post.
You’ve cleaned it up above, but the fact remains that most here are acknowledging that students, especially the poor, would be better served with in person schooling. Unfortunately, we are in a pandemic that we can’t control.
A large majority of students in poor areas DID go online to do their schooling. Communities are providing meals, free laptops and internet service and free tutoring. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but the streets aren’t overflowing with “feral” children.
New teachers start Monday. Still no official plan here. A tentative one was proposed late last week. K-3 go 4 days/week, the rest 2 days/week f2f and the rest online. Details were very and far between. However, it was not voted on and rumor is that it will change to all online. We will see.
As a spouse, I would be OK if they did a hybrid and everyone wore masks. I’d be OK if they reduced class sizes to 15-20 and everyone wore masks. But, I don’t believe that will be required. There is just too much resistance everywhere. It’s still not required for local public employees to wear them in my building. The City Manager and another VIP employee just walked through my office yesterday unmasked. I was like “really?!”
The wording is insensitive and not at all politically correct but this is exactly what is happening in the town where I am living. A lot of loose kids on the street; have to be v-e-r-y careful driving around. I know a number of the parents. They have little or no child care and have to go to work to pay the bills. The lucky ones have been on unemployable that ends this month. Delayed rents are becoming due too. Child services is becoming overwhelmed.
Many have just thrown familial cautions to the wind and the grands and greats are watching the kids. It’s not a good situation. The teachers here need to get back into the classrooms and be on video putting together lesson plans and be on camera the entire school day. This posting assignments on websites and leaving paper packs for pick up is not working. Even if the kids do not go back to the school buildings, the teachers need to do so and studebt attendance monitored through zoom. No one is watching the kids here for too many of them.
Anecdote - a student I know who was planning to attend a selective LAC is now asking 2nd choice school, also a very good school but less selective and more regional, whether attendance is still possible. The school they committed to will be fully online with no on campus living. The other option has all students going back, at this point at least. School 2 is in a slightly less Covid-y area. It sounds like the school has said yes, please come, and student is now deciding for sure. I wonder how much of this is happening.
No, @leigh22, a large majority of school kids did not go online successfully, just the kids that you know or who live your town or towns like yours did. Nationwide, the Ny Times reports that educators estimate 60% of school kids actually went online. Spend a week in the school districts not far from me, and yes, you will see many, many children running wild with no effective adult supervision at any time.
Why would you expect anything different? In the best of times it can be very difficult for poor single working parents or grandparents who often don’t speak English to supervise kids and get them to school. Try asking a title 1 teacher what they think will happen this year before you extrapolate your experience as the norm. It isn’t.
Is this true? I’m really curious. I’ve heard that Boston Public Schools had real problems in the poorer neighborhoods with a high percentage of kids never signing on once. Is there any data showing that a large majority of poor students went on line in other areas? I’d be interested in seeing that.
@roycroftmom you know nothing about my experience. I don’t need a lecture on poor single mothers - I was surrounded by them my entire childhood. I’m not talking about school districts I’ve lived “near” but ones I’ve actually lived in and attended. Trust me, not much as changed over the last few decades.
Your view is that the world is ending and mine is not. I see grassroots, community effort in Philadelphia to protect and serve these kids. The truancy rate prior to this pandemic was outrageous, but who cared then? People are doing what needs to be done, because there isn’t another choice.
It’s not just in the poorest neighborhoods that high school kids aren’t doing well with remote classes. A friend of mine teaches high school in what I would consider a nice, middle class neighborhood and she said she had to track down more than half of her students last spring because weeks were going by and they weren’t showing up to class or turning in assignments. She would email parents, try to stay on top of it, but it was really hard and discouraging. At least, when they show up to school in person, they are physically there in front of her and she can teach them. It’s going to take a village for a lot of kids to stay on track this fall.
I don’t see much sign of that village,@homerdog. I wish I did. The “villages” successfully organizing are the wealthier parents of private schools and some affluent suburban schools, not the vast majority of people.
By the way, @Leigh22 , it wasn’t “my” post, and it wasn’t “cleaned up”. I was responding to a post by @TatinG , with which I agree in spirit.
@me29034 in Philadelphia. 73% of middle schoolers and high schoolers were online for academics. The numbers were lower for elementary students due to their dependence on teachers logging them in as present, which didn’t always happen.
Cities like LA and NYC who struggled in the beginning saw a lot of improvement after initial growing pains of going online. NYC says 85% of students were logging in daily.
An issue that Philly raised is that truancy prior to going online was a problem, when the numbers weren’t being scrutinized. Point being kids already weren’t going to school anyway, so why would they start when it went remote?
Oh I agree. I’m sure that the wealthiest neighborhoods are the ones who are acting quickly to get child care set up and help during the day to help their kids with online learning. I’m hoping that middle class families can, at a very local level, find neighborhood families to take turns watching the younger crowd if both mom and dad have to go to work. It’s going to be very complicated.
Not true. A number of European countries do not require masks in the classroom. Some require them in hallways and bathrooms, and on the buses, and in staff rooms and offices. They rely mostly on distance for the teachers, and for the kids, on smaller groups spreading out more in well ventilated classrooms (exams and conferences are in the gyms, with strict rotations for whoever is needed in conference and who isn’t at any one time, and streamlined procedures, so everything is over as fast as possible. H loves it!)
There have been no outbreaks in elementary schools that I am aware of, and teachers appear to not be endangered in ways that medical personnel and transport staff are. High school is a somewhat different story, as South Korea and Israel have shown. But for high schoolers, better online support can help, and higher risks in high schools aren’t a reason to keep elementaries closed, too. (Middle schools are hard to call. Too young for online learning and staying alone at home, but big enough for the risk to go up.)
The kids are fine. Truly. They will adapt to any reasonable rule. They always have. Rules and discipline for schoolchildren have always varied wildly from country to country (from school to school even, and from teacher to teacher) and kids adapt. They do need the interaction, though. My younger kids didn’t seem to suffer any during lockdown, but they are different people now that they are back in school every other week. And they currently LOVE school. When they can’t go, they’re so upset!
Of course, case numbers are different in Europe than in many parts of the US. But they vary across the US, too. It appears that the most vocal unions are in the North East, which is currently dong best - is it just that unions, are more vocal there, period? Because it doesn’t make sense in relation to how much higher the risks currently are in the South and South West.
This is an interesting dilemma. I think it’s best though to pick the school for the long term, not the semester. The in person, less Covid area school may end up reverting to remote if kids show up positive, while the remote school may have kids back for spring. So many unknowns. If I had a first year I think I would be advocating for a gap year.