Cancel Virtual Academy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How are we behaving irresponsibly? We are vaccinated. But, you can still get and spread covid vaccinated. Which part of that do you not understand?

What is the real issue? Do you feel guilty sending your kids back? Do you feel guilty about your behavior so you have to tell yourself as long as you are vaccinated everything is ok?

Your kids are best in school. Its very clear. Its good you made that choice for them.

DP. By insisting that your children can't go to school until it's 100% safe, which it will never be (and which it also previously wasn't). But it's your right as a parent to make that decision for your children who are younger than 18.

What makes you think it was not a family situation? My kids choose it. Surprise. Really, why do you care about someone you don’t know making different choices. We’d love to send ours back. They are not ready. So you want them back too what are you willing to do to make it safer?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

Stop making up stuff to justify your poor behavior. No we will not go private. I got my kids spots for the fall and they choose virtual. Privates are not much safer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How are we behaving irresponsibly? We are vaccinated. But, you can still get and spread covid vaccinated. Which part of that do you not understand?

What is the real issue? Do you feel guilty sending your kids back? Do you feel guilty about your behavior so you have to tell yourself as long as you are vaccinated everything is ok?

Your kids are best in school. Its very clear. Its good you made that choice for them.

DP. By insisting that your children can't go to school until it's 100% safe, which it will never be (and which it also previously wasn't). But it's your right as a parent to make that decision for your children who are younger than 18.

What makes you think it was not a family situation? My kids choose it. Surprise. Really, why do you care about someone you don’t know making different choices. We’d love to send ours back. They are not ready. So you want them back too what are you willing to do to make it safer?

Your kids are your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

Stop making up stuff to justify your poor behavior. No we will not go private. I got my kids spots for the fall and they choose virtual. Privates are not much safer.

I didn't mean to suggest you would go private. I think your kids will stay in virtual for the foreseeable future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

Stop making up stuff to justify your poor behavior. No we will not go private. I got my kids spots for the fall and they choose virtual. Privates are not much safer.

I didn't mean to suggest you would go private. I think your kids will stay in virtual for the foreseeable future.

They will for the rest of this year and then we'll decide in August if we'll return to in person. We did look into and get spots in private. We figured that was better than in person public as the last resort as we couldn't find an good virtual option. At least the privates have weekly testing.

I can completely understand why many left for privates between the school violences issues, covid and curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

Stop making up stuff to justify your poor behavior. No we will not go private. I got my kids spots for the fall and they choose virtual. Privates are not much safer.

I didn't mean to suggest you would go private. I think your kids will stay in virtual for the foreseeable future.

They will for the rest of this year and then we'll decide in August if we'll return to in person. We did look into and get spots in private. We figured that was better than in person public as the last resort as we couldn't find an good virtual option. At least the privates have weekly testing.

I can completely understand why many left for privates between the school violences issues, covid and curriculum.

Cool. More evidence that it is needlessly wasteful to keep virtual education managed by individual counties/districts. If they're not back to MCPS next fall, they're probably never coming back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

This post also perfectly illustrates that you don't understand how to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. My child is in-person school in MCPS. Both of his parents have received boosters.

I still find it...surprising? perplexing? amusing? that people who have lived through the same things I've lived through in the last two years are dead-set on the idea that they can predict what is coming next. We can't. Certainly not enough to move to shut down the thing we desperately needed on the front end of this and didn't have until Fall 2021. Keep the Virtual Academy open--we all may need back into it before this is really over (as opposed to "over" on the internet).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

This post also perfectly illustrates that you don't understand how to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. My child is in-person school in MCPS. Both of his parents have received boosters.

I still find it...surprising? perplexing? amusing? that people who have lived through the same things I've lived through in the last two years are dead-set on the idea that they can predict what is coming next. We can't. Certainly not enough to move to shut down the thing we desperately needed on the front end of this and didn't have until Fall 2021. Keep the Virtual Academy open--we all may need back into it before this is really over (as opposed to "over" on the internet).

What do you mean by “over”? There is no “over”- COVID is never going away. Perhaps it will end up like the flu, with different variants popping up from time to time, some more serious than others. Life moves on, though. It is ridiculous to think we’re going to keep up COVID mitigations forever.

Keeping virtual options for kids/families is fine, as I’ve repeatedly said in this thread. But you seem to have unrealistic goals for COVID. You should work on acceptance. Life is filled with risks. With vaccines, the known and unknown risks of COVID blend into the background noise. That’s not to say the risk is zero, or that something bad won’t come along a month, year or decade from now. But that’s life. I can’t imagine the sheltered life someone would have had to live to not understand that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

This post also perfectly illustrates that you don't understand how to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. My child is in-person school in MCPS. Both of his parents have received boosters.

I still find it...surprising? perplexing? amusing? that people who have lived through the same things I've lived through in the last two years are dead-set on the idea that they can predict what is coming next. We can't. Certainly not enough to move to shut down the thing we desperately needed on the front end of this and didn't have until Fall 2021. Keep the Virtual Academy open--we all may need back into it before this is really over (as opposed to "over" on the internet).

What do you mean by “over”? There is no “over”- COVID is never going away. Perhaps it will end up like the flu, with different variants popping up from time to time, some more serious than others. Life moves on, though. It is ridiculous to think we’re going to keep up COVID mitigations forever.

Keeping virtual options for kids/families is fine, as I’ve repeatedly said in this thread. But you seem to have unrealistic goals for COVID. You should work on acceptance. Life is filled with risks. With vaccines, the known and unknown risks of COVID blend into the background noise. That’s not to say the risk is zero, or that something bad won’t come along a month, year or decade from now. But that’s life. I can’t imagine the sheltered life someone would have had to live to not understand that.

Why do you care if someone makes different life choices than you, especially during a health pandemic? Why is the only acceptable way, your way? Why do we have to agree to risk getting covid because you tell us we do?

You decide what risks you want to take for your family and we'll decide for us. Getting covid is not something our family wants to risk. But, I am fortunate to have kids who do well in virtual, they can count on us to support them and are very understanding of health issues and the impact of covid should one of us get it. We have really enjoyed the extra time together.

You have in person. So, how is this even a debate as it has zero impact on you? Actually, it has a positive impact as it reduces the number of in person kids at your kids school, which makes it safer for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

Stop making up stuff to justify your poor behavior. No we will not go private. I got my kids spots for the fall and they choose virtual. Privates are not much safer.

I didn't mean to suggest you would go private. I think your kids will stay in virtual for the foreseeable future.

They will for the rest of this year and then we'll decide in August if we'll return to in person. We did look into and get spots in private. We figured that was better than in person public as the last resort as we couldn't find an good virtual option. At least the privates have weekly testing.

I can completely understand why many left for privates between the school violences issues, covid and curriculum.

Cool. More evidence that it is needlessly wasteful to keep virtual education managed by individual counties/districts. If they're not back to MCPS next fall, they're probably never coming back.

How is it wasteful? How do you know if we'll come back or stay in virtual? How do you know about the 3000K students in virtual and each of their choices?

Really, its far cheaper for MCPS to run a VA than it is to open up more in person schools.

If anything, in person is wasteful, so if you are looking at cutting out waste, maybe all kids should go virtual. That way we can get rid of all the physical buildings and staff that go along with it. That would be a huge cost saver. No more busses. That a would be a win on finances and environment.

So, maybe the issue isn't we should close down VA, but based off your logic, we should shut down all in person schools. And, we should just get rid of MCPS and have the state run all educational programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

This post also perfectly illustrates that you don't understand how to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. My child is in-person school in MCPS. Both of his parents have received boosters.

I still find it...surprising? perplexing? amusing? that people who have lived through the same things I've lived through in the last two years are dead-set on the idea that they can predict what is coming next. We can't. Certainly not enough to move to shut down the thing we desperately needed on the front end of this and didn't have until Fall 2021. Keep the Virtual Academy open--we all may need back into it before this is really over (as opposed to "over" on the internet).

What do you mean by “over”? There is no “over”- COVID is never going away. Perhaps it will end up like the flu, with different variants popping up from time to time, some more serious than others. Life moves on, though. It is ridiculous to think we’re going to keep up COVID mitigations forever.

Keeping virtual options for kids/families is fine, as I’ve repeatedly said in this thread. But you seem to have unrealistic goals for COVID. You should work on acceptance. Life is filled with risks. With vaccines, the known and unknown risks of COVID blend into the background noise. That’s not to say the risk is zero, or that something bad won’t come along a month, year or decade from now. But that’s life. I can’t imagine the sheltered life someone would have had to live to not understand that.

Why do you care if someone makes different life choices than you, especially during a health pandemic? Why is the only acceptable way, your way? Why do we have to agree to risk getting covid because you tell us we do?

You decide what risks you want to take for your family and we'll decide for us. Getting covid is not something our family wants to risk. But, I am fortunate to have kids who do well in virtual, they can count on us to support them and are very understanding of health issues and the impact of covid should one of us get it. We have really enjoyed the extra time together.

You have in person. So, how is this even a debate as it has zero impact on you? Actually, it has a positive impact as it reduces the number of in person kids at your kids school, which makes it safer for them.

And as I’ve said again and again, I think the state should provide a permanent and sustainable virtual learning option for all students in Maryland, including your kids. I’m not trying to force your kids, or any others, back into schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

This post also perfectly illustrates that you don't understand how to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. My child is in-person school in MCPS. Both of his parents have received boosters.

I still find it...surprising? perplexing? amusing? that people who have lived through the same things I've lived through in the last two years are dead-set on the idea that they can predict what is coming next. We can't. Certainly not enough to move to shut down the thing we desperately needed on the front end of this and didn't have until Fall 2021. Keep the Virtual Academy open--we all may need back into it before this is really over (as opposed to "over" on the internet).

What do you mean by “over”? There is no “over”- COVID is never going away. Perhaps it will end up like the flu, with different variants popping up from time to time, some more serious than others. Life moves on, though. It is ridiculous to think we’re going to keep up COVID mitigations forever.

Keeping virtual options for kids/families is fine, as I’ve repeatedly said in this thread. But you seem to have unrealistic goals for COVID. You should work on acceptance. Life is filled with risks. With vaccines, the known and unknown risks of COVID blend into the background noise. That’s not to say the risk is zero, or that something bad won’t come along a month, year or decade from now. But that’s life. I can’t imagine the sheltered life someone would have had to live to not understand that.

Why do you care if someone makes different life choices than you, especially during a health pandemic? Why is the only acceptable way, your way? Why do we have to agree to risk getting covid because you tell us we do?

You decide what risks you want to take for your family and we'll decide for us. Getting covid is not something our family wants to risk. But, I am fortunate to have kids who do well in virtual, they can count on us to support them and are very understanding of health issues and the impact of covid should one of us get it. We have really enjoyed the extra time together.

You have in person. So, how is this even a debate as it has zero impact on you? Actually, it has a positive impact as it reduces the number of in person kids at your kids school, which makes it safer for them.

And as I’ve said again and again, I think the state should provide a permanent and sustainable virtual learning option for all students in Maryland, including your kids. I’m not trying to force your kids, or any others, back into schools.

We have one, just like many other counties in MD have. Each has their own school system complete with a VA. The state doesn't provide direct educational services. The two programs they approved (as all they do is approve programs) are basically homeschooling programs with limited supervision. There is no equivilaent that the counties are providing that the state could contract out with and cost wise it would be a lot more money to contract out.

But, really, why do you care? Why are you so insistent the state handle it? Why do you believe its not sustainable via MCSP and the other counties offering it? Why are you assuming its not permanent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How are we behaving irresponsibly? We are vaccinated. But, you can still get and spread covid vaccinated. Which part of that do you not understand?

What is the real issue? Do you feel guilty sending your kids back? Do you feel guilty about your behavior so you have to tell yourself as long as you are vaccinated everything is ok?

Your kids are best in school. Its very clear. Its good you made that choice for them.

DP. By insisting that your children can't go to school until it's 100% safe, which it will never be (and which it also previously wasn't). But it's your right as a parent to make that decision for your children who are younger than 18.

What makes you think it was not a family situation? My kids choose it. Surprise. Really, why do you care about someone you don’t know making different choices. We’d love to send ours back. They are not ready. So you want them back too what are you willing to do to make it safer?

Your kids are your kids.

Yes, and they will be taking advantage of the district administered virtual program, which you don't like, but that's a You Problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

Stop making up stuff to justify your poor behavior. No we will not go private. I got my kids spots for the fall and they choose virtual. Privates are not much safer.

I didn't mean to suggest you would go private. I think your kids will stay in virtual for the foreseeable future.

They will for the rest of this year and then we'll decide in August if we'll return to in person. We did look into and get spots in private. We figured that was better than in person public as the last resort as we couldn't find an good virtual option. At least the privates have weekly testing.

I can completely understand why many left for privates between the school violences issues, covid and curriculum.

Cool. More evidence that it is needlessly wasteful to keep virtual education managed by individual counties/districts. If they're not back to MCPS next fall, they're probably never coming back.

Cool. Virtual on the current format is still going to continue anyway, despite your shrieks of EVIDENCE!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every county, or at least he bigger ones have VA. Googling to see it, even Baltimore City has one. At some point, if you have 10-40K students in VA, you'd have to create a entire new school system, vs. separate schools like each county did now. If that poster wants to go through the state, fine, however they can argue all they want but MCPS has been clear that they are committed to keeping VA.

Doing it through the state makes no sense except if you mandate each county use the same exact curriculum so kids can move in and out of VA to in person easily. Although the state taking over the curriculum may not be a bad thing if they brought textbooks back.

I get why it there might be substantial value to making it easy to go to/from virtual during the pandemic. But we're nearing the end-game on COVID, with the 5-11yo vaccines rolling out. Of the kids whose parents choose to keep them in virtual next fall, I think it is safe to assume *most* will never return to their old in-person schools. So there's very little benefit to keeping the virtual curriculum aligned with the physical schools that happen to be geographically close to the students.

It is striking how little anyone here seems to contemplate the prospect of a vaccine-escaping variant.

The vaccines target the spike protein. The spike protein is the part that engages with the cell. If the spike protein mutates far enough to escape the vaccines, it will no longer engage with the cell.

Naturally acquired immunity, though, can target any part of the virus, and those parts of the virus can mutate away. This is why vaccine acquired immunity is better than infection-acquired.

I would bet money that the COVID spike protein turns out to be more creative than this makes it out to be.

More to the point, I wouldn’t bet our school system that it’s going to happen only the way you suggest and that we’re not going to be right back in March 2020 a lot faster than any of us want to be.

Good luck to all.

This post perfectly illustrates my point. For some people the pandemic will never end, and they'll never consider in-person schools safe. To someone like the pp, terrified of breakthrough infections, hesitant to get vaccine boosters, and convinced the other shoe is going to drop, there's plausible path back to in-person learning. And that's her right. But let's structure virtual learning around the false belief that students in these families are coming back. We'll need a large number of students return next fall after getting vaccination. But the ones that are kept home after that are going to stay home for a long, long time. And when/if they return to in-person school, I suspect will end up in private schools rather than public schools. Only a small percentage will end up ever stepping foot in an MCPS school again.

This post also perfectly illustrates that you don't understand how to hold two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time. My child is in-person school in MCPS. Both of his parents have received boosters.

I still find it...surprising? perplexing? amusing? that people who have lived through the same things I've lived through in the last two years are dead-set on the idea that they can predict what is coming next. We can't. Certainly not enough to move to shut down the thing we desperately needed on the front end of this and didn't have until Fall 2021. Keep the Virtual Academy open--we all may need back into it before this is really over (as opposed to "over" on the internet).

What do you mean by “over”? There is no “over”- COVID is never going away. Perhaps it will end up like the flu, with different variants popping up from time to time, some more serious than others. Life moves on, though. It is ridiculous to think we’re going to keep up COVID mitigations forever.

Keeping virtual options for kids/families is fine, as I’ve repeatedly said in this thread. But you seem to have unrealistic goals for COVID. You should work on acceptance. Life is filled with risks. With vaccines, the known and unknown risks of COVID blend into the background noise. That’s not to say the risk is zero, or that something bad won’t come along a month, year or decade from now. But that’s life. I can’t imagine the sheltered life someone would have had to live to not understand that.

Why do you care if someone makes different life choices than you, especially during a health pandemic? Why is the only acceptable way, your way? Why do we have to agree to risk getting covid because you tell us we do?

You decide what risks you want to take for your family and we'll decide for us. Getting covid is not something our family wants to risk. But, I am fortunate to have kids who do well in virtual, they can count on us to support them and are very understanding of health issues and the impact of covid should one of us get it. We have really enjoyed the extra time together.

You have in person. So, how is this even a debate as it has zero impact on you? Actually, it has a positive impact as it reduces the number of in person kids at your kids school, which makes it safer for them.

And as I’ve said again and again, I think the state should provide a permanent and sustainable virtual learning option for all students in Maryland, including your kids. I’m not trying to force your kids, or any others, back into schools.

And we're not sure why you persist in saying it again and again, because it's out of your control and it's not going to happen.