COVID-19

[NTP66]

Looking at the CDC guidelines for school, which particular line items are outrageous? Nothing is jumping out at me that makes me go "this is absurd!", so I want to see where I should be outraged.

[shafnutz05]

Looking at the CDC guidelines for school, which particular line items are outrageous? Nothing is jumping out at me that makes me go "this is absurd!", so I want to see where I should be outraged.

For starters

Create distance between children on school buses (g., seat children one child per row, skip rows) when possible.

Have children bring their own meals as feasible, or serve individually plated meals in classrooms instead of in a communal dining hall or cafeteria, while ensuring the safety of children with food allergies.

Face masks on everyone over 2, etc. I didn't use the word "outrage", you did. At this point, they don't even know if children can transmit COVID. Those guidelines will essentially change school forever, and take away just about everything that makes school "school".

No sitting next to anyone on the bus? No talking/walking with friends at school? No playground use unless it is disinfected every 20 minutes basically? No studying next to each other? No group projects? And so on.

My real worry is that once some of these changes are implemented, they will be hard to roll back. I know you've been consistently on the "nothing is too careful" side for a while so I know I won't change your mind.

[shafnutz05]

And again, before anyone accuses me of being anti science, I've been fighting with wingnuts on social media for two months.

[Freddy Rumsen]

Can you imagine how many more buses and bus drivers we would need to implement that one one item?

On the second one that Shad mentioned something like 70% of the kids at my local elementary school are on free lunch. On what planet are those kids going to bring their own food? And most elementary schools are woefully understaffed already. You really think districts have the money to hire new cafeteria workers to plate all that food?

Anyone, and I'll use the word, who doesn't think that's outrageous isn't dealing in real life.

[King Colby]

Closing cafeterias and making students eat at their desks would be very sad

[NTP66]

Looking at the CDC guidelines for school, which particular line items are outrageous? Nothing is jumping out at me that makes me go "this is absurd!", so I want to see where I should be outraged.

For starters

Create distance between children on school buses (g., seat children one child per row, skip rows) when possible.

Have children bring their own meals as feasible, or serve individually plated meals in classrooms instead of in a communal dining hall or cafeteria, while ensuring the safety of children with food allergies.

Face masks on everyone over 2, etc. I didn't use the word "outrage", you did. At this point, they don't even know if children can transmit COVID. Those guidelines will essentially change school forever, and take away just about everything that makes school "school".

No sitting next to anyone on the bus? No talking/walking with friends at school? No playground use unless it is disinfected every 20 minutes basically? No studying next to each other? No group projects? And so on.

My real worry is that once some of these changes are implemented, they will be hard to roll back. I know you've been consistently on the "nothing is too careful" side for a while so I know I won't change your mind.

Addressing these in order:

Create distance between children on school buses (g., seat children one child per row, skip rows) when possible.

This is probably close to impossible to accomplish for most schools. Ours may be able to do it since we don't require many buses, but who knows. I already drop my daughter off at school every day, and will likely pick her up for the foreseeable future.

Have children bring their own meals as feasible, or serve individually plated meals in classrooms instead of in a communal dining hall or cafeteria, while ensuring the safety of children with food allergies.

This was already being discussed at our school, and I'd honestly have little problem with the kids eating lunch in their classrooms where they sit, because it's easier to distance yourself when you have 1:1 seating. Most kids already bring their own lunch anyway, so it's not a huge shift.

Face masks on everyone over 2, etc. I didn't use the word "outrage", you did. At this point, they don't even know if children can transmit COVID. Those guidelines will essentially change school forever, and take away just about everything that makes school "school".

No issues on face masks. It's quite literally the least you can do, and I'm always going to err on the side of caution when it comes to kids. I have a feeling that kids will whine about this far less than adults, judging by what I see on social media today.

No sitting next to anyone on the bus? No talking/walking with friends at school? No playground use unless it is disinfected every 20 minutes basically? No studying next to each other? No group projects? And so on.

My real worry is that once some of these changes are implemented, they will be hard to roll back. I know you've been consistently on the "nothing is too careful" side for a while so I know I won't change your mind.

Welcome to highly transmittable diseases? Life has to adapt. And this isn't deemed permanent yet. If things go well, we may be able to go back to the way things were at some point. If a vaccine is developed, then it will just be added to the list of vaccinations all students must have in order to attend public school. It sucks, but we have few options here. Our school district has mentioned a hybrid environment where students attend on-site half of the week and virtually the other half. If that means an actual live online meeting style remote environment, I'd be open to that. I imagine the kids who either don't have internet access or a device (our school does hand them out to those who need them) will likely be on-site more than others.

[Freddy Rumsen]

That kind of stuff may work in a suburban environment with active parents, but it is just a flat impossible task for rural and poor urban districts.

You think the mom (since dad is not in the picture for a plurality of kids in these kinds of districts) or grandma who is already working two jobs has the time/ability to helm a hybrid environment?

The horror stories I've heard from teachers over the last two months do not fill me with much confidence that any of these ideas wouldn't just increase the learning gap between rich and poor.

[Nuge]

In my experience with high school students, they will take those masks off any chance they get. Especially in rural areas where at home they hear how much it "infringes on their rights".

[NTP66]

I agree, it's probably much less likely to work in the rural/poor areas. They're just guidelines, so I don't expect them all to be followed. If you implement a number of them, that should help.

[count2infinity]

To Freddy's point... in rural areas, the bus thing will never happen. It just can't. One bus goes out and picks up a full load of kids. Some of those routes take over an hour and a half from their start point to school. Now you have to send 3-5x more buses out that way?

Lunch: Nope. They need to invest more money into hiring more workers and provide more meals, not less. The number of kids that can't bring lunch from home because there isn't anything at home to bring is heartbreaking. Now if they want to have assigned seating for a while to keep social distancing in place, I'm for that. If that means eating in classrooms, so be it.

Everything else seems fine by me for a period of time. At a certain point we, as a civilization, will come to some sort of middle ground where these new things will just be normal to us, and some precautions we're taking now will be thrown out the window and the risk involved in doing so will just become the risk we take in living our lives (like so many other risks we take daily).

[Trip McNeely]

Our daycare is saying that kids 2 and over need to wear a mask....but if they want to take it off, they are allowed. So essentially they don’t need to wear a mask.

These are guidelines. We have to remember that our country is full of very dumb parents and it’s better to over-guideline than under-guideline is almost every situation in regards to schooling/daycare

[RonnieFranchise]

In my experience with high school students, they will take those masks off any chance they get. Especially in rural areas where at home they hear how much it "infringes on their rights".

Yeah, you hear your parent dodint about Circle K violating their rights for having to wear a mask for 5 minutes to run in for a pack of smokes and a scratch ticket, are you seriously going to wear the mask around your high school?

[willeyeam]

They say when possible right? I don't read them as requirements, just guidelines for the ones that are possible to implement. Reading them obviously not many will be able to be implemented for most

[NTP66]

Let's be honest - a lot of people already don't want to listen to the CDC now, so why should these guidelines even matter?

[MWB]

Having desks be six feet apart reduces my capacity by about half. Also, this now creates and “sit and get” approach, which is what very few do anymore. No more group work or collaborative learning.

One way hallway routes...not sure how that works in my school. We have a central area and each grade has spokes off the center. One way means going outside and waking around the building.

Staggering arrival and departure times and other “crowd reducing measures.” My school has about 1400 kids. Implementing some of these probably reduces instruction time by half, conservatively.

The only way I see this being feasible is by reducing school time to every other or every third day. At least for most schools around me. Smaller schools wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

[faftorial]

A lot of ITT today.

[MWB]

They say when possible right? I don't read them as requirements, just guidelines for the ones that are possible to implement. Reading them obviously not many will be able to be implemented for most

Not many schools want to fight lawsuits when the argument will be, “the CDC gave guidelines you refused to follow.”

[willeyeam]

They say when possible right? I don't read them as requirements, just guidelines for the ones that are possible to implement. Reading them obviously not many will be able to be implemented for most

Not many schools want to fight lawsuits when the argument will be, “the CDC gave guidelines you refused to follow.”

Yeah that's a good point

[MWB]

Also, re buses... we already have a bus driver shortage and buses that do double routes. It’s a small area that’s covered, but buses get to school 15 minutes late and leave school 30-45 minutes after dismissal in normal times.

[grunthy]

There might never be a vaccine. Are we going to live like this forever then? Society would collapse.

[MWB]

Our school district has mentioned a hybrid environment where students attend on-site half of the week and virtually the other half. If that means an actual live online meeting style remote environment, I'd be open to that. I imagine the kids who either don't have internet access or a device (our school does hand them out to those who need them) will likely be on-site more than others.

This would require greater parent involvement and more technology. Zoom is easy if I’m sitting in front of my screen, but if I’m being recorded teaching a class, it’s a little different. You’d need parents to make sure they have the kids do the work, so that the days they’re in school are just a review of the previous days material. Otherwise we’re just cutting the year in half and covering half the content.

[count2infinity]

There might never be a vaccine. Are we going to live like this forever then? Society would collapse.

A lot of ITT today.

[Freddy Rumsen]

Again, this is anecdotal, but talking with administrators and teachers in maybe the best district in South Carolina and they are saying less than 30% of students have engaged in what they are calling "consistent attendance and work completion" with zoom, google teams, etc...

I don't even want to know what that number looks like in non-wealthy districts.

[count2infinity]

My mom is a middle school math teacher in one of the poorest* districts in PA. They pretty much just packed it in when this broke out and said "see ya next year!" A lot of the students don't have access to online learning because they don't have equipment to handle it and/or internet that can handle it.

*-I don't know if "poorest" is correct... as far as money available for spending on students, it's toward the bottom of the list.

[MWB]

Again, this is anecdotal, but talking with administrators and teachers in maybe the best district in South Carolina and they are saying less than 30% of students have engaged in what they are calling "consistent attendance and work completion" with zoom, google teams, etc...

I don't even want to know what that number looks like in non-wealthy districts.

I’m at around 50% of students completing all the work each week, and about 15% completing none of the work. The others are somewhere in the middle. I teach a grade level class. I know the advanced classes are getting much higher numbers. However, we can’t do direct instruction, and it’s a pretty well-off area.

As you say, poor areas are not doing well at all.