Allegedly there are several options for the fall none of which include being back full time?

[Anonymous]

I suggest you rioters all get on the MCPS board meeting livestream right now and get your pitchforks ready.

[Anonymous]

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I absolutely agree with you. Unfortunately because FCPS already announced that they will be having DL and possibly only 2 days a week of in person school I don't think MCPS or DCPS will stray too far from that. I wish they would but I just don't think it will happen.

This. I strongly want schools to be open 100% in-person, but if FCPS and DCPS are doing 2 days/week, there's no way MCPS is going to be a trailblazer and offer 5 days/week. It's just not in the MCPS DNA to innovate.

Heck, when things first shut down and they had free lunch distribution sites, they had only 20 and none in upcounty (Damascus) nor in Bethesda/Potomac. Meanwhile, Anne Arundel, with a smaller school system, had 40+ distribution sites including mobile locations like the parking lot of community centers.

MCPS finally caught up to Anne Arundel a few weeks later, and they now offer 40+ sites, including one in Damascus.

Just being realistic here -- start planning _now_ that your kids will be in school at most 2 days/week this fall, and maybe through the spring too. Even if we have a vaccine ready in a few months, it will take at least 6 months to vaccinate 330 million people.

+100. I get the frustration on this tread, but it's not going to make a difference. The energy/anger is better directed as helping the system do distance learning as well as possible.

[Anonymous]

Rioters, the official presenting at the MCPS meeting now says they are planning for hybrid and fully remote--no full-time in-person option. I don't see any of you marching down my street yet. Where are you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rioters, the official presenting at the MCPS meeting now says they are planning for hybrid and fully remote--no full-time in-person option. I don't see any of you marching down my street yet. Where are you?

Hopefully they are packing for Cumberland or Hancock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IS MCPS hiring?

https://mcps.taleo.net/careersection/2/jobsearch.ftl?lang=en&portal=101430233

[Anonymous]

I may be smoking something, but it sounds like they are going to hold both options open until announcing the actual back to school plan on August 15.

[Anonymous]

Two MCPS board members so far have said that they are relying on prayer.

[Anonymous]

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Yes teachers are just like doctors what with all the respect, support and money they get from society. Everyone wants someone else to make the sacrifice for them, but god forbid Larla has to be sad and her parents have to sacrifice for her.

I'd say teachers get more respect and money than supermarket workers. And yet the latter are doing their jobs despite some risk.

Retail workers, home health care aides, other medical workers who aren't doctors, bus drivers, delivery people, construction workers, truck drivers, warehouse workers, food manufacturing workers, building services workers, mail carriers...

And it's not about Larla's sadness, or at least not only about Larla's sadness (though mental health is also a public-health factor, just like covid). It's about Larla's education.

So you think that teachers should be treated like delivery people, truck drivers, or warehouse workers? None of those jobs require prolonged exposure to other people in a small enclosed space, day after day. None of those jobs require them to literally touch other people's bodily fluids, except home health aides. They also don't require any formal education at all. I'm sorry, I didn't work my way through undergrad and graduate school to be fold sweaters or stock shelves in a supermarket. Forgive all our student loans and just throw us in the building with the kids and I'll keep them alive, then. They can watch movies, color, whatever they want. Either I'm a babysitter or I'm an educator. I'm not both.

DP (and the one who said that other essential workers haven’t complained this way):

-There are many, many essential workers who absolutely are in small enclosed spaces with *other adults* (aka the ones most likely to spread COVID) all day
-Stop looking down on people who have less education than you
-You can’t teach people while providing care? Really? Inherent in the job of teaching children, especially young ones, is providing oversight. Is the issue that you think you’re better than a “babysitter”?
-I really hope you can develop more appreciation for the emotional work of teaching. Part of the reason I respect (some) teachers so highly is because they get how important their role is. They don’t haughtily describe themselves as “educators” only and ignore the very real emotional care they provide to children

And I only respect some parents. Some of them just can’t be bothered to do any work at all with their children (the majority of my class) and are angry that they’ve lost their free full time care. I don’t think they’re doing their job supporting the emotional or educational needs of their children, which is an enormous personal failure on their part. We absolutely will not be pushed back to the classroom under unsafe conditions. We’ve worked hard for our rights and we aren’t going to sacrifice them to make your life easier.
You assume that you can tell me that you don’t respect me, and then turn around and say that I don’t value other people’s work. You don’t see the irony there? Good luck treating teachers like they owe you a place to deposit your child 5 days a week during a pandemic. They don’t.

Not a teacher and I totally agree. I think the same people on here and on FB who bitch and moan about schools JUST HAVE to be open have the financial privilege and job security to keep their kids home but they just don't want bothered.

Seems pretty entitled on the part of a teacher to expect the parents to do a good part of their job, which is what it amounts to when you deal with young elementary students. The "virtual" teacher is pretty much useless, and what I am doing is homeschooling. And frankly, that's what I'll likely do if we have DL.

Yup, I’m expected to continue to perform all of my duties and responsibilities while working at home. I can’t tell someone else to pick up the slack.

That's what parenting is. You want a teacher to risk their life or the life of their family member so you can get your work done? What on earth is wrong with you people? Also keep in mind that teenagers are more like adults in their ability to catch and spread the illness so all the high school teachers are dealing with a different situation. Can't we just band together, do our best and thank our lucky effing stars that kids dont' seem to be dying of this?

DP. No, parenting does not require a willingness to homeschool, which doesn't work for most parents or kids. That's why we have public schools. Yes, I expect teachers to do their jobs, not primarily for my sake but for my kids' sake, for whom DL is a pale substitute to actual school. Unless, of course, the teachers are actually at high risk, in which case they should be offered the option to teach DL to those kids who are also high-risk, or whose parents have other reasons not to send them back. Or they should get retirement incentives, career change support, etc. But to expect that they should keep receiving the same benefits while parents serve as their substitutes or assistants is just entitled. It was fine for a few months while everyone was dumbfounded by an unexpected pandemic, but it is not fine for potentially another year or years. What on earth is wrong with you people thinking we could keep kids out of school for this long?

Parenting DOES require you to oftentimes experience trials or discomfort to assist them. That's the WHOLE job. No one doesn't expect teachers to do their jobs I just don't expect them to die for their jobs. Not wanting to die teaching is NOT entitled. Wanting people to potentially experience a life altering illness or die so your child doesn't miss one year of school is entitled - super entitled. Life is long, kids are adaptable (except for your little darlings apparently) if they need to repeat a year then they repeat a year. You get to have them home for another year before they go to college and save for another year. This is a global pandemic. If we don't get this right people, thousands will literally die. What on earth is wrong with you people thinking that your child's education is more important than someone else's life? Where is your soul?

You are trying to personalize this, and twist the call to re-open schools into the moral failure of the suburban moms on DCUM. But the issue is much bigger than this. We are not just talking about the loss of education for mine or some other poster’s kid, but for tens of millions across the country. It is a question both of public health and of bioethics. How many lives would we need to save in order to justify depriving millions of kids of their education for a year? How many lives saved would justify the harms inflicted on so many kids, as well as on their families’ livelihoods? I don’t think your cavalier dismissal that those harms even exist or that they don’t matter in the face of even a single death is going to be taken seriously by any expert in the field. There are no easy answers, but trying to brand the parents who question the justifications and wisdo
m of widespread and indefinite school closures as morally deficient is definitely not helpful to any serious discussion of this complex issue.

OK, then let's think of it this way: How many people would you be willing to have die in your extended family to ensure that kids could go back to school? One? Two? Would it be worth it? If your answer is "zero" then you have no moral leg to stand on in making your argument. Because that means you'd be willing to sacrifice other people's family members but not your own.

EXACTLY. But you won't get a real answer. You'll either get an ignorant pithy one-liner that tries and fails to be clever or pages of nonsense trying to justify their odious, selfish position. "It won't happen to me or mine and I've got mine, so screw everybody else." Of course, there's no way to know that it won't happen to them or theirs, but they'll just keep repeating it to themselves anyway. Delusional.

[Anonymous]

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OK go ahead and name a few. You can close restaurants, stores and bars. You can close movie theaters and professional sports. You can have people work from home where possible. This will reduce overall community spread but it will merely slow down, not end, spread in schools. Schools will become the primary vector for family infection and community spread.
If you want to limit spread in schools, the most effective way to do that is cut off modes of transmission by having all kids wear masks, ensuring adequate social distancing (which, given the crowded state of most public schools, means only a fraction of students can be in the building at any given time), and routinely test students and contact trace and require contacts to self isolate for 14 days when positive cases are found.

I suspect this would actually be more disruptive to families' lives then full time distance learning, but it would get kids back in school buildings for at least part of the time.

The goal was to slow down the spread, not end it - right? That's what the whole "flatten the curve" thing was - right? And we have contact tracing and testing to actually eliminate the spread - right?

Testing is getting better, but contact tracing is almost non-existent. We needed a national army of contact tracers and the federal government did nothing about it. In the states that have tried to get it off the ground, it's slow going. You can't create functional public health apparatus out of nothing, and public health was underfunded for way too long before this.

And of course, you have whole states that never really did what they needed to do even to flatten the curve--witness what is happening now in Texas and Florida. We have open borders with those places.

THIS. I can't believe anyone is typing with a straight face that they put their faith in the abject, laughable joke that is the state of contract tracing in the U.S. today. They're either woefully misinformed or they just don't give a damn, because JUST PUT MY KIDS BACK IN SCHOOL AND GET THEM OUT OF MY HOUSE.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the idea that public school is some kind of nom-essential luxury that parents wrongly think of as an entitlement is...something. It's one of THE major universal institutions in all modern first world countries. And it IS an entitlement! It's not a luxury, everyone pays taxes because children, NOT their parents, are ENTITLED to an education. It is a right of residence and a key institution of social reproduction.

Now, whether and how much schooling happens in person during a pandemic is more of a logistical question, I'm not saying therefore we have to go back 5 days a week. But the whole framing that school is NOT essential and that it's selfish of PARENTS to want it is one I strongly reject. With lots of caps.

Well said. The PP who thinks public school is a non-essential privilege embodies everything that's wrong with America.

Oh for God's sake. THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL They are going to be educated to the standards set by the state.

They are just not going to have it in the format you want it. That's sad for you, but oh well.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the idea that public school is some kind of nom-essential luxury that parents wrongly think of as an entitlement is...something. It's one of THE major universal institutions in all modern first world countries. And it IS an entitlement! It's not a luxury, everyone pays taxes because children, NOT their parents, are ENTITLED to an education. It is a right of residence and a key institution of social reproduction.

Now, whether and how much schooling happens in person during a pandemic is more of a logistical question, I'm not saying therefore we have to go back 5 days a week. But the whole framing that school is NOT essential and that it's selfish of PARENTS to want it is one I strongly reject. With lots of caps.

Well said. The PP who thinks public school is a non-essential privilege embodies everything that's wrong with America.

Oh for God's sake. THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL They are going to be educated to the standards set by the state.

They are just not going to have it in the format you want it. That's sad for you, but oh well.

That is not at all what happened with DL in the spring. My kid was not educated at all. -DP

[Anonymous]

Is there a link to the presentation materials from today’s BOE meeting?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the idea that public school is some kind of nom-essential luxury that parents wrongly think of as an entitlement is...something. It's one of THE major universal institutions in all modern first world countries. And it IS an entitlement! It's not a luxury, everyone pays taxes because children, NOT their parents, are ENTITLED to an education. It is a right of residence and a key institution of social reproduction.

Now, whether and how much schooling happens in person during a pandemic is more of a logistical question, I'm not saying therefore we have to go back 5 days a week. But the whole framing that school is NOT essential and that it's selfish of PARENTS to want it is one I strongly reject. With lots of caps.

Well said. The PP who thinks public school is a non-essential privilege embodies everything that's wrong with America.

Oh for God's sake. THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL They are going to be educated to the standards set by the state.

They are just not going to have it in the format you want it. That's sad for you, but oh well.

That is not at all what happened with DL in the spring. My kid was not educated at all. -DP

He probably didn’t log on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With numbers being so good and getting better every day, I don't see how students would not be allowed for in-person education. Some people say other parts of US not so good, people may travel to other states etc. Closing schools because some people might travel to other states is laughable. Just a lame excuse. If students are not allowed to schools, I will riot very hard. I'm paying taxes. If you want absolutely zero risk, you are welcome to stay at home. But you can't collect salary from my taxes. Sorry.

LOL. I hope making this strident declaration on a random internet message board made you feel powerful, and please feel free to "riot," both "very hard" or otherwise. And yes, dear, they can and will "collect salary from (your) taxes for distance learning." Just watch them. Sorry.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yeah, the idea that public school is some kind of nom-essential luxury that parents wrongly think of as an entitlement is...something. It's one of THE major universal institutions in all modern first world countries. And it IS an entitlement! It's not a luxury, everyone pays taxes because children, NOT their parents, are ENTITLED to an education. It is a right of residence and a key institution of social reproduction.

Now, whether and how much schooling happens in person during a pandemic is more of a logistical question, I'm not saying therefore we have to go back 5 days a week. But the whole framing that school is NOT essential and that it's selfish of PARENTS to want it is one I strongly reject. With lots of caps.

Well said. The PP who thinks public school is a non-essential privilege embodies everything that's wrong with America.

Oh for God's sake. THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE THEIR PUBLIC SCHOOL They are going to be educated to the standards set by the state.

They are just not going to have it in the format you want it. That's sad for you, but oh well.

DP. There is plenty of evidence, known to people with expertise about education (not you, evidently) that shows that remote learning does not work well for the majority of kids, especially not young ones. That is a fact you can rail against all day long. Your yelling in all caps about how DL is just a different "format" really just shows how clueless you are. Or how lucky that you have the type/age of kid for whom it works well. Good for you and your kids.