If your school is red, are you sending your child tomorrow?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My children are in school today. They are in newly red schools and all three said attendance of students and teachers was great yesterday. No subs needed and they noticed maybe 1-2 absent students they know of which is normal after the holidays in any year.

My kid is in unicorn "green" school. Friends said most classes were 1/4 to 1/2 empty.

Small sample size, but I'd wager that's because the following things are correlated:

-We are "green" not because of low rates in our immediate community, but because we are a poorer school with unique communication issues (non-Spanish/non-English language issues) and fewer people are able to PCR test and/or know how to/can easily report

-This same population is also more cautious about sending kids to school during high community spread, as evidenced by the fact that only 35% sent their kids back last spring

very interesting, pp. Our elem school also only sent back about 30% of kids last spring. Our population is highly diverse (about 35% Asian, 20% Hispanic), and my sense is highly cautious. My child said many kids did not show up yesterday. No major staff shortages that impacted her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am confused by the data. If the data is from winter break - then supposedly those kids aren't at school or are already over Covid. So I don't understand the percentages on the MCPS chart. And why did the numbers jump so dramatically from tuesday to thursday? Was it because of the testing they did at school yesterday? I guess I need context to understand exactly what we are dealing with.... SIGH.

Anecdotally, my child had a close contact at school because she sat at lunch next to a child whose parents had sent them to school while awaiting a PCR test. So, some of the results were in-school testing and some was careless folks coming back from vacation and not wanting to wait just one more day to get test results back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None of those positive cases are at school they’re all at home. I’m sending my kid to school. He’s vaxxed and we are boostered.

Sorry, but you're really dumb. I don't know if you're the one parroting this on every MCPS thread, or if there are a small number of really stupid dummies.

Schools are accelerators of Omicron spread, especially during lunch. The kids are sitting close together, hundreds in one crowded cafeteria, without masks, opening their mouths to eat and yell. Every day. What do you think's going to happen? It's way, way worse than any mass super-spreader event you could participate in outside of school, unless you took your household to an indoor concert venue and you all took off your masks. So people with Omicron are going to school, and spreading it rapidly to others students and staff.

And don't say it didn't happen before. It happened with Delta in September, but to a lesser extent because OMICRON IS 10 TIMES MORE TRANSMISSIBLE THAN DELTA.

Not the PP, but there is not a single scientific shred of evidence that schools are super spreaders. Lunch time is not a super spreader event. The reason why cases have skyrocketed recently is because people were NOT in school, socializing, attending parties, going to the mall, going to restaurants, etc. and THAT'S how the virus is spread around. Not by attending school.

This is just completely and utterly untrue. There is evidence that schools serve as locations of Covid transmission, especially during unmasked lunch time. Here is one study in Chicago which shows 40% of cases originating at schools.
https://dph.illinois.gov/covid19/data/contact-tracing/potential-exposure-location.html?regionID=0

Maybe they could just go to half days with no eating?

That's not a bad idea actually. Didn't some schools in DC do this in the spring ? There was a morning cohort and an afternoon cohort. The rest of the day was virtual.
of course, the buses need to run for this to work.

[Anonymous]

I did not. I’m not concerned about sickness as much as inconvenience (parent not being able to work, sibling not attending private school) and feel like today would be a wasted day anyways. Don’t want to risk exposure if the school is just going to close.
Pretty much guessing tomorrow will be a snow day. I’m going to let MCPS figure out staffing and closures and then will send child back Monday if they are still open.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

This probably has divides across ages. My 12 yo is 7 months past her second shot. So, she’s not nearly as protected as a vaccinated 5-11 or boosted 16. So yeah, I’m worried. Since you asked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

Right but there are many many students in the position of having a sibling under 5 or a close relative who is immunocompromised.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

This probably has divides across ages. My 12 yo is 7 months past her second shot. So, she’s not nearly as protected as a vaccinated 5-11 or boosted 16. So yeah, I’m worried. Since you asked.

Right! I forgot that group! 12-16 year olds *are* highly vaccinated in this area, but not boosted yet for the most part. Teachers aren't required to be boosted (I think, though I assume most are). And parents are still concerned about vaccinating their 5-11 year olds at the same rates of the 12 and over. So those folks are all going to present with symptoms when exposed to Omicron, and there will be cases as a result.

[Anonymous]

Do you all realize that in the two years of the pandemic, not one kid in MoCo 19 and younger has died from Covid whether vaccinated or not. The risk is crazy low.

[Anonymous]

My kids under 6, one partially vaccinated & one too young to be vaccinated, both got covid over winter break, does that mean they have super immunity to covid now? If he/she sits next to someone positive eating food, he/she is less likely get covid again right? I wonder will that exempt him/her from quarantine because he/she got it once already.

They have almost no symptom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My children are in school today. They are in newly red schools and all three said attendance of students and teachers was great yesterday. No subs needed and they noticed maybe 1-2 absent students they know of which is normal after the holidays in any year.

My kid is in unicorn "green" school. Friends said most classes were 1/4 to 1/2 empty.

Small sample size, but I'd wager that's because the following things are correlated:

-We are "green" not because of low rates in our immediate community, but because we are a poorer school with unique communication issues (non-Spanish/non-English language issues) and fewer people are able to PCR test and/or know how to/can easily report

-This same population is also more cautious about sending kids to school during high community spread, as evidenced by the fact that only 35% sent their kids back last spring

My child's school which has the same characteristics (very high rate of FARMS and majority ESOL) is red and most everyone showed up yesterday. They had classes as usual.

If you look at the dashboard closely there is also a green school that is in a wealthy area that has almost no ESOL. Your theories are so bogus and you should just stop stereotyping.

I believe you, but if you look at the chart closely, you'll see that your two examples are definitely outliers.

The data is problematic.

That's the point. The data might be helpful 14 days from now when they have been in school for that long, but it's not super helpful right now and making up theories about why certain schools are red and certain ones are green is not helpful to this discussion especially since many of them perpetuate stereotypes.

This. For all their pushing of the random testing program, why isn’t MCPS using that to determine Covid rates in kids actually attending school right now? Yes, I understand not all families have opted in, but there are shortcomings to basing it off self-reporting as well. It just makes no sense to start closing schools based on transmission that largely happened outside of schools over the winter break. Test the kids who returned and if levels are really at 5% then ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

+1. I agree with you PP. Right now the reason why I would prefer going virtual is more for stability and consistency in learning. I fully expected the cases to go up in January. I think most people did. But it does not seem sustainable to stay open as we can all see, because we will not have enough staff from all over the place and this will just lead to a lot of interruption on learning and peoples lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

Right but there are many many students in the position of having a sibling under 5 or a close relative who is immunocompromised.

You can keep them home then. If someone is living with an immunocompromised family member, they probably should have applied to the VA to begin with. Tons of under 5s have been back in daycare and preschool for a while now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

Right but there are many many students in the position of having a sibling under 5 or a close relative who is immunocompromised.

You can keep them home then. If someone is living with an immunocompromised family member, they probably should have applied to the VA to begin with. Tons of under 5s have been back in daycare and preschool for a while now.

Unempathetic mean VA mom continued her streak!!

Latest hot take: have an immunocompromised family member? Then it's all your fault you didn't consider that last July! Of course, all immunocompromised people now have been that way since before July, and in July, we all had crystal balls that allowed us to predict the future.

Those of us who didn't? Well, our families deserve what we get because we mocked mean VA mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if schools are superspreaders or not, but I know for sure my kid got it school right before the break.

Well sure, that’s going to happen. The question for me is, is Covid spread at schools at a statistically higher rate than other settings like workplaces and all the other things that are open and will continue to stay open while schools are closed? If not, than why are we targeting schools based on a community transmission percentage alone. I would understand if a school or classroom needed to close due to a specific staff shortage.

I would however, be in favor of expanding a virtual option if that’s what it took to calm the pro-closers down. I thought some parents would relax a bit when their kid got vaccinated but that doesnt seem to have happened.

How many vaccinated kids' parents are *really* worried about their kids getting very sick? I know very very few. The few who are super worried have a person at home who is not vaccinated (under 5), or immunocompromised (grandparent, parent on chemo, etc.). And yes, VA needs to be expanded to include those with lower risk tolerance.

I'd be more worried that only 55% of the kids in this county 5-11 are actually vaccinated. They are the ones who, when exposed to the virus, may come down with symptoms, and therefore test, and therefore shut down the school. I have the same concern for the staff who haven't received their boosters.

This is only my anecdotal experience, but two of the most vocal families I know now have all their kids vaccinated and no elderly/compromised people at home (pretty sure all of their extended families are out of state). They’re still terrified of their vaccinated kids getting Covid, one did not send their kids back to school this week.

But then, most of the families I know with kids under 5 also have dual working parents and some sort of childcare arrangement for these young kids already, they haven’t been sitting home in a bubble. I could see how a family with a SAHP would think it’s worthwhile to revert to virtual to eliminate any risk to under 5s at home.