Are you sending your kids to school next month?

[kdonnel]

Here is the data for my local school system.

This is plotting the newly reported cases each day since in school learning started August 18th.

For the weeks proceeding Thanksgiving the reported daily cases remained somewhat steady. Then there was a spike after lots of community spread at Thanksgiving and another big spike after even more community spread after the Christmas break.

The spread in schools seems to not be an issue.

Community spread seems to be the problem.

 

[BadgerGirl84]

My kids (4K and second grade) have been in person since August. No kids have gotten sick. We switched to private school because our public school’s virtual learning STUNK last year. I didn’t want to risk being stuck with virtual if they closed.

My kids also did summer Little League and ballet, and now they are in dance, Scouts and gymnastics. I’m so happy they have been living life as kids should and not isolated in front of a screen all day at home.

 

[monsterkitty]

Honest question; what is it going to take for you to feel comfortable? Safety protocols? Lower COVID #s? The vaccine? The teachers will have 2 of the 3 where I am by the end of the month. The third, well, you shouldn't have cut off the last sentence in my last post. I have a 1st grader who is regressing developmentally, a SOPH who's grades are suffering right when they need to be stellar, and a SR who is missing out on the last year he will ever have with his childhood friends, not to mention the last chance he will get to play lacrosse. These are desperate times and the clock won't stop ticking. For the adults making the decisions it's just one year, but not for the kids. I am more than happy to support whatever it is that will get teachers back in the classroom - but they have to get back in the classroom. Just name it.

We are back in the classroom with more students in the classroom than we had first semester. Parents switched their kids to in person. Even in person students are not getting a stellar education because we have to social distance and it is incredibly difficult to help a child from 6 feet away.

Oh wait, we're not 6 feet away. Our rooms aren't big enough even with only 20 students to be 6 feet away. Thank goodness the CDC changed the distance to 3 feet for schools.

What would make us feel safer? Not being lied to. We were told that we would be getting our vaccines in our state in 1b. However, the state has now said that teachers and other essential workers in the 1b category will not be getting their first shots until sometime in March.

Community numbers in our district is 11%. Our state saw 29 cases of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children in December, the highest number of any month.

Things that are making us feel safer - we are required to wear an N95 mask with a surgical mask over the top and safety goggles at all times. The surgical mask is to keep the N95 clean because we only get 2 N95 masks per month. Our kids are incredible about wearing their masks. The kids who moved from online to in person are having a hard time with the masks but are getting used to them. Parents are also not sending sick kids to school. If a child becomes ill during the day they are really good about coming and getting them instead of having them hang out in the office. Most importantly, our district admin is working incredibly hard to find a work-a-round the having to wait until March to get the vaccine.

 

[Renarr]

It's been awhile since I've updated here, here's where things are at:

As in most of the rest of the country, case numbers are rising here in my part of the state of Washington. The governor recently relaxed the standards for schools to reopen, but in announcing the priorities for vaccines, older teachers (over 50) are scheduled for February, but younger teachers (under 50) aren't scheduled until April, and we're behind the posted schedule. Our district has announced plans to welcome K-2 learners in the next couple weeks for half-days. We already have select special education, students who don't speak English fluently, and some select students who struggled in the spring in buildings.

I'm a high school teacher with a full year virtual assignment (working with virtual students only) in a relatively affluent district. Some kids are thriving, some are making it through, and some are absolutely struggling right now. Truth be told, I'm also really struggling right now to keep up with the workload, and I've decided next semester that I have to work-to-contract, which will cut my hours by about 20 per week. I don't like it, but I've already (not by design) lost about 15 pounds this semester, and my doctor is concerned but can't find any other root cause besides stress, despite a battery of tests being performed, which seems to raise my stress levels and around we go.

One interesting thing that we discovered recently was that students would be allowed to switch from "scheduled remote" to "scheduled hybrid" (room permitting) or "scheduled hybrid" to "scheduled remote" at semester. More families are opting to switch to the remote, which I have to admit I did not see coming.

There's a number of elements that would really be concerning me about going back into my classroom right now (were I to have an assignment that would require it before the fall):
(1) As others have said recently in this thread, a vaccine would greatly reduce the anxiety of a number of educators.
(2) We have a large antimasking group within our community. With the vaccines reportedly only 95% effective, masks are still really an essential part of our fight to protect everybody (especially students, who won't be vaccinated at this point). My building has usually done an extremely poor job of enforcing "habit" based regulations (students frequently roam the halls until well after the bell, because tardy policies are not enforced), and there's already been anecdotal evidence that students currently in the building are defiantly refusing to wear masks and still being permitted to stay in our limited reopening. This shouldn't be happening now, and this can't happen within a broader reopening.
(3) The schedule of half-days (really about 2.5 - 3 hours, to provide time for cleaning) doesn't work for any parent who has to work. This means that there's going to be a lot more carpooling and child care in play than usual, which again increases community spread.
(4) Cases are currently growing in my area, with an estimated r of 1.2. We shouldn't be reopening while r > 1.0.
(5) Parents in our community have already decided that they will not have their children tested. I... I just don't know what to say about that one, but the only way we will know about a COVID case for many of our students is if they end up hospitalized.

The only other comment that I wanted to add here is that I feel a lot of the "spread in schools" data is pretty misleading. The only way our district is recognizing a case as "spread in schools" is if Student A gets it, Student B shares a space with Student A, Student B goes absolutely nowhere except for school and home (including a trip to the doctor's office!), and then Student B also gets it. Our district (and I don't think we're alone in this) is arguing, then, that since no students have met the practically impossible-to-prove standard that no spread is occurring in schools, because they don't have any cases where spread definitively did occur there. The logical fallacies in this argument...

 

[lanejudy]

How has the remote curriculum been for those that chose to stay remote? A concern I’ve read (again, not everywhere, but from many accounts) is that the remote curriculum becomes a lower priority and resources and attention becomes focused heavily on the in-person curriculum.

The fully-remote students in my district are essentially a different school. Those families had to commit to the remote learning with minimal options to transfer to in-person, it would be like transferring schools mid-session. The teachers are from our district, but I'm not sure how the curriculum matches up. While I recall they said something like 20% signed up for the fully-remote option back in the fall, I only know of 1 or 2 families and they aren't families that I connect with often. But I haven't heard any complaints here.

 

[godisney14]

The remote learning in various districts near me vary so widely. We’re told that educators regularly meet to strategize. But, in reality, It’s almost like these educators have never met their peers to discuss best practices even after a year of this situation.

On one end of the spectrum, it seems similar to what I would imagine a traditional home school to be. (In elementary) The teacher is on Zoom for a brief time each day and the rest of the day is independent study and homework. On the other end of the spectrum is full-time Zoom video, even to do homework together. The concern is that schools could gravitate to the former when in-person opens up for a subset of the school (due to opt outs and social distancing requirements).

 

[piglet1979]

I know this wasn’t directed at me, but my husband doesn’t feel safe at school. He wants parents to stop sending their kids to school sick. (“It’s just allergies” has turned into several positive cases already.) He wants parents to stop sending kids to school when the parent tested positive with Covid. He wants contact tracing back. (The Health Dep is overwhelmed- the school is relying on parents to self-report positive cases and exposure.) He wants reduced classroom sizes to allow for social distancing. He wants reduced covid numbers and spread in the community- which means people can’t just act like everything is normal and attend a 500-person concert indoors where everyone jammed up against the stage and didn’t wear masks. He wants community members to stop going to board meetings and saying it’s a hoax. He wants students to stop having “covid parties.”

But since none of that is something he can control, he wants protection from the vaccine, which will take time after the first shot.

This is how my mom feels. They had a student that became sick while at school. After the nurse talked to her they found out that mom had already tested positive and the student was told not to tell the school. Kids have also been going to school sick. They give them meds in the morning and when they wear off is when they find out the student is sick.

How has the remote curriculum been for those that chose to stay remote? A concern I’ve read (again, not everywhere, but from many accounts) is that the remote curriculum becomes a lower priority and resources and attention becomes focused heavily on the in-person curriculum.

Our remote learning for 6-12 is the same as in-person. They have the same teachers and classmates as face to face students. The teachers teach both students at the same time. My 8th and 9th graders are still learning like they have in the past. It is just on the computer in video calls rather then in-person. I know it does not work for all but it has worked great for us. Both kids are getting good grades. I do have to be on top of my 9th grader a bit more when it comes to homework but that is nothing new. I like that I am able to see when his homework is turned in because it is turned in online on Google classroom. When in person I have no control to make sure he actually turns his assignments on time.

 

[Colleen27]

For everyone here that are saying that their school or district has had very few cases, are your schools all back in session full time with the full student population?

Ours pretty much is.... we have 94 students K-8 and only a handful of them are in families who chose remote learning for the first or second quarter (or both), but that means we've got fewer than a hundred people in the building including teachers and support staff. We have had one confirmed case in a member of the building maintenance staff and two teachers who had to quarantine due to exposure at home. No confirmed student cases. Our affiliated private high school has had 4 student and 1 staff cases, out of a student body of around 180/staff of maybe 30.

Our public district has had what I'd consider to be very few cases, even when they were open full time, but they shut down just before the governor's order closing high schools in November and are just reopening this week. The high school had about a dozen confirmed cases in a student population of about 500, and the local elem had fewer. Both the public and private high schools in our community have found that at the older grade level, the challenge is shared rides to school and other school-adjacent socializing; the elems are having great success with mask-wearing and other precautions, but the older kids carpool or go out to eat together after school and end up passing the virus more freely.

 

[Colleen27]

So, I apparently jinxed my school... not an hour after I posted that we hadn't had any cases, I got an email that we now have our first. Ironically, the only reason my daughter wasn't exposed because she missed school last week for us to go to Florida and is quarantining at home this week just to be on the safe side (we'll test late this week so she can return next week). The student is asymptomatic so far and only tested because a member of her household became symptomatic, which is a bit of a double edged sword because it means the student is doing well but also that we don't know how long s/he might have been positive and contagious at school. Hopefully we will find that our classroom protocols work and this case won't lead to more.

 

[HeatherC]

Just saw this article today. Thought people might be interested. Since the article won’t load, it is basically about how Oklahoma is seeing an increase in kids being affected with the multi-inflammatory syndrome.

https://okcfox.com/news/local/oklah...n-severe-illness-tied-to-covid-19-in-children

 

[piglet1979]

We are a larger school, a few hundred in each class level. My sons kindergarten class had 7 classes of about 20 kids each. This was just his school. There were 3 other schools. So far since September we have had 54 students and 62 staff that have tested positive. This week alone they have had 5 students and 5 staff test positive and they won't update the numbers until about 4 or 5 today. This was just from yesterday. And we are no longer requiring anyone to quarantine from a close contact at school. Only if it was a close contact outside of school will someone need to quarantine. This came out over Christmas break. K-5 started last week 5 days a week and next week 6-12 will be 4 days a week with Fridays being fully remote so teachers can spend time with the fully remote students in they need to. I see things getting worse here before they get better.

 

[Kestryl]

My husband’s school is under 70% student attendance, with 25% students out due to quarantine and sickness (almost 1/5 of those students are actively positive). The district refuses to put them on the virtual program. Instead they’re demanding teachers to do everything they can to get that 5% that are out for non-covid reasons to get back. (Meanwhile, those kids could be out for completely legitimate reasons like other medical causes or sickness.)

 

[neverlandsky]

Our state dept of education issued a new requirement for when in-person instruction out of alignment with the metrics, schools are required to offer access to on-site COVID-19 testing for symptomatic students and staff identified on campus, as well as those with known exposure to individuals with COVID-19. Mostly likely due to the lack of available vaccines. With this new requirement, not sure if in-person is still a go for the kids on 2/8.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Our state dept of education issued a new requirement for when in-person instruction out of alignment with the metrics, schools are required to offer access to on-site COVID-19 testing for symptomatic students and staff identified on campus, as well as those with known exposure to individuals with COVID-19. Mostly likely due to the lack of available vaccines. With this new requirement, not sure if in-person is still a go for the kids on 2/8.

Why are you not sure? Are there not enough tests in your area to match this guideline or do you think the schools won't want to test themselves?

 

[neverlandsky]

Why are you not sure? Are there not enough tests in your area to match this guideline or do you think the schools won't want to test themselves?

Lack of resources to test at every school. There's been a lot of hoops to jump through just to get a test to begin with plus the cost of it.

 

[monsterkitty]

Our state dept of education issued a new requirement for when in-person instruction out of alignment with the metrics, schools are required to offer access to on-site COVID-19 testing for symptomatic students and staff identified on campus, as well as those with known exposure to individuals with COVID-19. Mostly likely due to the lack of available vaccines. With this new requirement, not sure if in-person is still a go for the kids on 2/8.

Lack of resources to test at every school. There's been a lot of hoops to jump through just to get a test to begin with plus the cost of it.

Who is paying for these tests? As teachers we are tested every two weeks but our health insurance provider is paying for that. Is the state covering the costs for testing?

My husband’s school is under 70% student attendance, with 25% students out due to quarantine and sickness (almost 1/5 of those students are actively positive). The district refuses to put them on the virtual program. Instead they’re demanding teachers to do everything they can to get that 5% that are out for non-covid reasons to get back. (Meanwhile, those kids could be out for completely legitimate reasons like other medical causes or sickness.)

Is your DH and his co-workers supposed to go the the students' houses and pick them up and drive them to school?

We are a larger school, a few hundred in each class level. My sons kindergarten class had 7 classes of about 20 kids each. This was just his school. There were 3 other schools. So far since September we have had 54 students and 62 staff that have tested positive. This week alone they have had 5 students and 5 staff test positive and they won't update the numbers until about 4 or 5 today. This was just from yesterday. And we are no longer requiring anyone to quarantine from a close contact at school. Only if it was a close contact outside of school will someone need to quarantine. This came out over Christmas break. K-5 started last week 5 days a week and next week 6-12 will be 4 days a week with Fridays being fully remote so teachers can spend time with the fully remote students in they need to. I see things getting worse here before they get better.

In the fall many were saying that there was no spread in schools. It was all happening outside of school. Now many districts are going to the close contact is within 6 feet of the infected person in order to be quarantined. Your district is going to soon find out that COVID is being spread in school no matter how many precautions are taken. It happened our district. It's happening in other districts. People just aren't testing their children as much so they have no idea if their child is asymptomatic.


I am so thankful that my district, as crazy as they may drive us at times, is being very cautious and careful. Trust me, if they weren't I would not have gone back.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

In the fall many were saying that there was no spread in schools. It was all happening outside of school. Now many districts are going to the close contact is within 6 feet of the infected person in order to be quarantined. Your district is going to soon find out that COVID is being spread in school no matter how many precautions are taken. It happened our district. It's happening in other districts. People just aren't testing their children as much so they have no idea if their child is asymptomatic.

I'm going to take issue with your statement. You seem to be under the impression that people simply didn't know any better. People didn't doubt your assertation of what what going on in your area, you shouldn't doubt others. Many were going with information backed up by their areas which continues to be backed up by their areas, not some unprovable point that parents weren't testing their kids in every school in every place in the U.S. You should be able to take people for their word just as they took it for your word.

 

[neverlandsky]

Who is paying for these tests? As teachers we are tested every two weeks but our health insurance provider is paying for that. Is the state covering the costs for testing?

I don't know. That was my question exactly and couldn't find out anything more.

 

[monsterkitty]

I'm going to take issue with your statement. You seem to be under the impression that people simply didn't know any better. People didn't doubt your assertation of what what going on in your area, you shouldn't doubt others. Many were going with information backed up by their areas which continues to be backed up by their areas, not some unprovable point that parents weren't testing their kids in every school in every place in the U.S. You should be able to take people for their word just as they took it for your word.

I am taking her word for it. However, I do think the poster is as upset with the new policy as I would be. That is how I read the post.

As for parents not testing their children - look here on the DIS. I have seen many posts stating that parents don't want to test their children unless necessary because it's not a pleasant test. I get it. There is a person at our testing location who we all call the brain proctologist because she puts the swab so far up our noses. I would not want this person to give a COVID test to my child either.

Finally, I've never said parents aren't testing their kids in every school in every place in the US. As I said, parents aren't testing their kids but I never said all parents. Never have I said that.

My conversation with you is over.

 

[firefly_ris]

Our school district had to test a random 20% of students and staff (result rate was below 1%). In our case the tests were provided by the county (WNY).