School closure after break?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a teacher it would feel a bit violating to have just my class shut down if I test positive and have everyone know that information. I don’t want to be negatively judged for my health status. I a doing everything I can to NOT get Covid but omicron is a virulent little sucker.

Are you suggesting that the whole school needs to go virtual so that you can keep your positive test secret? That’s nuts. No one will judge you for testing positive. SMH

Ipe. Not suggesting that. That would be unnecessary. Just expressing that it would feel weird and guilt inducing. No feelings I can’t survive however!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Last month, a grand total of four people in Washington DC died from coronavirus. Try to keep things in perspective.

If it's just about deaths then why is 70% of DCPS central office staff still working remotely?

this argument is dumb.

It is so tired. We are still in a pandemic, and people who can effectively work remotely should continue to do so. Teaching can’t be done effectively from home, but a lot of administrative jobs can. I have been on the teachers’ side for almost everything but arguments like this just make it sound like you don’t want to teach at all. Go get an office job you can do remotely! I support you in that.

The problem is that they are doing administrative jobs, and not supporting actual teaching and learning in schools. I'm not talking about HR-types. Obviously payroll and benefits and things like that are necessary bureaucracy and can and should just remain virtual. I'm talking about all of these hundreds of people in curriculum and instructional oversight positions. Its a waste of time to be doing that this year. Everything is so chaotic. They all need to be re-tasked to schools to fill in vacant positions, or to provide coverage for absent teachers. They are supposedly so much better than us at teaching, they should come do it.

Yes please! Other than payroll and benefits the central office has never done anything for me but create busy work barriers to teaching students!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Wilson parent, I am concerned if the building is light staffed. They had a lot of behavior problems when fully staffed.

M

Same.

[Anonymous]

COVID hospitalizations are getting real ugly ….

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Core petition: https://twitter.com/dc_core/status/1475144471348187143?s=21

Please tell me I didn’t just read they are advocating for asynchronous days for deep cleaning. I imagined that right?

CORE is part of WTU, no?

They are saying that DC schools should CLOSE until case rates reach a specific metric.

And yes, they want asynchronous days for cleaning.

Eff off, all you people that said no one was advocating for school closures. Here it is, from a portion of the teachers union.

This teacher petition goes against public health guidance. We need test to stay rather than increased quarantines for students. This also advocates for blanket school closures. Totally in favor of COVID coordinators in schools and increased testing. Daily infections may not go below 200 per day - the metric this petition proposes for keeping school virtual - given the highly contagious nature of the variant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:COVID hospitalizations are getting real ugly ….

A LOT are incidental. I will be very interested to see the stats of hospitalization for vs with covid. It's definitely more incidentals than previous waves and most are just testinf positive in ED and being sent home.

-Healthcare worker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:COVID hospitalizations are getting real ugly ….

A LOT are incidental. I will be very interested to see the stats of hospitalization for vs with covid. It's definitely more incidentals than previous waves and most are just testinf positive in ED and being sent home.

-Healthcare worker.

I agree that hospitalizations look pretty good in DC right now. But we still might have short closures if there isn't enough staff. Hopefully this wave will burn out as quickly as it came up.

[Anonymous]

Another healthcare worker here. Hospitalizations are not the issue. It's staff calling out.
It will be the same for schools. Everyone who gets it is out for 1-3 weeks. It's hard to run a school with no staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another healthcare worker here. Hospitalizations are not the issue. It's staff calling out.
It will be the same for schools. Everyone who gets it is out for 1-3 weeks. It's hard to run a school with no staff.

Omicron is more mild, so at the most, 10 days. Why shut all schools down which really just postpones the inevitable vs just allow classes to run if the school has the staff to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won't teacher staffing be the rate limiting factor? It doesn't matter if kids don't get sick if the teachers are out.

I'm vaccinated and boosted (not a teacher) and have had Omicron all week. I'm day 9 and still testing positive on rapid tests and am still coughing. I thought I was completely on the upswing (two days of feeling 95%) but then today I have a low grade fever again and my cough is back. Sure, I'm not critically ill but you also wouldn't want me in a classroom (all said and down-- for a good 2-3 weeks)z. this virus is really weird.

I think everyone is aware that teacher/staff shortage would cause classes/grades to close. I think the concern is that entire schools or even the entire district would close pre-emptively, particularly with no clear metric for reopening.

I hope you feel better soon!

But no one wants to close pre-emptively. The chancellor and the principals at my kids’ schools have all said the safest and best place for kids is at school. As long as they have staff, kids will be at school.

There is a petition from CORE that is advocating for preemptively closing the schools. So there are indeed people — WTU teachers — that want to close preemptively.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another healthcare worker here. Hospitalizations are not the issue. It's staff calling out.
It will be the same for schools. Everyone who gets it is out for 1-3 weeks. It's hard to run a school with no staff.

So do you close the whole hospital? No, no you don’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:COVID hospitalizations are getting real ugly ….

Source? As of earlier today only 2.4% of covid cases in DC were hospitalized (the lowest of the pandemic).

[Anonymous]

CDC just reported quarantine can just be for 5 days now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:CDC just reported quarantine can just be for 5 days now.

Which is hard to believe because I know people who began symptoms 6-8 days into quarantine. One even had a negative rapid on day 5. If they ended their quarantine on day 5 they would’ve been infecting people around them smh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:COVID hospitalizations are getting real ugly ….

Source? As of earlier today only 2.4% of covid cases in DC were hospitalized (the lowest of the pandemic).

Baltimore county just declare state of emergency based on lack of icu beds. Multiple DC hospitals just started diverting patients today. Remember that hospitalizations lag cases and we have had a LOT of cases (~10,000 more in the past 4 days).