Is your county's school reopening a mess like mine?

[randumb0]

I'm in Orange county and we have a dashboard to see the number of infections and quarantines. I found it odd that neighboring counties had less infections yet more listed as quarantined. Turns out our Dept of Health doesn't have enough contact tracers. My coworker's son's class had a student test positive. I asked her what she is supposed to do and she said she doesn't know. She has to wait for a phone call from the health department. What a mess!

 

[Kittyblue]

The schools don't know what to do either. Schools started this week here and already dealing with a mess.

 

[Southernmiss]

Yes. Worse.

 

[brockash]

It seems to be the same as last year, just not as many precautions nor as much panic. It's definitely a mess...has been all along. Honestly until tgis thing is next to dead; I'm not sure if there's a way for it not to be a mess. Kids need to be in school- for lots of reasons; yet it's still a pretty active virus and under 12 still can't be vaccinated. Definitely a mess.

 

[Dan Murphy]

We have state-wide mask mandate for K-12. Also, Chicago today, and all of Cook County on Monday next week, reinstituted mask mandate for anything indoor, shopping, gyms, entertainment, etc.

 

[5Tulips]

Not yet. But probably will be soon. Last year we dealt with all the contact tracing, quarantines and non existent phone calls from DOH. A total of two cases were traced back to in school transmission. There were at least two hundred in our district. Masks were required in school. This year schools are operating as normal. We are bracing for the fallout.

 

[DLgal]

I'm in Orange county and we have a dashboard to see the number of infections and quarantines. I found it odd that neighboring counties had less infections yet more listed as quarantined. Turns out our Dept of Health doesn't have enough contact tracers. My coworker's son's class had a student test positive. I asked her what she is supposed to do and she said she doesn't know. She has to wait for a phone call from the health department. What a mess!

FL or CA?

I'm in OC, CA. School reopening has been smooth.

In our district (and state), masks are required for everyone and it's strongly enforced. They aren't doing contact tracing and no one is required to quarantine unless they have symptoms or a positive test. Everyone (teachers and students) can come to school as long as they are symptom free. A positive case in a classroom has no effect on anyone other than the kid/teacher who tested positive. The rules surrounding symptoms are very strict, however. Kids who show ANY symptoms have to either be evaluated by a doctor and cleared to return with a note or have to test negative for covid before returning.

My husband has covid right now and is in isolation since last Sunday and my kids are allowed to go to school since they have no symptoms. I spoke to the district and school site nurse prior to sending them in. We are all vaccinated, but the rules would not have changed if my kids weren't. We went for PCR tests today just for informational purposes, as none of us have symptoms and it's been 5 days.

 

[dreamin_disney]

It’s a mess! I think parents and staff thought we would be going back with social distancing, plastic barriers in the desk , kids at lunch sitting with space in between students, 3ft a part in line etc. Theres none of that going on. As classified staff Sp Ed aide I’m work with two different teachers and work in 5 different classes.
One teacher allows students to sit next to each other. No wiping down desk between classes. I make sure to give each kid a squirt of hand sanitizer before entering class. First week of school we had 3 sick kids in the three classes I have with that teacher. Two have not returned.

2nd teacher she has a social distancing seating chary in her class and all kids entering class get hand sanitizer. Two students have been out for 3 days no idea why. I work two classes with her.

There are a lot of cases in the district and no one knows what’s going on. Just be a kid gets covid in class doesn’t mean everyone in class is notified or have to quarantine. There’s another aide who works several classes to. She was around family who tested positive but she didn’t. She’s been out but the other aides who work with her or the teachers didn’t get any notice. I only found out because she told another staff that told me. I heard kids being sent home but teachers don’t know if the students have covid or not. Those teachers didn’t know what to do so some went and test and others didn’t .

schools are a super spreader and it will get worse. It sucks because I’m high risk, vaccinated , take precautions and I’m in the middle trying to dodge catching covid. There’s No Support! i don’t have an option to work virtual like pare have a choice to put their kids in virtual . Many of us staff, teachers and parents feel like it’s all about money!


one large school district 3200 staff and students tested positive. School just started last week or this week for them.

another district sent home 300 kids.

not sure about the district I work for

 

[VandVsmama]

I'm in Orange county and we have a dashboard to see the number of infections and quarantines. I found it odd that neighboring counties had less infections yet more listed as quarantined. Turns out our Dept of Health doesn't have enough contact tracers. My coworker's son's class had a student test positive. I asked her what she is supposed to do and she said she doesn't know. She has to wait for a phone call from the health department. What a mess!

I don't know how the rest of schools in our county are handling it, but at the charter school my kids attend, what they do is this:

• each classroom has a seating chart. This is to aid in determining which families need to be notified in the event that a student tests positive for COVID.
• if there's a confirmed case of COVID, the school notifies all families in that student's class that a student in the classroom tested positive.
• for students who had close contact with the infected student ("close contact" = within 6 feet for 15 min or more), those families are notified and those students are asked to quarantine.
• Notifications are not sent out to the entire school for positive cases, but the count of how many current positive cases there are at the school is posted on their website.

My kids missed 3 days of school this week because they both came down with COVID symptoms last weekend. Got them tested for COVID and results came back on Wednesday as negative, so they returned to school the following day. Since the results were negative, no notification was sent out to other families at the school.

 

[low-key]

its a mess I feel bad for all who have to deal with it, but it feels so good to getting or world back (careful baby steps)

 

[Boopuff]

It’s the worst! We started out “adulting” if you’re vaccinated show proof to principal and you could choose to mask or not, we’ll now it’s changed back to masks full time and all kids full time. The extra cleaning (we must do - what’s lunch? Or planning? We’re cleaning!) If we go back online I’m quitting.

 

[Mango7100]

The public school system in my TN county is literally doing nothing. No masks, no distancing, not even contact tracing/quarantine. Have no idea how many cases are in school because there is no reporting. If you don’t report cases, it doesn’t exist right? School staff are not allowed to give parents any information about positive students or staff—it’s all hush hush but based on reports on social media there’s a lot of it in the schools. Some parents have offered to buy HEPA filters for classrooms and were told they are not allowed.
The only thing my daughters private school is doing is contact tracing and notifying parents of cases. We have already been told that even though we are private they will follow our governors executive order to allow opt outs of mask mandates—but there isn’t one to begin with anyway. We did purchase a HEPA room purifier for my child’s classroom.

 

[Lupin]

My son goes to a charter school near Boston. k-12 with 1300 students. They were the first in the state to close during the pandemic and the first to re-open with full-time in-person learning. Despite mandating masks and social distancing rules we thought they were going to shutdown within weeks. They went the entire school year without a single COVID transmission in school. We just started yesterday with the rules and protocols in place and are keeping our fingers crossed that we don't get an outbreak. The Delta variant has us pretty worried though. I don't think we'll be as lucky this year but on the bright side the vaccination rates in MA are pretty high.

 

[Heather07438]

Passaic Co, NJ: A couple of months ago they said schools would return to full normal going back-to-school in Sept as usual. No more virtual learning (full in-person only unless opting for homeschool), full normal hours/schedule, and masks optional. Then a few weeks ago they had to change that last part, masks mandatory when they go back in 2 weeks. Fall should be fine. Winter could pose a problem but maybe not. We'll see.

Orlando residents are asked to cut back on water usage as the virus surges in Florida.
to preserve the city’s supply of liquid oxygen, which is being used to treat a surging number of Covid-19 patients. Orange County is struggling in many ways.

 

[CdnCarrie]

School doesn’t start here until after Labour Day long weekend.
Masks will be mandatory so I don’t anticipate a huge explosion of cases.
Plus we have like 81% of the population vaccinated.

 

[neverlandsky]

We’ve had the pleasure of experiencing two different school districts in neighboring States that almost mirrored each other. I have to say we’re extremely pleased how everything is being handled.

 

[randumb0]

FL or CA?

I'm in OC, CA. School reopening has been smooth.

In our district (and state), masks are required for everyone and it's strongly enforced. They aren't doing contact tracing and no one is required to quarantine unless they have symptoms or a positive test. Everyone (teachers and students) can come to school as long as they are symptom free. A positive case in a classroom has no effect on anyone other than the kid/teacher who tested positive. The rules surrounding symptoms are very strict, however. Kids who show ANY symptoms have to either be evaluated by a doctor and cleared to return with a note or have to test negative for covid before returning.

My husband has covid right now and is in isolation since last Sunday and my kids are allowed to go to school since they have no symptoms. I spoke to the district and school site nurse prior to sending them in. We are all vaccinated, but the rules would not have changed if my kids weren't. We went for PCR tests today just for informational purposes, as none of us have symptoms and it's been 5 days.

FL

 

[Colleen27]

Not yet, but I'm fairly sure it will be. We don't have enough health department staff to effectively contact trace even small numbers of cases, and I'm hearing from parents with kids in fall sports that there have already been cases and parents got the notification days or even as much as a week after the positive test. There's also really no consistency in how they're defining "close contact" at this point for quarantine purposes; one friend's daughter runs cross country, hardly an in-your-face sport, and the whole team was told to quarantine after a teammate tested positive, but there have been two cases on the football team and supposedly no one else on the team was in close enough contact with those players to need to quarantine. I'm pretty sure that coach is working on the assumption that nothing that happens outdoors meets the standard for quarantine.

Classes don't start until after Labor Day so I suppose there's still time for a more consistent policy to be adopted before the district has to contend with possible large-scale exposures, but with no mask mandate or mitigation measures continuing and a low local vaccination rate, I figure it is just a matter of time until we're another of those school districts with dozens or hundreds of kids quarantining almost right off the bat. I am so glad DD has one more year of private school before she jumps into that whole mess. She goes back next Thursday, in person without a mask mandate or distancing, but we have a 100% staff vaccination rate and I know the other 3 girls in her seating cluster are all vaccinated so I doubt she'll run into any problems. And hopefully by next fall, when she transitions to public school, this will all be behind us.

 

[RangerPooh]

Our district doesn't share information on numbers infected or in quarantine. What they do provide is an email if someone in your child's class tested positive. Of course, you'll receive a call from the county health dept if your child was deemed to have been in proximity. We have two in middle school and two in high school. I receive at minimum one email per day, and have yet to receive a call saying mine was in proximity. It's ridiculous. I don't think the teachers know who the kid sits next to. I asked one of my middle school sons yesterday how many kids were out? He said there were 5 or 6 out due to Covid in one class alone. It's frustrating!

The letters claim confidentiality, but I wish they'd hare which class the infected child was in. Especially as the governor has declared that masks can not be mandated.

 

[DisneyHardin]

I teach in the largest district in KY and we are definitely building the plane while we are flying it. We started back to school Aug. 11 and have already had 1000's of kids quarantined. We have 93,000 students total and as of yesterday, 2200 were quarantined. At my school, we have about 400 kids and have had 3 positive cases and about 25 kids in quarantine.

The *awesome* KY State Legislature passed a bill that requires all districts to be in school at full capacity 5 days per week and only allows for 10 virtual days per school year. There have already been several smaller districts in the state that have shut down for a few weeks to try and get things under control, but they are using "snow days" I believe.