Does their fully remote back up plan include synchronous teaching? IMO so many Illinois schools are choosing fully remote it will force the schools who (rightly IMO) want to go hybrid because teachers’ kids will be home.
Our HS hasn’t answered the question re: if we are fully remote will teachers be required to teach synchronously at least some, if not all, of every class period.
Fully remote Illinois school districts should mandate teachers teach from their empty classrooms…they have better tech there and access to their materials, lab supplies, etc. Schools can provide daycare in the empty schools if they choose to do that, they can work out if the teachers have to pay for that, or not. We have had plenty of time to plan for this situation (unlike in the spring), which could be with us for 1+ years.
I’ve said from the beginning that if our district goes remote the teachers should report to the school buildings as usual and teach.
I completely understand that this isn’t problem free, but every scenario has complications.
Yes, jym. That was very helpful. Here’s what I was able to find on the Vassar Fall Reopening site:
Conceptually, this is even more restrictive than Wesleyan’s definition of “family”, which would include suite mates, apartment shares and housemates. Perhaps, because Wesleyan has more of those than Vassar? A traditional dorm floor with a long hallway would definitely require a mask at both schools.
Yes, we are experiencing a surge for our area. Technically, our numbers are lower than many others, but it’s still a surge. Another 25-30% in new cases in the last 5 days. I am in a small low SES city (40K) in a rural area. I am not sure surveys were done. There were not any to my knowledge, but I don’t have kids in the system. They didn’t ask teachers. We also lost our superintendent over the summer and the #2 spot has been unfilled for quite some time. Even in the best of times our leadership was lacking, and now we had none. However, the new interim has come from a good area, so maybe she will be on the ball. She only started a couple of weeks ago.
The school board voted for everything to be online for the first 9 weeks. And they delayed the start of the kids until August 24th. The original schedule was the 10th and then they moved it to the 17th and now this in order to give teachers more time to transition online.
I have mixed feeling about this. From a health of my H’s standpoint, I am relieved. From his mental health, I hope he will go spend time at school to work some. He does not do well with summers off in non-pandemic times. 5 months… well, he’s getting ornery. From the kids’ standpoint, I wish they would have said 4 weeks and then revisit. I don’t see online going well for many students in my district for all of the reasons stated many times above for kids in low SES areas.
I also had an idea. What if elementary teachers had to spend 4-5 hours/day in their classrooms. Parents/students could book one 30 min time slot with the teacher per week. All would be masked. Then, they could meet face to face, go over any education and technical issues and send them off for the next week. That seems like it would be less risky for teachers. I know many parents would not bring their kids in, but it might help some? Meetings could also be virtual - online or on the phone as well.
Is anyone’s college doing wastewater testing? Yesterday I attended a Zoom meeting for parents and students of Hope College (Holland, MI). One thing they mentioned that I haven’t seen discussed here is wastewater testing. They said they are dividing the residential areas into zones and will do wastewater testing to monitor for Covid. If they detect some unspecified level of Covid, they will test the whole dorm or apartment or cottage.
This is in addition to other testing they’re doing on campus, including a mail in saliva test before arrival and then a plan to do a nasal swab (the shallower one) of everyone on campus in the first 100 days. But has anyone else heard their college mention a plan for wastewater testing? Thoughts?
Young, healthy teachers, parent volunteers and staff on site for supervision.
Teaching staff remote using tech and video conferencing.
Kids in classrooms for access to excellent internet connections, socialization, friendship, food, observation of any potential child abuse and discussions/reflections.
Our HS is right now going to try a two day per week in school, three remote, which is 50% capacity (although I have my doubts this will work because so many other Illinois schools are choosing fully remote, as momofsenior’s local HS above).
On the remote days, kids will zoom to join the teacher and 50% of the classmates who are physically in the classroom.
If a teacher is at risk and can’t teach f2f, the technology is in place for the teacher to teach from home…showing the zoom in the classroom (where half the students are) and to the remote kids at home. In this case, a staffer or sub will sit in the classroom to supervise the students.
Let’s solve for the concerns of teachers and need for students to have a place to go by being creative. If remote is a good alternative. Let the teachers be remote.
Use social distancing for staff on site and mask all adults.
At risk kids stay home.
Do pool testing of the effluence weekly. If an issue is found. Go to on site testing or a short break like for a blizzard until results are returned.
Yes, but a lot of homeschooling will be different, too. Homeschooling often involves in-person outside the home classes, a lot of hands on experience, a good quotient of being out-in-the-world in a variety of ways. The shift my D23’s public school made last Spring to remote learning was nothing like the homeschooling she did several years ago, but many people around me seemed to think that their kids were homeschooling last Spring. This Fall, others will opt out of their school’s remote planning and into homeschooling instead, but what they have available to them isn’t the full homeschooling experience. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong choice - but Fall 2020 Covid homeschooling isn’t all that Fall 2019 non-Covid homeschool had the potential to be. The homeschool experience is suffering, too.
MA has just made it’s 14 day quarantine an actual requirement with a $500 per day penalty. Initial reports are that states exempted are those in New England, NY, NJ, and HI. I wonder how that will affect those traveling back to school.
Wastewater testing is the best option. They can test the sewage multiple times a day at multiple locations at a low cost because the testing is done in a campus lab. It allows the school to know the level of infected and if it’s rising or falling for the school as a whole and specific parts of campus.
CU Boulder mentioned they are testing over 20 locations and the number is rising as they find more creative places to test. They’re looking at testing per floor of the dorms, but haven’t nailed the details. All of the collection and testing is done by students, so it’s easy to scale up.
For testing individuals for COVID to be superior it needs to be multiple times per week with a fast turn around. That looks very unlikely right now.
I think the smartest plans are everyone tested and virus free at the start of school, and then sewage testing after that. When sewage tests come back positive staff can test specific people on campus until they locate the infected.
“If 50k kids in LA alone didn’t login once to distance learning this Spring”
If you’re talking about LA Unified I don’t think it’s 50K kids, it’s 15K high schoolers who never logged in, which is still concerning no doubt. There are 120K high schoolers, of which 15K didn’t participate at all and another 26K that didn’t log in every day, but did log in during the week. Of the 600K total students, 25% estimated not to have internet access.