We had our BoE meeting last night.
The state (NJ) wants each school district to come up with a hybrid plan, a fully open plan, and a fully virtual plan, so that they’re be ready to go no matter what happens this year.
I guess our district didn’t really take it seriously, bc they barely out any effort into it and voted to ask the state to let them go fully virtual. Which I doubt they will agree to.
It came out under pressure from the teachers and parents that their plan for the middle and high school kids relies on said kids cleaning their own chairs and desks between periods with provided antibacterial wipes.
You know, the same kids that think rewearing the clothes from the floor of their rooms that smell like Axe and sweat socks is perfectly fine.
I believe in a lot of them.
I’d probably take it… 
I may be from another planet, but I totally believe a kid from about 8/9 yo up could be handed a wipe and expected to clean off a desk and a chair. My kids clean bathrooms at 10.
I almost never say, “Yay, Canada.” But “Yay, Canada!”
My moms whole family lives in Ontario.
I dropped out of our homeschool co op in part because I am not about to ask my kids to wear masks at school and I am not about to wear one all day, either.
In the spring, many of my coworkers had 2 parents trying to work remotely and doing online school with 1-3 kids. Very, very challenging. A few of my coworkers had to cut back hours because young children and even some older one need help/supervision for online school. During video meetings, I can hear some of the kids playing/screaming in the background and see some of the kids doing entertaining things! I don’t mind any of those incidents because they are semblance of normality.
One size won’t fit all for families and people will be unhappy any which way until we have a vaccine and/or herd immunity.
Yep and don’t forget the risk to the teachers and their families.
Do you do SAT/ACT Boot Camp or one on one SAT/ACT tutoring? If it is just the child studying for the test, I’m all for it. Studying is technically available to everyone.
I was talking to the principals today about this. They need to start to communicate with the students and families. I asked them to prepare videos of a classroom, talk to the families and students about not being able to move around, prepare them!
Remote learning in the spring will not be what remote learning in the fall is, if a district goes 100% remote. In the spring we were crisis planning. For months we have been focused on curriculum and instruction.
I see N95 masks for sale all over the internet for about $5 each. I have some N95 masks leftover from last year’s fire season and may have paid $2 each. However, I have yet to buy any disposable masks or more N95 masks since the pandemic began because they are still in short supply for our front line medical workers. Last week CA governor said that some health care workers were only getting 2-3 N95 per week. I don’t get it. If they are available all over the internet for anyone to buy, why aren’t the hospitals buying more (money?)? Apparently the governor is also buying them to distribute to the hospitals.
I’ve been on the aerosolization wagon for months, possibly because of the Diamond Princess.
Oh and another article posted here which had a comment about two guys at an auto parts company in Germany and the only way they could have spread it between each other is when one passed the salt shaker. Overlooking that they sat at the same table for however long lunch was. And worked in the same building.
There’s still another aspect at work. St Louis numbers which spiked scarily in April are coming down while other areas in Missouri have increased a bunch. Yet not as scary as St Louis, Chicago, NYC.
I still feel that comparing US numbers to Europe is apples to oranges. Or urban US to rural US. While I’d love to see an effective vaccine and a treatment, I’m expecting to see covid mitigations for awhile. Almost more than a vaccine or treatment I’d like to see research such as the Diamond Princess modeling until we get a better sense of what this virus is.
Thanks, I shared this with my team. The testing kits are unusual.
Well, yes and no. It’s totally different when it’s their home and they know you’ll get on their case if they do a lousy job.
Also, the state requires that they be cleaned to CDC guidelines. Students don’t know those guidelines, not should they be trusted to meet them.
Will the kids get training to use them so they don’t do something like wipe their desk, then rub their eyes? These are medical Super Sani Cloths, not what we buy in stores.
We have a large homeschool store here where a friend of mine works (and where I bought most of our books in early June, not knowing what the rest of summer would bring). She said they are swamped. Parents who haven’t homeschooled before are overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. They can’t keep curriculum on the shelves. Some programs (Singapore) have had outbreaks at printers, compounding the problem. The used book section (like 1/4 of the store) is bare.
So. It seems like a simple solution when you are already comfortable sorting through your choices and it’s something you actually like doing. But I don’t think it’s true for most people.
My friend who hired a teacher/nanny for her 1st grader will be enrolling in her school’s virtual learning but doing the bare minimum and supplementing. The point of staying enrolled is to keep her spot at a popular school.
I chatted with my sister, who teaches 7th grade at a private school, and it’s really fascinating how they are adjusting to teach both in person and virtually. Kids will watch the instruction portion in a video the night before instead of homework and then spend much of class time completing work and using chrome books to connect in groups virtually. I wonder how this will change the face of schools in the years to come.
Well, mine are the hardware-store variety because when I got them back in January, that kind was by far easier to get. I went to several places and was amazed there was no run on them, although they were sold out on Amazon.
I offered to give some to individual medical people and organizations, but no one would take them except DH and his clinic because they weren’t on the list to get any at all from his employer. Even at the height of the panic, around here they still wanted medical grade. Which are no different except they are water and fire resistant.
So it may be that what you are seeing on offer is not medical-grade. Or are coming from a shady manufacturer.
Yup. That actually is the event the paper @stlouie linked to analyzed. It’s still just modeling but it does make sense. They ran a bunch of different scenarios incorporating various modes of transmission and the scenarios with aerosol spread are the ones that explained the outcome on the DP the best.
I don’t know about your kids, but mine certainly do a better job for everybody else in the world than they do for mom.
@Pod and anyone else who might know … what is the difference between an n95 mask and a kn95 mask? Are they the same? I was thinking about buying a few to use in case we decide to fly to Orlando on a whim.
It’s unfortunate, but you have to think about it from the perspective of the school. I wouldn’t necessarily expect the elementary kids to do a great job. But middle and high school, outside of certain special education populations, can and will have to take this responsibility on. Is it fair? Is it a perfect solution? No, probably not. But I can’t imagine many schools have enough custodial staff to do this in each classroom in the school in between every class change. Ours isn’t even close. And they will be busy disinfecting surfaces, etc.
I know some schools are looking into cohorting middle school and even high school kids so that the teachers change rooms and not the students. I think our middle school is going to, but our high school just can’t work it out. Since I’m in the high school, I feel lucky that we are even able to get the wipes to clean with! And I wish I could say I’d have the time to wipe the desks myself between classes, because I would for sure do it. But many of us will have to share rooms with each other and be moving around, and work on getting technology set up in between classes as we may be livestreaming each class…
So. Unfortunately, the best solution is to have the kids wipe their own desks.
Here at my hospital we have plenty of all types of PPE, including N95s. We are not limited to a particular number per day or week. That is odd that they are in such short supply still in your area.
Glad to hear you have the needed PPE!
This (remote learning in the fall being different than in the spring) fills me full of anxiety b/c I finally got used to the system our school came up with in the spring. And I don’t want the kids to be on the computer watching zooms many more hours per day than they already were. It wasn’t anything near as long as a regular school day, but they all had plenty to do (7th, 5th, 2nd grades last year). I felt like the school got it really right very quickly (it took them about 3 weeks of changing stuff around before they settled on their final plans–this is a small Catholic private school). I’m hoping the fall will be much like the spring turned out to be. I know we were lucky compared to some of the other schools nearby which didn’t really get started until 2 months in.