Schools can’t open safely......

PopsnTuff

PopsnTuff

Well-known Member
Location
Virginia USA
But no losses should be acceptable when they are entirely avoidable. By now, we know enough about the risks of the coronavirus to realize that simply declaring that schools are safe is an exercise in fantasy. There are some things public health experts agree present extraordinarily high levels of risk, and schools combine several of them. The administration is taking advantage of parents’ understandable eagerness to get kids back to school to push ahead with its program to pretend everything with the pandemic is fine. The result is a new movement to ignore reality, pretend schools present no risk and imagine that the virus will magically conform to our needs by Labor Day — while utterly disregarding the moral implications of putting teachers, administrators and other school employees in danger.

The arguments for reopening are obvious, and as the mother of a 5-year-old, I understand them viscerally: Children need to learn, and isolation is not good for their mental health. People also need to return to work, and many can only do that if their children are in school or they have some other safe place for them to be during the day. At the same time, there is no conceivable way to reopen all schools safely. Discussion about school safety has been largely centered around the ostensibly low transmission rates of covid-19 for children, as if children attend school in an adult-free vacuum. Where the lives of school workers, teachers and administrators are taken into consideration at all, people argue that they’re acceptable losses ...

More on: www.washingtonpost.com
https://www.aedaily.net/en/posts/sc...nding-they-can-only-helps-trumps-gaslighting/

(Wording in bold is intentional from me as I totally agree with this....in our county they still haven't posted any schedules to parents or in the local newspapers of what's going on but saying school will open August 11th, pfffttt....I hope it keeps getting postponed each month into next year)
 

No matter what kind of "rules" the schools try to implement, getting young kids to adhere to them will be fruitless.....try asking a 7 yr. old to wear a mask for several hours, or staying seated at a desk several feet from his/her friends....good luck on that. Even if this virus isn't severe on young kids, they still can carry it to their parents, and the teachers. "Social Distancing" for an active little child????....won't happen.

We have 4 little great grandkids who, along with their parents, will be at risk in the very near future.
 

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Don M. said:
No matter what kind of "rules" the schools try to implement, getting young kids to adhere to them will be fruitless.....try asking a 7 yr. old to wear a mask for several hours, or staying seated at a desk several feet from his/her friends....good luck on that. Even if this virus isn't severe on young kids, they still can carry it to their parents, and the teachers. "Social Distancing" for an active little child????....won't happen.

We have 4 little great grandkids who, along with their parents, will be at risk in the very near future.
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Couldn't agree more with you Don, not to mention getting them to use sanitizer all day along with washing their hands, and god only knows what will happen in the cafeteria.....is there really gonna be a thorough sanitizing of all these classrooms and restrooms each night.....dont think so.
My 13 y.o. gr'daughter will not be coming back here to visit anytime soon if her mom decides to send her back instead of online classes...:(
 
Don M. said:
No matter what kind of "rules" the schools try to implement, getting young kids to adhere to them will be fruitless.....try asking a 7 yr. old to wear a mask for several hours, or staying seated at a desk several feet from his/her friends....good luck on that. Even if this virus isn't severe on young kids, they still can carry it to their parents, and the teachers. "Social Distancing" for an active little child????....won't happen.

We have 4 little great grandkids who, along with their parents, will be at risk in the very near future.
Click to expand...

Absolutely! I wonder why this is so difficult for some folks to accept. Perhaps they've never been around little kids.

Even if you could force them to behave in class, once they are out the door-- not a chance.
 
As school districts across the United States consider whether and how to restart in-person classes, their challenge is complicated by a pair of fundamental uncertainties: No nation has tried to send children back to school with the virus raging at levels like America’s, and the scientific research about transmission in classrooms is limited.

The World Health Organization has now concluded that the virus is airborne in crowded, indoor spaces with poor ventilation, a description that fits many American schools. But there is enormous pressure to bring students back — from parents, from pediatricians and child development specialists, and from President Trump.

“I’m just going to say it: It feels like we’re playing Russian roulette with our kids and our staff,” said Robin Cogan, a nurse at the Yorkship School in Camden, N.J., who serves on the state’s committee on reopening schools.

Data from around the world clearly shows that children are far less likely to become seriously ill from the coronavirus than adults. But there are big unanswered questions, including how often children become infected and what role they play in transmitting the virus. Some research suggests younger children are less likely to infect other people than teenagers are, which would make opening elementary schools less risky than high schools, but the evidence is not conclusive.....read on.....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/health/coronavirus-schools-reopen.html?
 
In Ontario they are discussing three options for schooling.
1/. Go back to school with no more than 15 children per class.
2/. Keep doing home schooling
3/. Don’t know the third option

Whatever they choose the parents have to also be in agreement or it won’t work.
Poor kids. School is tough enough. I can’t image this type of pressure put on kids but I really hope they do ok.
 
As the School Year Approaches, Education May Become the Pandemic’s Latest Casualty....

In much of the U.S., that’s not what will be happening. In recent weeks, more and more districts have announced that schools will reopen only remotely this fall. Money and time are too short to sort out the complicated logistics as the pandemic worsens in many states, spreading at rates that make in-person instruction too dangerous.

Parents and teachers overwhelmingly back the decisions, saying they are not comfortable sending kids back to classrooms under current conditions. “I’m just afraid that they’re really pushing schools to be this thing that saves us, that allows us to get the economy going again and get things back to normal,” says Megan Ake, a high school English teacher in Fenton, Mich. “I want to be done too. But I’m just so worried that we’re going to be like a giant test case.” Parents left to their own devices are struggling to find work-arounds, making informal arrangements with friends and neighbors or turning to a burgeoning array of service providers to supplement online learning, like tutors offering group instruction at $80 per hour for “pods” of families.....read on....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/school-approaches-education-may-become-100823588.html
 
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It seems that many people are having difficulty accepting the fact that there are no "good" solutions to this problem. It's a case of identifying and evaluating the possible options and then choosing the "less bad" one. To compound the problem, that option will likely be different for different locations. That makes it tough, and leaders know that, no matter what path they choose, some damage will occur and there will be those who will cry bitterly that they messed up.

I pray that the Lord wil be with our decision-makers through this difficult time.
 
If we are not careful COVID19 could be the death blow to the public education system as we know it.

Betsy DeVos and others have been working to change our public education system over to some sort of voucher system that would turn public education into a for-profit education industry made up of private/charter schools.
 
PopsnTuff said:
As the School Year Approaches, Education May Become the Pandemic’s Latest Casualty....

https://www.yahoo.com/news/school-approaches-education-may-become-100823588.html
In much of the U.S., that’s not what will be happening. In recent weeks, more and more districts have announced that schools will reopen only remotely this fall. Money and time are too short to sort out the complicated logistics as the pandemic worsens in many states, spreading at rates that make in-person instruction too dangerous.
Click to expand...

This article's characterization of education being "the pandemic's latest casualty" is defeatist and overblown in my humble opinion. The next few months are going to be a challenge, for sure, but it's a challenge that parents, children and school systems are going to have to face.

My daughter & SIL are teachers (MS & HS) with two young children; one going into 3rd grade, the other entering kindergarten. They're preparing for remote learning now.

Instead of watching Netflix in the evenings, DD & SIL are on line gathering information and learning techniques for effective remote teaching. They're also picking up tips on how to fill in the educational gaps their kids will be facing - fine motor skill development using scissors for the kindergartner, for instance. Plenty of physical activity for both.

Parenting is loaded with unexpected challenges. Many far worse and long-lasting than home schooling for a while. If your kid develops cancer, diabetes, learning disabilities, resistance to showering or brushing their teeth, bedwetting problems, being bullied, whatever, parents have to suck it up, learn what they can, and help pull their kids through.

The difference here is that there will be a lot of people navigating their own boats in this same storm at the same time. Lots of support.
 
Got my wish today....our county's schools are delayed till August 27th cuz they still haven't figured out a concrete plan for all involved mostly referring to the safety of the staff from catching the virus.....school bus schedules are a mess too.....
 
PopsnTuff said:
But no losses should be acceptable when they are entirely avoidable. By now, we know enough about the risks of the coronavirus to realize that simply declaring that schools are safe is an exercise in fantasy. There are some things public health experts agree present extraordinarily high levels of risk, and schools combine several of them. The administration is taking advantage of parents’ understandable eagerness to get kids back to school to push ahead with its program to pretend everything with the pandemic is fine. The result is a new movement to ignore reality, pretend schools present no risk and imagine that the virus will magically conform to our needs by Labor Day — while utterly disregarding the moral implications of putting teachers, administrators and other school employees in danger.

The arguments for reopening are obvious, and as the mother of a 5-year-old, I understand them viscerally: Children need to learn, and isolation is not good for their mental health. People also need to return to work, and many can only do that if their children are in school or they have some other safe place for them to be during the day. At the same time, there is no conceivable way to reopen all schools safely. Discussion about school safety has been largely centered around the ostensibly low transmission rates of covid-19 for children, as if children attend school in an adult-free vacuum. Where the lives of school workers, teachers and administrators are taken into consideration at all, people argue that they’re acceptable losses ...

More on: www.washingtonpost.com
https://www.aedaily.net/en/posts/sc...nding-they-can-only-helps-trumps-gaslighting/

(Wording in bold is intentional from me as I totally agree with this....in our county they still haven't posted any schedules to parents or in the local newspapers of what's going on but saying school will open August 11th, pfffttt....I hope it keeps getting postponed each month into next year)
Click to expand...
I've actually heard a nurse @ work say that the kids are required to spend 7 hrs online learning & since she knows her kids won't do that she's perfectly ok with sending them to school. OMG!
 
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In New York state, each public school district has to submit a three-part plan to provide a basic public school education by July 31st.

The plan needs to include remote learning, hybrid learning, and traditional in-school learning.

The state is using the area infection rates to determine which districts will be able to open and remain open. The region where the school is located must be in Phase IV and maintain a daily infection rate of 5% or lower over a 14-day average. If the infection rate is at 9% or over the school must go to remote learning but will still be required to provide basic public education.

The local university is requiring students from various states and countries to report on August 2nd and begin a 14-day self-quarantine before being allowed to return to campus. Freshmen will be quarantined in dorms, returning students will self-quarantine in local hotels or in their off-campus apartments. We are all holding our breath about the influx of students from around the country and the world to see if we experience a spike in new infections/hospitalizations.
 
And it's not only elementary-high schools and younger kids. How about the colleges?

From what I understand, some of them are partially reopening, some are opening strictly online, some give the students choices, etc. What a confusing mess. My granddaughter is starting her freshman year next week, online. I feel so sorry for her and all the other kids who were looking forward to their first big adventure away from home, meeting all those new people, living in dorms, enjoying the community and all it has to offer. Instead they are staying in their parents' home, sitting in front of a computer or a phone all day, hour after hour.

And who knows for how long? I know life is unfair, but this kind of unfairness is really sad.
 
Teachers Are Wary of Returning to Class, and Online Instruction Too....

Unions are threatening to strike if classrooms reopen, but are also pushing to limit live remote teaching. Their demands will shape pandemic education.

Teachers in many districts are fighting for longer school closures, stronger safety requirements and limits on what they are required to do in virtual classrooms, while flooding social media and state capitals with their concerns and threatening to walk off their jobs if key demands are not met.

On Tuesday, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union raised the stakes dramatically by authorizing its local and state chapters to strike if their districts do not take sufficient precautions — such as requiring masks and updating ventilation systems — before reopening classrooms. Already, teachers’ unions have sued Florida’s governor over that state’s efforts to require schools to offer in-person instruction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/us/teacher-union-school-reopening-coronavirus.html
 
Two weeks ago, I thought Pennsylvania would be in a position to open. Today, I am not so sure. The Governor has put out too many do’s and dont’s and I don’t believe that schools would be able to adapt to his principles. Busing alone would be a huge issue.
 
This is a reality but sooo sad for our teenage girls, boys not as much; they seem to be more content with their video games.....mental therapy is at an all time high for these kids, online.....
I've read this in other places also.....

HELPING GIRLS THRIVE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

KEY FINDINGS
  • Girls are experiencing newfound fear about their futures since the onset of COVID-19. Over half (52%) of girls are thinking differently about their futures since the start of the pandemic, with nearly 60% reporting fear or uncertainty regarding what the future will bring.
  • Loneliness and isolation are negatively impacting teen girls at alarmingly high rates. Most girls (80%) are more lonely and isolated since the onset of COVID-19, and a full one-third are much more lonely/isolated.
  • The majority of girls found the upheaval associated with COVID-19 detrimental to their ability to organize, concentrate and complete their school work. Most (59%) reported difficulty with academic executive functioning skills, such as organization and concentration, and more than half struggled to keep up with their school work.
  • COVID-19 markedly amplified the stress levels of teen girls. Nearly half of high school girls report experiencing higher stress levels than before the pandemic with 42% reporting that their life is harder than it was before.
“I think about if we are even going to make it out of this situation.
Click to expand...
— 6th grade girl
“When am I going to have my life back to normal, or is this the new normal?
Click to expand...
— 8th grade girl

https://rulingourexperiences.com/covid19
 

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