the virus & the education industry (ie. what should schools do)

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  • July 12, 2020 at 11:51 am #117892
    zn
    Moderator

    ==

    July 12, 2020 at 11:55 am #117893
    zn
    Moderator

    Three Arizona teachers who shared a classroom got coronavirus. One of them died

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/12/us/arizona-teachers-coronavirus/index.html

    Three teachers who shared a summer classroom at a school in Arizona all contracted coronavirus last month, leaving one of them dead.

    Kimberley Chavez Lopez Byrd, 61, died June 26, less than two weeks after she was hospitalized. The other two teachers — Jena Martinez and Angela Skillings — said they’re still struggling with the effects of the virus that has killed nearly 135,000 people nationwide.

    All three teachers wore masks and gloves, used hand sanitizer and socially distanced, but still got sick, according to school officials at the small community in the eastern part of the state.

    Kimberley Byrd had worked at the Hayden Winkelman School District for 38 years — so long that she’d started teaching the children of her former students.

    “Losing Mrs. Byrd in our small rural community was devastating. She was an excellent educator with a huge heart,” said Pamela Gonzalez, principal of Leonor Hambly K8. “We find comfort in knowing her story may bring awareness to the importance of keeping our school employees safe and our precious students safe in this pandemic.”

    The infection started in June

    Kimberley Byrd started feeling unwell in June. She was prone to sinus infections, and also had asthma, diabetes and lupus. Her doctor gave her antibiotics and steroids and on June 13, she went to the emergency room, according to her husband, Jesse Byrd Sr.
    She was admitted to the hospital and immediately put on oxygen, but her husband was not allowed to be with her. The next morning, she called him to say doctors were putting her on a ventilator. That was the last time they spoke.

    “I just had this horrible gut-wrenching feeling just knowing how much of a struggle this was going to be because I knew her lungs were compromised even before this … fear, just the worst fear that you could feel,” Byrd said. “I knew it was going to be rough on her.”

    Days later, Jesse Byrd, his daughter, son, daughter-in-law, 4-year-old granddaughter and several other relatives contracted Covid-19. His wife’s brother’s also tested positive and has been on a ventilator for over 27 days, he told CNN Saturday night.
    Jesse Byrd said his wife’s condition started improving and the doctors woke her up to see if she could tolerate being intubated while semiconscious. When she woke, she had a panic attack and started regressing.

    “We just prayed for a miracle, and we put her in God’s hands and we said either he’s gonna work a miracle in her and save her or he’s gonna take her home,” Jesse Byrd said. “She didn’t make it … It’s been devastating for us here in our home.”
    She died just short of their 24th wedding anniversary.

    Kimberley Byrd loved the outdoors, said Jeff Gregorich, the superintendent of Hayden Winkelman Unifed School District. “One of my fondest memories was every time I would see her, she would show me [pictures of] her last weekend fishing at the lake,” he said.
    Jesse Byrd said his wife had a passion for teaching and cared for her students. “A lot of her classroom rules were based around kids respecting each other and being kind to each other and not bullying — that was really important to her,” he said.

    Gregorich reiterated the three teachers were careful and still got Covid-19.

    “I think that’s really the message or the concern that our staff has is we can’t even keep our staff safe by themselves … how are we going to keep 20 kids in a classroom safe? I just don’t see how that’s possible to do that,” he said.

    Byrd said reopening schools will put people in their small community at risk and he does not want to see other families go through a similar experience.

    “Many grandparents, wind up being caretakers to kids when they get off school- mom and dad are working and a lot of grandparents are even raising their grandchildren. So, many of these grandparents fall into this high risk category of being older with more health issues,” he said.

    “They have no business opening the schools to try and get back to a traditional classroom … let’s get through this pandemic first before we try to get back to normal.”

    July 12, 2020 at 3:25 pm #117904
    Zooey
    Moderator

    How to Reopen Schools: What Science and Other Countries Teach Us
    The pressure to bring American students back to classrooms is intense, but the calculus is tricky with infections still out of control in many communities.

    By Pam Belluck, Apoorva Mandavilli and Benedict Carey
    July 11, 2020

    link https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/11/health/coronavirus-schools-reopen.html?fbclid=IwAR1eaVtVh7cg625vf46u6klRJlQQg3AorJP-v2opXz5BatF85Qz4vp6HuGE

    As school districts across the United States consider whether and how to restart in-person classes, their challenge is complicated by a pair of fundamental uncertainties: No nation has tried to send children back to school with the virus raging at levels like America’s, and the scientific research about transmission in classrooms is limited.

    The World Health Organization has now concluded that the virus is airborne in crowded, indoor spaces with poor ventilation, a description that fits many American schools. But there is enormous pressure to bring students back — from parents, from pediatricians and child development specialists, and from President Trump.

    “I’m just going to say it: It feels like we’re playing Russian roulette with our kids and our staff,” said Robin Cogan, a nurse at the Yorkship School in Camden, N.J., who serves on the state’s committee on reopening schools.

    Data from around the world clearly shows that children are far less likely to become seriously ill from the coronavirus than adults. But there are big unanswered questions, including how often children become infected and what role they play in transmitting the virus. Some research suggests younger children are less likely to infect other people than teenagers are, which would make opening elementary schools less risky than high schools, but the evidence is not conclusive.

    The experience abroad has shown that measures such as physical distancing and wearing masks in schools can make a difference. Another important variable is how widespread the virus is in the community over all, because that will affect how many people potentially bring it into a school.

    For most districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrids that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online.

    “You have to do a lot more than just waving your hands and say make it so,” said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a professor of the practice at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “First you have to control the community spread and then you have to open schools thoughtfully.”

    The transmission puzzle
    Though children are at much lower risk of getting seriously ill from the coronavirus than adults, the risk is not zero. A small number of children have died and others needed intensive care because they suffered respiratory failure or an inflammatory syndrome that caused heart or circulatory problems.

    The larger concern with reopening schools is the potential for children to become infected, many with no symptoms, and then spread the virus to others, including family members, teachers and other school employees. Most evidence to date suggests that even if children under 12 are infected at the same rates as the adults around them, they are less likely to spread it. The American Academy of Pediatrics has cited some of this data to recommend that schools reopen with proper safety precautions.

    But the bulk of the evidence was collected in countries that were already in lockdown or had begun to implement other preventive measures. And few countries have systematically tested children for the virus or for antibodies that would indicate whether they had been exposed to the virus.

    Infectious disease specialists have been modeling schools’ impact on community spread beginning as far back as February.

    In March, most modelers agreed that closing schools would slow the progression of infections. But wider measures, like social distancing, proved to have a far greater containing effect, overshadowing the results of school closings, according to recent analyses.

    The risk of reopening “will depend on how well schools contain transmission, with masks, for instance, or limiting occupancy,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, a professor of biology and statistics at the University of Texas, Austin, who has been consulting with the city and school districts. “The background community transmission rate in August will also be a factor.”

    In Austin, for example, which like cities in Florida and Arizona has seen a recent acceleration in new cases, the estimated infection rate now is about seven per 1,000 residents. That means a school with 500 students would have about four carrying the coronavirus. “The school might be able to contain those, depending on the measures it takes,” Dr. Meyers said.

    If not, schools could help incubate outbreaks, given that they’re enclosed facilities where students, especially younger ones, are likely to have great difficulty social distancing, never mind wearing masks. Even if it turns out that children do not spread the virus efficiently, all it would take is one or two to seed new chains.

    The evidence from abroad
    So far, countries that reopened schools after reducing infection levels — and imposed requirements like physical distancing and limits on class sizes — have not seen a surge in coronavirus cases.

    Norway and Denmark are good examples. Both reopened their schools in April, a month or so after they were closed, but they initially opened them only for younger children, keeping high schools shut until later. They strengthened sanitizing procedures, and have kept class size limited, children in small groups at recess and space between desks. Neither country has seen a significant increase in cases.

    There have not yet been rigorous scientific studies on the potential for school-based spread, but a smattering of case reports, most of them not yet peer-reviewed, bolster the notion that it is not inevitably a high risk.

    One snapshot comes from a study in Ireland of six infected people (two high school students, an elementary student and three adults) who spent time in schools before they were closed in March. The researchers analyzed 1,155 contacts of the six patients to see if any had been found to have confirmed coronavirus infection. The contacts included participants in school activities that could be fertile ground for transmission, like music lessons on woodwind instruments, choir practice and sports. None of the students appeared to have infected any other people, the authors reported, adding that the only documented transmission of the virus was to two adults who were in contact with one of the infected adults outside of school.

    But there have been school-based outbreaks in countries with higher community infection levels and countries that apparently eased safety guidelines too soon. In Israel, the virus infected more than 200 students and staff after schools reopened in early May and lifted limits on class size a few weeks later, according to a report by University of Washington researchers.

    Case studies in some countries suggest differences in virus transmission in younger children compared to older children.

    In one community in northern France, Crépy-en-Valois, two high school teachers became ill with Covid-19 in early February, before schools closed. Scientists from the Institut Pasteur later tested the school’s students and staff for coronavirus antibodies. They found antibodies in 38 percent of the students, 43 percent of the teachers, and 59 percent of other school staff, said Dr. Arnaud Fontanet, an epidemiologist at the institute who led the study and is a member of a committee advising the French government.

    “Clearly you know that the virus circulated in the high school,” Dr. Fontanet said.

    Later, the team tested students and staff from six elementary schools in the community. The closure of schools in mid-February provided an opportunity to see if younger children had become infected when schools were in session, the point when the virus struck high school students.

    Researchers found antibodies in only 9 percent of elementary students, 7 percent of teachers and 4 percent of other staff. They identified three students in three different elementary schools who had attended classes with acute coronavirus symptoms before the schools closed. None appeared to have infected other children, teachers or staff, Dr. Fontanet said. Two of those symptomatic students had siblings in the high school and the third had a sister who worked in the high school, he said.

    The research also indicated that when an elementary school student tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, there was a very high probability that the student’s parents had also been infected, Dr. Fontanet said. The probability was not nearly as high for parents of high school students. “When I look at the timing, we think it started in the high school, moved into the families and then to the young students,” he said.

    Dr. Fontanet said that the findings suggest that older children may be able to transmit the virus more easily than younger children.

    That pattern may also be reflected by the experience in Israel, where one of the largest school outbreaks, involving about 175 students and staff, occurred in Gymnasia Rehavia, a middle and high school in Jerusalem.

    There are different theories about why older children would be more likely to transmit the virus than younger children. Some scientists say that younger children are less likely to have Covid-19 symptoms like coughs and less likely to have strong speaking voices, both of which can transmit the virus in droplets. Other researchers are examining whether proteins that enable the virus to enter lung cells and replicate are less abundant in children, limiting the severity of their infection and potentially their ability to transmit the virus.

    What schools can do
    Testing for infections in schools is essential, public health experts said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends testing of students or teachers based only on symptoms or a history of exposure. But that will not catch everyone who is infected.

    “We know that asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic spread is real, and we know that kids are less likely to show symptoms if they’re infected than adults,” said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency medicine doctor and expert in adolescent health at Brown University. Schools should randomly test students and teachers, she said, but that may be impossible given the lack of funding and limited testing even in hospitals

    Countries that have reopened schools have implemented a range of safety guidelines.

    Some countries initially brought back only a portion of their students — younger children in Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Switzerland and Greece; older children in Germany, according to the report by University of Washington researchers. Belgium brought back students in shifts on alternate days.

    Several countries limited class size, often allowing a maximum of 10 to 15 students in a classroom. Many place desks several feet apart. Several countries group children in pods or cohorts with social interaction largely restricted to those groups, especially at recess and lunchtime.

    Mask-wearing policies vary. In Asia, where the practice of wearing masks during flu season is common, many countries are requiring masks in school. Elsewhere, some countries required masks for only some students or staff, such as teachers in Belgium and high school students in France, according to the University of Washington report.

    In Germany, students who test negative for the virus do not have to wear masks, according to the report, which said that since opening schools, Germany has seen increased transmission of the virus among students, but not school staff.

    The C.D.C. has outlined steps schools can take to minimize the risks for students, including maintaining a distance of six feet, washing hands and wearing masks.

    “The guidelines are already exceptionally weak,” said Carl Bergstrom, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. He and others said they feared that the recommendations would get watered down even more in response to political pressure.

    The C.D.C. has been working on new recommendations for reopening schools for several weeks, in consultation with organizations like the National Association of School Nurses, according to a C.D.C. spokeswoman. The five planned documents include guidance on symptom screening and face masks, and a checklist for parents or guardians trying to decide whether to send their children to school. But they do not include any information on improving ventilation or curtailing airborne spread of the virus.

    Schools will need to ensure that they circulate fresh air, whether by filtering the air, pumping it in from the outside, or simply by opening windows, said Saskia Popescu, a hospital epidemiologist at The University of Arizona. School nurses like Ms. Cogan will also need protective equipment like gloves, gowns and N95 masks.

    There are differences in how other countries are responding when coronavirus cases are identified in schools, with some countries, like Israel, closing entire schools for a single case and others taking the more targeted approach of sending students and teachers in an affected classroom into home quarantine for two weeks.

    Dr. Kathryn Edwards, an infectious disease specialist and professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, is advising Nashville schools on reopening approaches. She said the district is still evaluating how far apart desks should be. “Some people say you only need three feet and others say you need six feet, and others wonder with the aerosol issue, do we need more distance?”

    Dr. Edwards said she was disappointed by Nashville’s decision, announced Thursday, to conduct classes online for the first month of school, at least until Labor Day.

    Keeping schools closed for a prolonged stretch has worrisome implications for social and academic development, child development experts say. It also became evident this spring that denying children a real school day deepened racial and economic inequalities.

    “There is really damage to kids if they don’t go to school,” Dr. Edwards said. “I think we have got to think of the kids and getting them back to school safely.”

    July 12, 2020 at 3:35 pm #117907
    zn
    Moderator

    from New York Times: Internal CDC documents warn full reopening of schools is ‘highest risk’ for coronavirus spread

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/11/politics/cdc-documents-warn-high-risk-schools-reopening/index.html?fbclid=IwAR1VzHij50OSfMmCobOXBea3r4CJkc3Zn3oOnrbtoFaLv2w-JO0lDAmSp3U

    Internal documents from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that fully reopening K-12 schools and universities would be the “highest risk” for the spread of coronavirus, according to a New York Times report, as President Donald Trump and his administration push for students and teachers to return in-person to classrooms.

    The 69-page document obtained by the Times marked “For Internal Use Only” was among materials for federal public health response teams deployed to coronavirus hotspots to help local public health officials handle the outbreak, the newspaper reported.

    July 13, 2020 at 11:40 am #117936
    zn
    Moderator

    DeVos Wants To Cut Off Govt. Funding If Schools Don’t Reopen; Chris Wallace “You Can’t Do That”

    link https://www.newsandguts.com/video/devos-wants-to-cut-off-govt-funding-if-schools-dont-reopen-chris-wallace-you-cant-do-that/?fbclid=IwAR3T3LfaNYYZQA4kgt4GeTuuKmPbT8c1KAc2Zo9P2HkCA-3xmbUG2Vs_Fu0

    July 13, 2020 at 3:18 pm #117948
    zn
    Moderator

    Jason Overstreet@JasonOverstreet
    BREAKING: All schools in Los Angeles and San Diego Counties will be closed for the fall and will only be offering online classes.

    July 13, 2020 at 4:21 pm #117950
    Zooey
    Moderator

    July 13, 2020 at 6:34 pm #117957
    wv
    Participant

    Whats that line from The Hunt For Red October? You guys know the one i mean.

    November cant come soon enough. Jeezus.

    w
    v

    July 13, 2020 at 7:10 pm #117959
    zn
    Moderator
    wv wrote:

    Whats that line from The Hunt For Red October? You guys know the one i mean.

    November cant come soon enough. Jeezus.

    w
    v

    July 13, 2020 at 10:55 pm #117966
    zn
    Moderator

    from Facebook

    Mary E. Joyce:

    To Betsy DeVos, we “teachers” have a few questions for you:

    • If a teacher tests positive for COVID-19 are they required to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Is their sick leave covered, paid?

    • If that teacher has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, do all 150 of those students need to then stay home and quarantine for 14 days?

    • Do all 150 of those students now have to get tested? Who pays for those tests? Are they happening at school? How are the parents being notified? Does everyone in each of those kids’ families need to get tested? Who pays for that?

    • What if someone who lives in the same house as a teacher tests positive? Does that teacher now need to take 14 days off of work to quarantine? Is that time off covered? Paid?

    • Where is the district going to find a substitute teacher who will work in a classroom full of exposed, possibly infected students for substitute pay?

    • Substitutes teach in multiple schools. What if they are diagnosed with COVID-19? Do all the kids in each school now have to quarantine and get tested? Who is going to pay for that?

    • What if a student in your kid’s class tests positive? What if your kid tests positive? Does every other student and teacher they have been around quarantine? Do we all get notified who is infected and when? Or because of HIPAA regulations are parents and teachers just going to get mysterious “may have been in contact” emails all year long?

    • What is this stress going to do to our teachers? How does it affect their health and well-being? How does it affect their ability to teach? How does it affect the quality of education they are able to provide? What is it going to do to our kids? What are the long-term effects of consistently being stressed out?

    • How will it affect students and faculty when the first teacher in their school dies from this? The first parent of a student who brought it home? The first kid?

    • How many more people are going to die, that otherwise would not have if we had stayed home longer?

    30% of the teachers in the US are over 50. About 16% of the total deaths in the US are people between the ages of 45-65.

    We are choosing to put our teachers in danger.
    We’re not paying them more.

    We aren’t spending anywhere near the right amount to protect them. And in turn, we are putting ourselves and our kids in danger.”

    July 14, 2020 at 9:45 pm #117997
    wv
    Participant

    July 15, 2020 at 7:36 pm #118031
    Zooey
    Moderator

    Districts all over California are going to full online to start the year. My district is still planning to open, but with Sacramento just announcing a couple hours ago that they are out, my district (adjacent) will likely follow within a day or two.

    And some teachers are upset. About 1/4 of our staff is anti-maskers to the point of saying they would refuse to wear a mask.

    July 16, 2020 at 1:16 am #118038
    zn
    Moderator
    Zooey wrote:

    About 1/4 of our staff is anti-maskers to the point of saying they would refuse to wear a mask.

    Man.

    Educators are supposed to be educated.

    July 16, 2020 at 11:04 am #118047
    Zooey
    Moderator
    zn wrote:
    Zooey wrote:

    About 1/4 of our staff is anti-maskers to the point of saying they would refuse to wear a mask.

    Man.

    Educators are supposed to be educated.

    Yeah. Well. So I’m seeing comments all over the place saying, “Hey, what’s this shit about not being able to enforce a mask policy? Schools seem to be able to enforce skirt length, and spaghetti straps. Oh…snap!”

    Okay. Your spaghetti straps didn’t kill anybody.

    And you didn’t spend your day switching your skirt every 30 seconds.

    And the teacher sent you to the office when it was convenient, and that was the end of it. There wasn’t a classroom full of kids that switched back and forth between clothes any time the teacher turned her back. Nor did they cluster in that alcove by the gym to violate the policy until an adult came near, and then switch back.

    I guarantee there are a million kids who think the mask rule is as dumb and pointless and the dress code policies, and they will violate it as often as they can to prove their courage and wisdom. With the tacit support of some of the teachers.

    That’s American schools in 2020.

    July 16, 2020 at 9:28 pm #118072
    zn
    Moderator

    July 17, 2020 at 1:44 pm #118082
    zn
    Moderator

    July 17, 2020 at 3:10 pm #118085
    Zooey
    Moderator

    July 22, 2020 at 1:07 am #118225
    zn
    Moderator

    July 23, 2020 at 7:48 pm #118322
    zn
    Moderator

    Jim Acosta@Acosta
    Trump is canceling part of his convention because of the threat posed by the virus while also pushing schools to reopen at the same time.

    July 23, 2020 at 9:01 pm #118324
    InvaderRam
    Moderator

    i don’t know when schools should reopen.

    but that should be the biggest concern for us as a country.

    i can do without professional sports for a year. i can do without new tv shows. new movies. just focus on getting kids back into as school as early as possible. without unnecessary risk of course.

    July 23, 2020 at 11:51 pm #118329
    zn
    Moderator

    from School-aged kids may spread the coronavirus in homes more often than adults, a new study found

    https://www.businessinsider.com/children-coronavirus-transmission-in-school-reopening-2020-7

    School-aged children could be more likely to spread the coronavirus to household contacts than any other age group.

    Around 19% of people who shared a home with an infected person who was 10 to 19 years old contracted COVID-19, a South Korean study found.

    The results suggest that reopening schools could lead to even more widespread transmission.

    August 4, 2020 at 1:14 am #118849
    zn
    Moderator

    I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy’
    Jeff Gregorich, superintendent, on trying to reopen his schools safely

    Jeff Gregorich, superintendent of schools at Hayden Winkelman Unified School District in Arizona

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/01/schools-reopening-coronavirus-arizona-superintendent/?arc404=true

    This is my choice, but I’m starting to wish that it wasn’t. I don’t feel qualified. I’ve been a superintendent for 20 years, so I guess I should be used to making decisions, but I keep getting lost in my head. I’ll be in my office looking at a blank computer screen, and then all of the sudden I realize a whole hour’s gone by. I’m worried. I’m worried about everything. Each possibility I come up with is a bad one.

    The governor has told us we have to open our schools to students on August 17th, or else we miss out on five percent of our funding. I run a high-needs district in middle-of-nowhere Arizona. We’re 90 percent Hispanic and more than 90 percent free-and-reduced lunch. These kids need every dollar we can get. But covid is spreading all over this area and hitting my staff, and now it feels like there’s a gun to my head. I already lost one teacher to this virus. Do I risk opening back up even if it’s going to cost us more lives? Or do we run school remotely and end up depriving these kids?

    This is your classic one-horse town. Picture John Wayne riding through cactuses and all that. I’m superintendent, high school principal and sometimes the basketball referee during recess. This is a skeleton staff, and we pay an average salary of about 40,000 a year. I’ve got nothing to cut. We’re buying new programs for virtual learning and trying to get hotspots and iPads for all our kids. Five percent of our budget is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where’s that going to come from? I might lose teaching positions or basic curriculum unless we somehow get up and running.

    I’ve been in the building every day, sanitizing doors and measuring out space in classrooms. We still haven’t received our order of Plexiglas barriers, so we’re cutting up shower curtains and trying to make do with that. It’s one obstacle after the next. Just last week I found out we had another staff member who tested positive, so I went through the guidance from OSHA and the CDC and tried to figure out the protocols. I’m not an expert at any of this, but I did my best with the contact tracing. I called 10 people on staff and told them they’d had a possible exposure. I arranged separate cars and got us all to the testing site. Some of my staff members were crying. They’ve seen what can happen, and they’re coming to me with questions I can’t always answer. “Does my whole family need to get tested?” “How long do I have to quarantine?” “What if this virus hits me like it did Mrs. Byrd?”

    We got back two of those tests already — both positive. We’re still waiting on eight more. That makes 11 percent of my staff that’s gotten covid, and we haven’t had a single student in our buildings since March. Part of our facility is closed down for decontamination, but we don’t have anyone left to decontaminate it unless I want to put on my hazmat suit and go in there. We’ve seen the impacts of this virus on our maintenance department, on transportation, on food service, on faculty. It’s like this district is shutting down case by case. I don’t understand how anyone could expect us to reopen the building this month in a way that feels safe. It’s like they’re telling us: “Okay. Summer’s over. It’s been long enough. Time to get back to normal.” But since when has this virus operated on our schedule?

    I dream about going back to normal. I’d love to be open. These kids are hurting right now. I don’t need a politician to tell me that. We only have 300 students in this district, and they’re like family. My wife is a teacher here, and we had four kids go through these schools. I know whose parents are laid off from the copper mine and who doesn’t have enough to eat. We delivered breakfast and lunches this summer, and we gave out more meals each day than we have students. I get phone calls from families dealing with poverty issues, depression, loneliness, boredom. Some of these kids are out in the wilderness right now, and school is the best place for them. We all agree on that. But every time I start to play out what that looks like on August 17th, I get sick to my stomach. More than a quarter of our students live with grandparents. These kids could very easily catch this virus, spread it and bring it back home. It’s not safe. There’s no way it can be safe.

    If you think anything else, I’m sorry, but it’s a fantasy. Kids will get sick, or worse. Family members will die. Teachers will die.

    Mrs. Byrd did everything right. She followed all the protocols. If there’s such a thing as a safe, controlled environment inside a classroom during a pandemic, that was it. We had three teachers sharing a room so they could teach a virtual summer school. They were so careful. This was back in June, when cases here were starting to spike. The kids were at home, but the teachers wanted to be together in the classroom so they could team up on the new technology. I thought that was a good idea. It’s a big room. They could watch and learn from each other. Mrs. Byrd was a master teacher. She’d been here since 1982, and she was always coming up with creative ideas. They delivered care packages to the elementary students so they could sprout beans for something hands-on at home, and then the teachers all took turns in front of the camera. All three of them wore masks. They checked their temperatures. They taught on their own devices and didn’t share anything, not even a pencil.

    At first she thought it was a sinus infection. That’s what the doctor told her, but it kept getting worse. I got a call that she’d been rushed to the hospital. Her oxygen was low, and they put her on a ventilator pretty much right away. The other two teachers started feeling sick the same weekend, so they went to get tested. They both had it bad for the next month. Mrs. Byrd’s husband got it and was hospitalized. Her brother got it and passed away. Mrs. Byrd fought for a few weeks until she couldn’t anymore.

    I’ve gone over it in my head a thousand times. What precautions did we miss? What more could I have done? I don’t have an answer. These were three responsible adults in an otherwise empty classroom, and they worked hard to protect each other. We still couldn’t control it. That’s what scares me.

    We got the whole staff together for grief counseling. We did it virtually, over Zoom. There’s sadness, and it’s also so much fear. My wife is one of our teachers in the primary grade, and she has asthma. She was explaining to me how every kid who sees her automatically gives her a hug. They arrive in the morning — hug. Leave for recess — hug. Lunch — hug. Locker — hug. That’s all day. Even if we do everything perfectly, germs are going to spread inside a school. We share the same space. We share the same air.

    A bunch of our teachers have told me they will put in for retirement if we open up this month. They’re saying: “Please don’t make us go back. This is crazy. We’re putting the whole community at risk.”

    They’re right. I agree with them 100 percent. Teachers don’t feel safe. Most parents said in a survey that they’re “very concerned” about sending their kids back to school. So why are we getting bullied into opening? This district isn’t ready to open. I can’t have more people getting sick. Why are they threatening our funding? I keep waiting for someone higher up to take this decision out of my hands and come to their senses. I’m waiting for real leadership, but maybe it’s not going to happen.

    It’s me. It’s the biggest decision of my career, and the one part I’m certain about is it’s going to hurt either way.

    August 6, 2020 at 6:28 pm #118958
    zn
    Moderator

    August 6, 2020 at 8:49 pm #118962
    wv
    Participant

    August 9, 2020 at 8:57 pm #119075
    zn
    Moderator

    from Georgia high school reports 9 cases of coronavirus after viral photo

    https://www.axios.com/georgia-high-school-coronavirus-f303584f-fb29-4313-a416-d3bf4239ef62.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&fbclid=IwAR3wTEZh0Zn7TGMvOC2-YGCDhmyCfxgKb7veC5vEgk3PPMskHF3fTNflBl8

    Six students and three staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 at North Paulding High School in Georgia, where a photo showing a hallway packed with maskless students went viral last week, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports.

    August 15, 2020 at 1:15 pm #119363
    zn
    Moderator

    August 22, 2020 at 5:38 am #119801
    zn
    Moderator

    White House press secretary compares teachers to ‘meat packers’ and dismisses safety concerns

    https://news.yahoo.com/white-house-press-secretary-compares-173754536.html

    White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany offered little sympathy to America’s teachers concerned about their health and those of their students, comparing them to “meat packers” who need to get back to work “because America’s children must come first.”

    “Look, we believe teachers are essential workers,” McEnany said during a Fox News appearance on Thursday. “The media never stopped working during this pandemic. Our meat packers didn’t stop working during this pandemic. Our law enforcement didn’t stop working during this pandemic — nor should our teachers, because America’s children must come first.”

    Meatpacking plants saw some of the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus pandemic in the US, with the close quarters and poor air circulation leading to a much more viral spread than most workplaces.

    McEnany was also asked by Fox News host Shannon Bream whether President Donald Trump could promise whether the country will have “testing capacity to test kids before they go back to school.”

    The press secretary didn’t answer the question, only going so far to say “our testing is being surged to vulnerable communities, our nursing homes, that has to be the priority.”

    McEnany did add a caveat regarding teachers with pre-existing conditions or other factors that would make them more vulnerable to having a severe case of COVID-19.

    “The president has been clear, if you’re in a vulnerable community and you’re a teacher, by all means, don’t go back [to work],” she said.

    “But those who can go back, should. And we’ve gotta protect our children, and that means getting them back to school.”

    August 22, 2020 at 4:17 pm #119812
    zn
    Moderator

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