Sidwell, GDS, Maret: Keep schools open

[Anonymous]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/20/opinion/omicron-schools-do-not-close.html

Author: Dr. Allen is an associate professor and director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is also the chair of the Lancet Covid-19 Commission Task Force on Safe Work, Safe School and Safe Travel.

"The early evidence from outside the United States suggests that kids will remain low risk during the Omicron surge as well. The latest data from South Africa for the week ending Dec. 12 shows that school-age children (5-to-19-year-olds) had the lowest hospitalization of any age group, and even with the Omicron uptick, the hospitalization rate is four to six per 100,000 — higher than one in 100,000 but still quite low. The latest data from Britain is similar. As of Dec. 12, the hospitalization rate for 5-to-14-year-olds is 1.4 per 100,000 — the lowest hospitalization rate of any age group...

The harms to kids from being out of school, on the other hand, are severe. They are accumulating. And they could last for decades...

The effects of closed schools go far beyond learning loss. We have a full-on child mental health crisis on our hands. The proportion of pediatric hospital visits for mental health reasons increased significantly in 2020 as the pandemic hit and schools closed, and the trend only worsened as 2020 wore on."


If there are families who want to stay home, let them stay home. Bullis made the right call through this whole thing. The above schools need to take note.

[Anonymous]

To date, there is no move or suggestion that Sidwell will close. they have already announced a Jan 2 community wide testing, and likely they will take their cue from those results.

[Anonymous]

My understanding is that schools pretty much across the board are testing with a plan to go back Monday or Tuesday. I have not heard of any schools being out any more than the one extra day for testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My understanding is that schools pretty much across the board are testing with a plan to go back Monday or Tuesday. I have not heard of any schools being out any more than the one extra day for testing.

This. All I’ve heard is schools taking an extra day or two to wait for test results to come back so those who test positive are never in school which is smart. If they were never in class there will be much less disruption for everyone else, especially given how many people are testing positive right now.

[Anonymous]

I strongly disagree. They should go virtual through mid January when omicron is expected to peak and then subside. There simply are not enough tests or lab capacity to do this right. Two weeks of virtual is small price to pay. I worry about the unboosted kids whose immunity has waned from vaccination more than 6 months ago. I worry about the teachers — a lot. If we lose even one teacher by returning January 4 vs. January 17, it will not have been worth it. I hope Sidwell makes the right decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I strongly disagree. They should go virtual through mid January when omicron is expected to peak and then subside. There simply are not enough tests or lab capacity to do this right. Two weeks of virtual is small price to pay. I worry about the unboosted kids whose immunity has waned from vaccination more than 6 months ago. I worry about the teachers — a lot. If we lose even one teacher by returning January 4 vs. January 17, it will not have been worth it. I hope Sidwell makes the right decision.

Aren't you just delaying the inevitable? So you keep schools closed until Jan 17th. You open them then and then Omicron spreads and peaks. You just delayed the inevitable by 2 weeks. Meanwhile, kids have just lost 2 weeks of in-person school.
Can you speak to this?
I'm genuinely curious what your thinking is and I'd like to understand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I strongly disagree. They should go virtual through mid January when omicron is expected to peak and then subside. There simply are not enough tests or lab capacity to do this right. Two weeks of virtual is small price to pay. I worry about the unboosted kids whose immunity has waned from vaccination more than 6 months ago. I worry about the teachers — a lot. If we lose even one teacher by returning January 4 vs. January 17, it will not have been worth it. I hope Sidwell makes the right decision.

Even if schools open, they will be forced to close down. This spreads too easily. Certainly, schools can try, but they should have a back-up plan for when teachers get sick. They should also offer virtual options for students who are out sick. it will not be as simple as it was earlier this fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To date, there is no move or suggestion that Sidwell will close. they have already announced a Jan 2 community wide testing, and likely they will take their cue from those results.

Given how high positivity rates are, that would worry me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To date, there is no move or suggestion that Sidwell will close. they have already announced a Jan 2 community wide testing, and likely they will take their cue from those results.

Given how high positivity rates are, that would worry me.

Why? For example, Sidwell has a 100% or something close to it vaccination rate. Thus, there shouldn't be much, if any impact, if COVID spreads through vaccinated and boosted humans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I strongly disagree. They should go virtual through mid January when omicron is expected to peak and then subside. There simply are not enough tests or lab capacity to do this right. Two weeks of virtual is small price to pay. I worry about the unboosted kids whose immunity has waned from vaccination more than 6 months ago. I worry about the teachers — a lot. If we lose even one teacher by returning January 4 vs. January 17, it will not have been worth it. I hope Sidwell makes the right decision.

Aren't you just delaying the inevitable? So you keep schools closed until Jan 17th. You open them then and then Omicron spreads and peaks. You just delayed the inevitable by 2 weeks. Meanwhile, kids have just lost 2 weeks of in-person school.
Can you speak to this?
I'm genuinely curious what your thinking is and I'd like to understand.

You’re only “delaying the inevitable” if school gatherings themselves are inevitably a source of infection and spread. Is that what you’re suggesting, that schools are a primary source of spreading of Covid?

I suspect what the medical experts are thinking is that they want the wave of Covid infections from the holiday break to die down before they put kids together in schools, precisely to minimize the risk of spread at school. If Family A has Covid circulating in it from having attended a New Years gathering or Xmas at gramma’s house, they want Family A to pause long enough to let the virus develop and show itself in testing, all *before* the children from Family A go sit in a classroom and spread it to half a dozen other families. It’s sort of like having a soft quarantine after the holiday period when lots of people were tempted to travel and gather.

I don’t see any harm to waiting a week after the holidays to allow that to happen. Given the rates in many cities, it seems the infection has been spreading rapidly. Seems more sensible to pause on school return for a bit. Lots of businesses are delaying planned employee returns for this exact reason.

[Anonymous]

DC is in high school, worries about covid, and was successful in virtual learning. I'd love to have her stay home for another week or two and have classes online, but I don't think that's going to happen. I understand that the calculation is very different for younger kids and for students who hated virtual learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To date, there is no move or suggestion that Sidwell will close. they have already announced a Jan 2 community wide testing, and likely they will take their cue from those results.

Given how high positivity rates are, that would worry me.

Why? For example, Sidwell has a 100% or something close to it vaccination rate. Thus, there shouldn't be much, if any impact, if COVID spreads through vaccinated and boosted humans.

Because it keeps the virus circulating among the population for longer. Even where students are vaccinated, many have family members at home who are not vaccinated. It seems a small community sacrifice to do a few more days of virtual school to reduce the spread and the risk for others. That’s the whole point of community service, right?

[Anonymous]

Even if the danger is low, the problem before break was the rate of absences. The private school where I work has had up to 13 percent of students in quarantine at once. We’ve been so short on subs that teachers and administration staff are skipping lunch and canceling parent meetings to substitute teach while many of our teachers are home sick awaiting PCR test results. An “ideal” situation during quarantines is that staff stay healthy enough to work at school and end up teaching hybrid classes to quarantined and in-person students. That ends up being the least effective teaching style and causing the highest rate of teacher burnout. We’ve also seen people pre-emptively pulling their kids out to avoid exposure. They’re not necessarily afraid of their kid becoming seriously ill, but they feel their family can’t afford an exposure at the moment. Maybe a family member has a scheduled surgery, specialist doctors appointment, or the arrival of a new baby upcoming. The absence numbers are sky high. Maret recently reported 47 cases to DC health. In Montgomery County, Blair had a fifth of its students absent before winter break. You can say that school is safe until you’re blue in the face. Unfortunately, at this level of attendance, it is logistically extremely challenging-to-impossible to keep things running as usual.

[Anonymous]

Agree with you OP. Parents please keep the pressure on the schools to stay open. They operate in lock step on issues like this so if one folds, they all eventually do. There is no reason to close now- everyone is vaccinated and masked. Parents who are still fearful can keep their kids home if they want to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To date, there is no move or suggestion that Sidwell will close. they have already announced a Jan 2 community wide testing, and likely they will take their cue from those results.

Given how high positivity rates are, that would worry me.

Why? For example, Sidwell has a 100% or something close to it vaccination rate. Thus, there shouldn't be much, if any impact, if COVID spreads through vaccinated and boosted humans.

Because it keeps the virus circulating among the population for longer. Even where students are vaccinated, many have family members at home who are not vaccinated. It seems a small community sacrifice to do a few more days of virtual school to reduce the spread and the risk for others. That’s the whole point of community service, right?

To protect the non vaccinated? No. That’s on them. Sorry but this excuse doesn’t work any more.