I don't love online school as a teacher or as a parent, but I think it is the best of many bad options especially for my kids' school district which is about 96,000 kids big.
I think smaller schools can probably more safely manage COVID precautions (although I think the same thing I talk about below can and will happen to them especially since COVID rates are going up).
Let me flesh out what I briefly alluded to in my prior post about N's field hockey team the other day.
A young person went to a Younglife (this is apparently a religious thing) event.
That teenager was waiting on COVID test results.
Yes--that teen and/or that teen's parents thought it was an a-ok idea to go to a public function while waiting on a COVID test.
I think that is called "doing a Rand Paul."
That young person got a positive result the next day, which means every other kid who attended that event is now COVID-exposed, whether they were right up in this kid's face or all the way across the outside area where the event took place, whether they wore masks or not.
COVID exposure can mean nothing serious or everything serious because you just don't know what people's actions are unless you see them with your own eyes.
(And even then, we have under a year's worth of knowledge about this virus so we are flying blind most of the time.)
As I understand it, some of the friends of the 4-5 field hockey girls who attended the event (but did not attend field hockey conditioning) now have to get tested and quarantine because they socialize outside of field hockey and some of them work at a nursing home.
They have to now act out of an abundance of caution because one person made the call to attend a public event while waiting on COVID results.
As far as I'm concerned, if my kids went back to school in person, I would be spending a sizable portion of my time taking them for COVID tests.
And I imagine they would also be having to do much of their school work online anyway because if they got a COVID test, I would then have to quarantine them until we got the results back.
Which means a whole lot of stopping and starting.
Which is EXACTLY the worst thing for the first weeks of school.
It takes most kids like 6 weeks to even get into any kind of routine at the start of the year.
And if the district ultimately decided to do in-person school, kids' educational time would be sacrificed even if they are in the building.
Because...
--how much waiting time will there be to get temperature checks? If there are 300 kids in a building (lowball figure; my son's elementary has 700 kids; my daughter's high school has 1,400), how long will that take? If there are even half as many kids who opt for in-person school, how long will it take to record temps on 150 kids? Do we line all these kids up 6 feet apart? Where do we line them up? If it is raining, we can't do outside. What do we do with the kids who have fevers? (Since by being in line, they may have already exposed other students?)
(Also, temperature checks don't mean anything, even though every place keeps taking them simply to rule out the people who flagrantly violate the rules and go someplace with a fever.)
--how much waiting time will there be to move students from one area of the building (front door or bus drop off spot) to wherever they are supposed to be in the building? They can't follow social distancing and move kids all at once. How long will kids have to wait in the gym or multi-purpose room while teachers move groups of 5 or 10 kids throughout the building?
--how much waiting time will there be to do restroom breaks? Will there be monitors to do that or will teachers have to stop teaching to monitor? What are the kids doing who are just sitting there? A regular bathroom break takes a minimum of 10 minutes numerous times a day.
--how much waiting time will there be to do lunch? Do cafeteria staff bring it to rooms? What about kids who bring their lunches? Can they go in the halls to lockers to get them? How many can go at once? Then there will be clean-up time in classrooms which will be slower and longer since only a few kids can dispose of stuff to not violate the distancing guidelines.
--how much waiting time will there be to move teachers from one room to another? Kids likely won't be able to change classrooms so teachers will move, which will mean waiting time for kids in classes as they wait for a teacher to come in because they can't be left unsupervised.
--how much waiting time will there be to have kids go to lockers for books? Do they go to lockers? What will teaching kids to use their lockers in middle school be with masks and social distancing? Most kids share lockers. Can that happen now?
--how much waiting time will there be to go outside for recess? Again, there is that movement issue because traveling in a class of 30 kids will not happen. Who cleans the equipment between recesses? Is there wait time for that?
The point here is that the normal "wait" time of school will be magnified to a degree that most parents can't even wrap their heads around because they may not have a clue how long the normal administrative and movement stuff takes on a regular day when there isn't a pandemic.
In-person school will mean parents have an awful lot of stopping and starting work because they have to take their kids to get COVID tests.
And likely have to have them re-tested to prove they are COVID-negative.
In districts like ours that are huge, going back in-person would either require tremendous outlays of money for masks, staff, sanitation, etc or it would require significant outlays of money to use rooms/buildings differently to reduce class sizes by a third (at least).
Our district is a behemoth and something that size can't pivot without a lot of expense and time, which we don't have if we expect our kids to learn something this year.
I think smaller schools can probably more safely manage COVID precautions (although I think the same thing I talk about below can and will happen to them especially since COVID rates are going up).
Let me flesh out what I briefly alluded to in my prior post about N's field hockey team the other day.
A young person went to a Younglife (this is apparently a religious thing) event.
That teenager was waiting on COVID test results.
Yes--that teen and/or that teen's parents thought it was an a-ok idea to go to a public function while waiting on a COVID test.
I think that is called "doing a Rand Paul."
That young person got a positive result the next day, which means every other kid who attended that event is now COVID-exposed, whether they were right up in this kid's face or all the way across the outside area where the event took place, whether they wore masks or not.
COVID exposure can mean nothing serious or everything serious because you just don't know what people's actions are unless you see them with your own eyes.
(And even then, we have under a year's worth of knowledge about this virus so we are flying blind most of the time.)
As I understand it, some of the friends of the 4-5 field hockey girls who attended the event (but did not attend field hockey conditioning) now have to get tested and quarantine because they socialize outside of field hockey and some of them work at a nursing home.
They have to now act out of an abundance of caution because one person made the call to attend a public event while waiting on COVID results.
As far as I'm concerned, if my kids went back to school in person, I would be spending a sizable portion of my time taking them for COVID tests.
And I imagine they would also be having to do much of their school work online anyway because if they got a COVID test, I would then have to quarantine them until we got the results back.
Which means a whole lot of stopping and starting.
Which is EXACTLY the worst thing for the first weeks of school.
It takes most kids like 6 weeks to even get into any kind of routine at the start of the year.
And if the district ultimately decided to do in-person school, kids' educational time would be sacrificed even if they are in the building.
Because...
--how much waiting time will there be to get temperature checks? If there are 300 kids in a building (lowball figure; my son's elementary has 700 kids; my daughter's high school has 1,400), how long will that take? If there are even half as many kids who opt for in-person school, how long will it take to record temps on 150 kids? Do we line all these kids up 6 feet apart? Where do we line them up? If it is raining, we can't do outside. What do we do with the kids who have fevers? (Since by being in line, they may have already exposed other students?)
(Also, temperature checks don't mean anything, even though every place keeps taking them simply to rule out the people who flagrantly violate the rules and go someplace with a fever.)
--how much waiting time will there be to move students from one area of the building (front door or bus drop off spot) to wherever they are supposed to be in the building? They can't follow social distancing and move kids all at once. How long will kids have to wait in the gym or multi-purpose room while teachers move groups of 5 or 10 kids throughout the building?
--how much waiting time will there be to do restroom breaks? Will there be monitors to do that or will teachers have to stop teaching to monitor? What are the kids doing who are just sitting there? A regular bathroom break takes a minimum of 10 minutes numerous times a day.
--how much waiting time will there be to do lunch? Do cafeteria staff bring it to rooms? What about kids who bring their lunches? Can they go in the halls to lockers to get them? How many can go at once? Then there will be clean-up time in classrooms which will be slower and longer since only a few kids can dispose of stuff to not violate the distancing guidelines.
--how much waiting time will there be to move teachers from one room to another? Kids likely won't be able to change classrooms so teachers will move, which will mean waiting time for kids in classes as they wait for a teacher to come in because they can't be left unsupervised.
--how much waiting time will there be to have kids go to lockers for books? Do they go to lockers? What will teaching kids to use their lockers in middle school be with masks and social distancing? Most kids share lockers. Can that happen now?
--how much waiting time will there be to go outside for recess? Again, there is that movement issue because traveling in a class of 30 kids will not happen. Who cleans the equipment between recesses? Is there wait time for that?
The point here is that the normal "wait" time of school will be magnified to a degree that most parents can't even wrap their heads around because they may not have a clue how long the normal administrative and movement stuff takes on a regular day when there isn't a pandemic.
In-person school will mean parents have an awful lot of stopping and starting work because they have to take their kids to get COVID tests.
And likely have to have them re-tested to prove they are COVID-negative.
In districts like ours that are huge, going back in-person would either require tremendous outlays of money for masks, staff, sanitation, etc or it would require significant outlays of money to use rooms/buildings differently to reduce class sizes by a third (at least).
Our district is a behemoth and something that size can't pivot without a lot of expense and time, which we don't have if we expect our kids to learn something this year.
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