The Flu

[KUGRDON]

CDC:  Reopening of schools and colleges is the single largest threat to health in the United States.  https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/11/politics/cdc-documents-warn-high-risk-schools-reopening/index.html

[Orange]

16 hours ago, Scscsc89 said:

 

I don't understand how "everything besides remote learning will involve some risk of spreading the virus" is pig-headed.  It's just science.

Every county is faced with a different situation & every family has a different definition of "acceptable risk".  I wasn't even advocating that remote learning was the best choice for my or anyone's kid, just that it involves some risk.

My problem with saying that there are "good" solutions is that some districts will employ them, do everything right, and still get slammed.

 

 

Again, the WHY you are getting crowds of people together during a pandemic doesn't matter to the virus.    Perhaps it changes your personal openness to risk but the risk is the same.

 

 

It's great news that child-to-child and child-to-adult transmission appears to be low.   Not much solace for teachers tho.  

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/california-teachers-union-pushes-back-on-reopening-schools/103-7b2f6362-7deb-411a-8a03-bb325bacb1aa

 

I think @MrBug708 is a teacher, isn't he?   Would love to hear his thoughts

Yes there is some risk of transmission with children (albeit low, as you pointed out), and even mitigating risk to teach elementary-age kids still leaves some risk.  Masks are great, and dramatically reduce risks (a woman in Missouri did hair all day despite being Covid positive, but none of her dozens of clients got infected. The reason was because she wore a mask.)
 

There are also risks to grocery stores.  Risks for anyone leaving the house, ever.  Some may be infected.  Maybe a little. Maybe a lot.  We don’t know, and it depends on how we do it.  
 

However, there is a GUARANTEED outcome of devastating physical and psychological effects for children ages 5-11 if they don’t learn in a school environment, and are instead forced to stay home, where working parents either receive far less income, or go on public assistance (which really doesn’t exist rn).  This is especially true for poor, minority children who don’t have the space/quiet/attentiveness/nutrition at home. 
 

Which is it?  The guaranteed bad outcome, or the speculative, possible bad outcome?

[Orange]

16 hours ago, KUGRDON said:

CDC:  Reopening of schools and colleges is the single largest threat to health in the United States.  https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/11/politics/cdc-documents-warn-high-risk-schools-reopening/index.html

This presupposes a false choice, and is not helpful.   Your president from YOUR party wants a full reopening, no restrictions.  Literally no one else except his slavish base, which is composed entirely of YOUR party, wants this kind of reopening.   We want common-sense safety measures to the extent we reopen schools.  No one suggests HS and college kids need to mingle, in person, to get a quality education.  5-11 year olds, however?  They NEED that format of education.  
 

I really don’t know why you comment anymore. You have zero credibility whatsoever.  YOUR policies and values have been proven morally bankrupt and harmful.  That’s what Covid has revealed; just how very, very wrong you and your ilk are.  

[Scscsc89]

15 minutes ago, Orange said:

 Which is it?  The guaranteed bad outcome, or the speculative, possible bad outcome?

I hope you recognize that you have come around to arguing my exact point this whole time:   There are no good choices.
 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Scscsc89]

So what to do:   My wife and I are discussing that right now.

Every parent will have to decide what risk is acceptable to them — but it doesn’t do any good to pretend that there’s a true, right, good answer.

We are all playing the percentages & some of us will lose.

[Orange]

1 hour ago, Scscsc89 said:

I hope you recognize that you have come around to arguing my exact point this whole time:   There are no good choices.
 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is tantamount to providing exactly zero to the convo.   There are better options.  Thanks for the news flash, tho.  #CovidisBad!  Spread it around!

[Scscsc89]

And yet I see parents & administrators everywhere skipping over the “we acknowledge/accept that we are putting our kids & community at risk” part & go straight to “this is obviously the best option for everyone”.

 

But admittedly, I may be blinded by my Trump Derangement Syndrome to see things with such simple clarity.  After all, he’s been so right about everything else.

”There’s risk in everything we do — including crossing the street.” is the exact same argument we heard from Texans on May 1.

I’m sure this time will be different.

[Scscsc89]

I do agree with @mysfit that as long as we are screwed (and it’s only going to get worse), it’s a good opportunity to tear some shit down that hasn’t been working & start again from scratch.

[MrBug708]

I have the fortune of having an in-coming K as well as my wife and I being teachers. Our district is planning on having kids come out but with the strict guidelines in place. I believe one of my classrooms will hold just 15. The other is a larger lab type room that I would imagine could hold more, I haven't heard the numbers. Other classrooms can hold 24, blocking a door, removing all bookcases and teacher used desks. Most schools at our district have empty rooms so for middle school,they will have an aide in the overflow classrooms where students will watch over Google meet. My wife works at a private school that wants to come back because if they don't, parents will pull their kids and the school will close, since why pay that much money to do full distance. They haven't decided what they are doing yet, but supposed start August 1st. (she teaches at a Trinity league school) I also don't know why every district doesn't use this time to transition to post labor day start dates, at least for this year. If the thing dies down, we have limited the amount of distant days.

 

It's gonna be a pain for my K because if I teach remotely,I gotta figure out how to teach him if the times overlap. He's also starting dual Immersion too, which also complicates things.

 

Our union members are all over the place. There are some members that want back ASAP, some want to wait or do a hybrid model, some who want things to hit stage 3 or better, and some who don't want to go back until there is a proven safe vaccine. But distant learning for my school was a hot mess. I teach a school that is 92% free lunches but we were able to get technology to them all. But by the end, I had 45 minutes worth of easy work that was being completed by as few as two students. Distance learning in low income areas is going to be awful but I don't think there is much we can do. My wife had great participation because there is a financial stake for parents but my wife teaches Spanish and it's tough to stop teach a language that way. While classroom management is fantastic, students want to stay on mute or hide their faces. Her school can somewhat touch that aspect. I can't do a thing about it. On a good day, I got half to show up, a couple to say anything. It's rough and while I hate to say distant learning will be a waste, you are probably getting to 10% of what you would normally get to. Mileage varies by teacher, grade, subject, location and other factors. We did our students no favors by not doing any feedback last year when the district made a policy of no harm grading/feedback. We couldn't comment on if they did any work or participate and now we've created a situation where parents do not have a true idea of the participation and work their students did and we are moving onto another year in this form. 

[KUGRDON]

Bug, I have no idea what the answer is this question so I’m not trying to set you up or come do a pre-determined conclusion. What is the worst case scenario if there is no school until there is a vaccine and assume the vaccine is available in spring.  Kids will have lost a year.  Can the students recover and finish their grade 12 just a year later than they would have, is there more lasting damage, hard to pick up and start again? What do the experts say?

[MrBug708]

You give me too much credit for being that proactive. I'm not an expert and I'm afraid whatever the answer is will have ramifications in different ways. I know my style is much more affective on class vs distant learning. As for not having school period, I doubt that will fly with parents, the community, the teachers and union, and students. I think a lot of changes in education will emerge out of this, like in a lot of ways in society, but schools are notoriously fickle and slow in embracing them. If distant education is the result, my guess is they just work with what they have for this year. There will be a lot of remedial work every year going forward. I don't think they can overload English and math any more than they already do without burning out kids. But I think you will see parents push to get their kids back in school more than you will see parents push to keep their kids home. Our district will allow, and I think recommend, distant learning options but will still open doors. Hopefully standardized tests continue to be put on hold for some time and we can use months of "test prep", to go back and teach things again.

[Orange]

20 hours ago, Scscsc89 said:

And yet I see parents & administrators everywhere skipping over the “we acknowledge/accept that we are putting our kids & community at risk” part & go straight to “this is obviously the best option for everyone”.

 

But admittedly, I may be blinded by my Trump Derangement Syndrome to see things with such simple clarity.  After all, he’s been so right about everything else.

”There’s risk in everything we do — including crossing the street.” is the exact same argument we heard from Texans on May 1.

I’m sure this time will be different.

Yeah, i can see how it would be easier to just blindly compare me to TrumpHumpers as opposed to actually reading what the fuck I wrote.  I get it.  It's easier.  Reading and comprehending (and then RESPONDING IN KIND!  OMG!) is hard.

 

[Orange]

14 hours ago, MrBug708 said:

Distance learning in low income areas is going to be awful but I don't think there is much we can do. My wife had great participation because there is a financial stake for parents but my wife teaches Spanish and it's tough to stop teach a language that way. While classroom management is fantastic, students want to stay on mute or hide their faces. Her school can somewhat touch that aspect. I can't do a thing about it. On a good day, I got half to show up, a couple to say anything. It's rough and while I hate to say distant learning will be a waste, you are probably getting to 10% of what you would normally get to. Mileage varies by teacher, grade, subject, location and other factors. We did our students no favors by not doing any feedback last year when the district made a policy of no harm grading/feedback. We couldn't comment on if they did any work or participate and now we've created a situation where parents do not have a true idea of the participation and work their students did and we are moving onto another year in this form. 

Precisely.  Distance learning, in my experience, is as good as zero school at all for K-3rd or 4th grade, at least.  It varies by student income levels, parent participation, etc. 

My wife and I both work from home, and we're incredibly lucky that way.  But we have 2 grade-school kids.  And even as we are two of the luckiest parents on the planet in terms of our work situation, it's absolutely hellish and stupid to have us attempt to homeschool our kids AND be expected to put in a 40-hr work week.  It's simply not possible.

One of two things has to happen:

1) Kids need to be back at school with maximum safety measures; or

2) Parents with school-age children (say, 7th grade or younger) need to be subsidized to teach their children at home.  We need our full income matched by the federal government to work half-time.  (For that matter, I think we should have done this with ALL essential works, and with essential workers being given hazard pay.  If we would have instituted this in April the pandemic would be over by now.)

This is what I mean --and what @Scscsc89 refuses to understand -- when I say "something has to give."  Working parents cannot BOTH teach AND work.  For most, that's literally so, because they cannot work from home.  If this isn't fixed with a federal subsidy to parents so they can stay home, the pandemic will get worse, the economy will get worse, and kids will get dumber.

But "wE doN'T nEeD tO fIx iT".

 

 

For fuck's sake.

[Orange]

14 hours ago, KUGRDON said:

Bug, I have no idea what the answer is this question so I’m not trying to set you up or come do a pre-determined conclusion. What is the worst case scenario if there is no school until there is a vaccine and assume the vaccine is available in spring.  Kids will have lost a year.  Can the students recover and finish their grade 12 just a year later than they would have, is there more lasting damage, hard to pick up and start again? What do the experts say?

The answers regarding chronic absenteeism are well-known.

https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/partnering-with-childs-school/working-with-childs-teacher/chronic-absenteeism-what-you-need-to-know

Missing school in the early grades can have a snowball effect. It sets kids up to fall behind in the fundamental reading skills they need in order to move on to more complicated work.

 

Research shows how big the impact can be. A study in California looked at kids who were chronically absent in both kindergarten and first grade. By the end of third grade, only one in six of them were proficient readers. But of the kids who missed less than 5 percent of school, two-thirds were proficient. (See a PDF of the study.)

[Scscsc89]

1 hour ago, Orange said:

One of two things has to happen:

I can guarantee you that neither of those things are going to happen.

 

1 hour ago, Orange said:

If this isn't fixed ... the pandemic will get worse, the economy will get worse, and kids will get dumber.

bingo

[Scscsc89]

 

[KUGRDON]

 

[Orange]

11 minutes ago, Scscsc89 said:

I can guarantee you that neither of those things are going to happen.

 

bingo

Again, real fucking helpful contribution.

And I don't know why you say some hybrid of re-opening schools/distance learning is "guaranteed" not to happen.  State governments are planning for that eventuality all over the country.

 

Are you okay?

[Scscsc89]

It’s more helpful to suggest things that aren’t going to happen?

[Orange]

Now i'm getting text messages indicating that there will be bans on 10-or-more people indoors -- EXCEPT FOR CHURCHES AND BUSINESSES. 

Uh, what's the fucking point then?  Why do churches have to be open??  They're proven superspreaders.

May as well jump to Phase 3 and say fuck it.