Looks like if you want to watch some football you need to dust off your childhood electric football game. One bonus, the players don’t kneel while you sing the national anthem.
Let's check back in after two weeks and see how things are going... Delaware will not regularly announce COVID-19 cases connected to schools https://www.delawareonline.com/stor...-covid-19-cases-connected-schools/3348968001/ The state will not regularly announce positive COVID-19 cases in schools, and will instead do so on a case-by-case basis, public health officials said Tuesday. It will also not require teachers and staff to undergo testing before the school year begins. “There may be times when there’s really no need for the public to know,” said Dr. Karyl Rattay, director of the state Division of Public Health. “For example, if a person was positive, but no one else would have been considered exposed, that’s unlikely to be made public. “However, if there are exposures,” she said, “and there’s reason to make the public aware, we will work with the school district to make sure that people will have the information that they may need.” (More at above url)
I live in a highly educated blue town in a red part of a highly educated blue state: 80percent of the parents here voted to send kids to school in some form (partial days).
In Wake County, North Carolina over 50% of the parents selected to have their children remote only for the fall. Many schools in the western part of the county (near Research Triangle Park) had over 70% selecting remote only. The children who will be going to school will be in school on either a 1 week out of 3 (or 1 week out of 2) in-school schedule with social distancing, etc. School is starting remote for everyone until September 8th (at least) so they can get everything worked out. Going to be a very strange start to school. North Carolina has had significant issues with private schools that started earlier in August. Most have had COVID outbreaks - and many have gone to remote only after a mere two weeks. Similarly nearly all the summer day camps in North Carolina had COVID outbreaks and needed to shut down.
our district is proposing 2 cohorts: 1 cohort does Monday, Tuesday. The second cohort does Thursday, Friday. Wednesday everyone remote learns and you remote learn on the days you aren’t in school. Wednesday and Saturday are disinfecting days. The surrounding districts are going fully remote. Most teachers we have spoken with (and it’s in the hundreds) want to go back. Their unions (and we’ve spoken to dozens) don’t.
Yes, lets reopen schools and have students go 2 times a week in alternating groups. Then, on the off days when their parents have to put them somewhere, they put them in daycare, co-mingling groups even more. Well done. Either the virus is so bad we shouldn't go to school (it isn't) or it is not bad and we should go to school regularly (we should). This middle of the road is so ridiculous, but hey - when you have a narrative you gotta push it.
Over 80% of parents in the U.S. believe that COVID is a threat and do not support sending their children back to school full-time. If you have been missing the recent news - many school systems that have started full-time in their buildings have been forced to close down after a mere 5 to 7 days of classes and switch to virtual learning -- all due to wide-spread COVID breakouts across the students and staff. These school outbreaks have also increased the COVID community spread greatly leading to hospitalization of many older household members of the students. I will admit that attempting a rotating schedule with partial in-school and partial virtual is the hardest on the school system and the parents. The school system must find teachers to cover both in-school and virtual - while also dealing with technology/training issues. The parents need to find coverage for child-care for virtual school days if they work. Seeing that many child-care options such as the YMCA have also closed down due to COVID the situation is getting tougher. I have seen a unique solution for COVID child-care coverage from some local RTP area tech companies. They are offering child-care in your home at low cost. They (via a third party provider) will provide $6 per hour child-care (per household) in-network (note your company pays the rest - $6 is your portion). Their network includes child-care personnel trained to support virtual education ("setting up the technology", "being sure assignments are done"). If a parent does not want to use an in-network child-care personnel then there is a out-of-network option where the plan covers $125 per week paid to the parents. For families with tech jobs with high salaries this solution works out -- because they can easily afford $6 per hour unlike retail workers. The parent can even take this option if they work at home and need to be on conference calls all day and don't have time to supervise their child's virtual learning.
I'm not surprised that 80% favor a mix. Their fear is strong and it is being pushed/nursed by a rabid media. Reading the actual poll: 44% of parents consider sending back kids in person as "safe". 56 percent say not safe, with the subset of 28 percent saying not at all. Those are probably the people I see jogging and riding a bike with a mask. 55 % of the parents consider their community as safe now. 15% not at all. Those are the folks with the masks at the beach. Of the 56 percent who think it isn't safe to send back to school, 44% of those believe it will be longer than January 2021 before it is safe. They should just decide to homeschool and get it over with and let the rest of us go back to a normal life. So why does the headline of the poll state Over 80% of parents in the U.S. believe that COVID is a threat and do not support sending their children back to school full-time?? Simple. It is a narrative. Over 80% support schools offering both in person and online classes - as even I have said I support. It should be a choice. But this does not mean that over 80% of parents want their kids going to school part time in person.
Thanks for parsing the numbers. In summary, the large majority of parents in the U.S. do not support opening K-12 schools full-time for students. Many of the schools that have opened full time have suffered significant COVID-19 outbreaks and had to shutdown and go virtual in under two weeks. There is no ability to perform social distancing in crowded classrooms and hallways if all the students are in school at the same time - COVID outbreak in these situations is inevitable if COVID is already uncontrolled in the community with no contact tracing and an R above 0.8.