Covid Update from Central Office

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay, here's a real translation.

"We were afraid of the very vocal absolutely-no-virtual parents, because they are disproportionately well-off and powerful and know how to get attention. Even though the data suggested we were in for a sh!tshow and it might be best to go virtual for a few weeks to ride off the omicron sugre, we tried to create a school-by-school metric that might at least exclude at least THOSE people's schools from having to go virtual.

Since wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated people have lower rates of actual infection and spread of COVID, we thought, hey, we're geniuses. Whoever made/insisted upon this plan didn't consider that purely self-reported data was going to have the opposite effect, because the same people who are wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated are also the ones more likely to speak fluent English, have time to be highly informed, understand the procedures and have or find access to tests. Thus though the spread may be the same or lower in, say, the Whitman cluster than the Wheaton or Blair clusters, the way this whole mess was designed, the Whitman people were more likely to have their schools shut down.

So we are uhhhhh not just asking everyone to go virtual for a week or three, like we should have in the first place, but making these decisions, based on highly inaccurate data, even more granular and more needlessly complicated. Because there will be hell to pay if Larla with the "red" Burning Tree kid has to go virtual under almost any circumstances-- and we don't really GAF about Larlette with the "green" New Hampshire Estates kids, who is confused and scared and kept her kids out of school last spring because she lives with her grandparents and she can't afford to get sick."

HTH

Look, I get why you think that. But if that were true, my kid would have gotten more than 20 days in school last year. It's simply not true.

The only thing that has ever caused them to change course, or expedite anything, has been pressure from the state.

Hogan had to pressure them to return last year.

And this switch came after the State called out their BS about following state guidelines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an MCPS teacher.

I agree this hasn't been handled all that well but I am relieved we are not going virtual. I want to teach in person. My students do better, NONE of the kids I teach (elementary) want to do virtual school. Groans of dread when they talk about it. My own kids (high school) do not want to go virtual. I am vaxxed and boosted. My HS kid had Covid before the break. Missed 1 1/2 week. Was like a cold. I caught it. Missed a few days before break. Was like a cold. The rest of my family had it as well and it was like a cold.

What I actually think should happen is: schools stay open, we mask, if you feel like you have a cold you test, if you get a positive you quarantine for 5 (calendar) days, go back to school/work. Close contacts keep going to school/work unless they become symptomatic as long as vaxxed/boosted.

At this point a lot of the reaction to the spread of Omicron is more psychological/emotional than rational. We have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and going to school and work. We never shut down for colds or even the flu before this and we shouldn't now either. Yes, it is spreading rapidly, but the staff shortages are due to the long quarantine which isn't really stopping the rapid spread of what is actually a pretty mild illness for vaccinated people.

Educating children is also a safety measure and an urgent, vital, societal need. It should have top priority and society should make sacrifices to do it correctly, every time. Every effort should be made to keep kids in school (and busses running, and food being served, etc, etc). We fail kids time and again. Another topic for another thread.

I am also a MCPS teacher and 100% agree with all of this!! The bad thing about covid is the policies and self-imposed regulations, not Covid itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, here's a real translation.

"We were afraid of the very vocal absolutely-no-virtual parents, because they are disproportionately well-off and powerful and know how to get attention. Even though the data suggested we were in for a sh!tshow and it might be best to go virtual for a few weeks to ride off the omicron sugre, we tried to create a school-by-school metric that might at least exclude at least THOSE people's schools from having to go virtual.

Since wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated people have lower rates of actual infection and spread of COVID, we thought, hey, we're geniuses. Whoever made/insisted upon this plan didn't consider that purely self-reported data was going to have the opposite effect, because the same people who are wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated are also the ones more likely to speak fluent English, have time to be highly informed, understand the procedures and have or find access to tests. Thus though the spread may be the same or lower in, say, the Whitman cluster than the Wheaton or Blair clusters, the way this whole mess was designed, the Whitman people were more likely to have their schools shut down.

So we are uhhhhh not just asking everyone to go virtual for a week or three, like we should have in the first place, but making these decisions, based on highly inaccurate data, even more granular and more needlessly complicated. Because there will be hell to pay if Larla with the "red" Burning Tree kid has to go virtual under almost any circumstances-- and we don't really GAF about Larlette with the "green" New Hampshire Estates kids, who is confused and scared and kept her kids out of school last spring because she lives with her grandparents and she can't afford to get sick."

HTH

Look, I get why you think that. But if that were true, my kid would have gotten more than 20 days in school last year. It's simply not true.

The only thing that has ever caused them to change course, or expedite anything, has been pressure from the state.

Hogan had to pressure them to return last year.

And this switch came after the State called out their BS about following state guidelines.

This is true.

And the ReOpen group would be wise to stop wasting time writing/calling/testifying with the local admins and Board; they just don't care. And instead, spend all that time advocating at the state level. The only way MCPS will react is if somebody higher on the food chain tells them to. They just don't listen to families (regardless of your stance on in-person/virtual; if you are just a parent, they do not care)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

Actually, I have talked to my kids about it. They absolutely want to be in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

They're not going to be stuffed in auditoriums without teachers for the remainder of the year. But if they pivoted to virtual, we know they would be stuck in that special slice of hell for the remainder of (or near to) the year. At least as of today, this is a big victory for many across teachers, students, and parents.

No, WE do not know.

You have no source at all for this invention of your imagination, except, what? That MCPS stayed virtual longer than it expected to when a novel virus first hit and people were dropping like flies, and no one was vaccinated?

Literally every district around here did the same. Some didn't stay virtual as long, but all of them "lied" when they said it was for "2 weeks" because it was a very specific situation with almost no information.

But sure, that definitely means that any pivot to virtual would end the same way. Absolutely.

I can't believe that those of us who advocated for a sensible, orderly preemptive pivot to virtual before all this mess were called the "hysterical" ones operating on "feelings," not "data."

The DATA predicted all of this spread, staffing issues, etc. would very likely happen if we reopened normally after winter break.

Yes, we do know that. Once they pivot to virtual, it would hugely difficult to pivot back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an MCPS teacher.

I agree this hasn't been handled all that well but I am relieved we are not going virtual. I want to teach in person. My students do better, NONE of the kids I teach (elementary) want to do virtual school. Groans of dread when they talk about it. My own kids (high school) do not want to go virtual. I am vaxxed and boosted. My HS kid had Covid before the break. Missed 1 1/2 week. Was like a cold. I caught it. Missed a few days before break. Was like a cold. The rest of my family had it as well and it was like a cold.

What I actually think should happen is: schools stay open, we mask, if you feel like you have a cold you test, if you get a positive you quarantine for 5 (calendar) days, go back to school/work. Close contacts keep going to school/work unless they become symptomatic as long as vaxxed/boosted.

At this point a lot of the reaction to the spread of Omicron is more psychological/emotional than rational. We have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and going to school and work. We never shut down for colds or even the flu before this and we shouldn't now either. Yes, it is spreading rapidly, but the staff shortages are due to the long quarantine which isn't really stopping the rapid spread of what is actually a pretty mild illness for vaccinated people.

Educating children is also a safety measure and an urgent, vital, societal need. It should have top priority and society should make sacrifices to do it correctly, every time. Every effort should be made to keep kids in school (and busses running, and food being served, etc, etc). We fail kids time and again. Another topic for another thread.

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an MCPS teacher.

I agree this hasn't been handled all that well but I am relieved we are not going virtual. I want to teach in person. My students do better, NONE of the kids I teach (elementary) want to do virtual school. Groans of dread when they talk about it. My own kids (high school) do not want to go virtual. I am vaxxed and boosted. My HS kid had Covid before the break. Missed 1 1/2 week. Was like a cold. I caught it. Missed a few days before break. Was like a cold. The rest of my family had it as well and it was like a cold.

What I actually think should happen is: schools stay open, we mask, if you feel like you have a cold you test, if you get a positive you quarantine for 5 (calendar) days, go back to school/work. Close contacts keep going to school/work unless they become symptomatic as long as vaxxed/boosted.

At this point a lot of the reaction to the spread of Omicron is more psychological/emotional than rational. We have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and going to school and work. We never shut down for colds or even the flu before this and we shouldn't now either. Yes, it is spreading rapidly, but the staff shortages are due to the long quarantine which isn't really stopping the rapid spread of what is actually a pretty mild illness for vaccinated people.

Educating children is also a safety measure and an urgent, vital, societal need. It should have top priority and society should make sacrifices to do it correctly, every time. Every effort should be made to keep kids in school (and busses running, and food being served, etc, etc). We fail kids time and again. Another topic for another thread.

Well said! Agree 100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are so happy to see this update! Upgrade your masks everyone and go to school!

Only complete idiots think this is good news. Enjoy your kid’s subpar education for the remainder of the year, stuffed into auditoriums with no teachers. But they are socializing! (If you actually talked to your kid, you’d know the kids are absolutely miserable in the buildings right now)

They're not going to be stuffed in auditoriums without teachers for the remainder of the year. But if they pivoted to virtual, we know they would be stuck in that special slice of hell for the remainder of (or near to) the year. At least as of today, this is a big victory for many across teachers, students, and parents.

Didn’t you read the plan from FCPS? That’s exactly what they are going to do too — stuff them all together with asynchronous “learning”. I’ll take DL over that any day.

They'll put them in auditoriums to the extent that solves a temporary staffing challenge. Temporary staffing challenges will resolve much faster than a pivot back from DL would.

[Anonymous]

I’m amazed this was announced today actually, I was expecting a Sunday 9pm announcement. So even though MCPS has been a dumpster fire this week, at least I won’t spend the weekend agonizing over whether our red school was going virtual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I am also a MCPS teacher and 100% agree with all of this!! The bad thing about covid is the policies and self-imposed regulations, not Covid itself.

Um no. That wasn’t the takeaway I got there. The bad thing about covid is covid. We as a society are making it worse not because we’re imposing regulations but because we’re doing a terrible, inconsistent, rigid, poorly communicated, histrionic, non-evidence-based, unimaginative job of imposing regulations.

Please let’s not confuse “this is a shitty way to handle a pandemic and we should do better” with “we should ignore pandemics and just let the chips/bodies fall where they may.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an MCPS teacher.

I agree this hasn't been handled all that well but I am relieved we are not going virtual. I want to teach in person. My students do better, NONE of the kids I teach (elementary) want to do virtual school. Groans of dread when they talk about it. My own kids (high school) do not want to go virtual. I am vaxxed and boosted. My HS kid had Covid before the break. Missed 1 1/2 week. Was like a cold. I caught it. Missed a few days before break. Was like a cold. The rest of my family had it as well and it was like a cold.

What I actually think should happen is: schools stay open, we mask, if you feel like you have a cold you test, if you get a positive you quarantine for 5 (calendar) days, go back to school/work. Close contacts keep going to school/work unless they become symptomatic as long as vaxxed/boosted.

At this point a lot of the reaction to the spread of Omicron is more psychological/emotional than rational. We have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and going to school and work. We never shut down for colds or even the flu before this and we shouldn't now either. Yes, it is spreading rapidly, but the staff shortages are due to the long quarantine which isn't really stopping the rapid spread of what is actually a pretty mild illness for vaccinated people.

Educating children is also a safety measure and an urgent, vital, societal need. It should have top priority and society should make sacrifices to do it correctly, every time. Every effort should be made to keep kids in school (and busses running, and food being served, etc, etc). We fail kids time and again. Another topic for another thread.

Great post!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm an MCPS teacher.

I agree this hasn't been handled all that well but I am relieved we are not going virtual. I want to teach in person. My students do better, NONE of the kids I teach (elementary) want to do virtual school. Groans of dread when they talk about it. My own kids (high school) do not want to go virtual. I am vaxxed and boosted. My HS kid had Covid before the break. Missed 1 1/2 week. Was like a cold. I caught it. Missed a few days before break. Was like a cold. The rest of my family had it as well and it was like a cold.

What I actually think should happen is: schools stay open, we mask, if you feel like you have a cold you test, if you get a positive you quarantine for 5 (calendar) days, go back to school/work. Close contacts keep going to school/work unless they become symptomatic as long as vaxxed/boosted.

At this point a lot of the reaction to the spread of Omicron is more psychological/emotional than rational. We have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and going to school and work. We never shut down for colds or even the flu before this and we shouldn't now either. Yes, it is spreading rapidly, but the staff shortages are due to the long quarantine which isn't really stopping the rapid spread of what is actually a pretty mild illness for vaccinated people.

Educating children is also a safety measure and an urgent, vital, societal need. It should have top priority and society should make sacrifices to do it correctly, every time. Every effort should be made to keep kids in school (and busses running, and food being served, etc, etc). We fail kids time and again. Another topic for another thread.

I am also a MCPS teacher and 100% agree with all of this!! The bad thing about covid is the policies and self-imposed regulations, not Covid itself.

Thankfully, you guys are saying it. Some posters here continue to use teachers as proxies to go back to virtual. They think it's still 2020.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, here's a real translation.

"We were afraid of the very vocal absolutely-no-virtual parents, because they are disproportionately well-off and powerful and know how to get attention. Even though the data suggested we were in for a sh!tshow and it might be best to go virtual for a few weeks to ride off the omicron sugre, we tried to create a school-by-school metric that might at least exclude at least THOSE people's schools from having to go virtual.

Since wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated people have lower rates of actual infection and spread of COVID, we thought, hey, we're geniuses. Whoever made/insisted upon this plan didn't consider that purely self-reported data was going to have the opposite effect, because the same people who are wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated are also the ones more likely to speak fluent English, have time to be highly informed, understand the procedures and have or find access to tests. Thus though the spread may be the same or lower in, say, the Whitman cluster than the Wheaton or Blair clusters, the way this whole mess was designed, the Whitman people were more likely to have their schools shut down.

So we are uhhhhh not just asking everyone to go virtual for a week or three, like we should have in the first place, but making these decisions, based on highly inaccurate data, even more granular and more needlessly complicated. Because there will be hell to pay if Larla with the "red" Burning Tree kid has to go virtual under almost any circumstances-- and we don't really GAF about Larlette with the "green" New Hampshire Estates kids, who is confused and scared and kept her kids out of school last spring because she lives with her grandparents and she can't afford to get sick."

HTH

Look, I get why you think that. But if that were true, my kid would have gotten more than 20 days in school last year. It's simply not true.

The only thing that has ever caused them to change course, or expedite anything, has been pressure from the state.

Hogan had to pressure them to return last year.

And this switch came after the State called out their BS about following state guidelines.

And who do you think applies pressure on Hogan? White wealthy donors.

[Anonymous]

Now that we know that the schools are going to stay open, I will expect more covid cases in the next few weeks, could be a good thing, who knows? When that happens I'd like to see how MCPS handle absences from teachers, school staff and bus drivers. No dog on this game anymore, just want the surge to end and get back to normal like last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Okay, here's a real translation.

"We were afraid of the very vocal absolutely-no-virtual parents, because they are disproportionately well-off and powerful and know how to get attention. Even though the data suggested we were in for a sh!tshow and it might be best to go virtual for a few weeks to ride off the omicron sugre, we tried to create a school-by-school metric that might at least exclude at least THOSE people's schools from having to go virtual.

Since wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated people have lower rates of actual infection and spread of COVID, we thought, hey, we're geniuses. Whoever made/insisted upon this plan didn't consider that purely self-reported data was going to have the opposite effect, because the same people who are wealthier, whiter and more-vaccinated are also the ones more likely to speak fluent English, have time to be highly informed, understand the procedures and have or find access to tests. Thus though the spread may be the same or lower in, say, the Whitman cluster than the Wheaton or Blair clusters, the way this whole mess was designed, the Whitman people were more likely to have their schools shut down.

So we are uhhhhh not just asking everyone to go virtual for a week or three, like we should have in the first place, but making these decisions, based on highly inaccurate data, even more granular and more needlessly complicated. Because there will be hell to pay if Larla with the "red" Burning Tree kid has to go virtual under almost any circumstances-- and we don't really GAF about Larlette with the "green" New Hampshire Estates kids, who is confused and scared and kept her kids out of school last spring because she lives with her grandparents and she can't afford to get sick."

HTH

Look, I get why you think that. But if that were true, my kid would have gotten more than 20 days in school last year. It's simply not true.

The only thing that has ever caused them to change course, or expedite anything, has been pressure from the state.

Hogan had to pressure them to return last year.

And this switch came after the State called out their BS about following state guidelines.

This is true.

And the ReOpen group would be wise to stop wasting time writing/calling/testifying with the local admins and Board; they just don't care. And instead, spend all that time advocating at the state level. The only way MCPS will react is if somebody higher on the food chain tells them to. They just don't listen to families (regardless of your stance on in-person/virtual; if you are just a parent, they do not care)

DP and no, it's not true. It's such a moronic, one-sided take on the issue. It's like you're stuck in 2020. We have vaccines now, most people in MoCo who are eligible got them, Omicron is less severe, etc.

AND now we know what a disaster DL truly was, even though people like you can't admit you were wrong to insist on it for so long. I mean, what reputable scientific/medical expert agrees that DL is needed now?