What needs to be done to repair damage of Covid/school closures/quarantines/Covid policy in DCPS?

[Anonymous]

People also want to have the other side concede. Parents want schools to say, we were wrong to have closed for so long and we know that by doing so we caused lots of harm, so we're sorry and we will do our best to fix it.

But Like so many divisive issues, that is never going to happen because that's not how "the other side" sees it.

[Anonymous]

To the teacher: Yes, you were called lazy and all sorts of names on this forum. That is true. No one should deny that that happened. I imagine that was painful and awful and it's apparent that it still hurts you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People also want to have the other side concede. Parents want schools to say, we were wrong to have closed for so long and we know that by doing so we caused lots of harm, so we're sorry and we will do our best to fix it.

But Like so many divisive issues, that is never going to happen because that's not how "the other side" sees it.

I disagree that the people in power (who made the decisions to close schools and keep schools closed for so long) can't own their mistakes.

We can all own our mistakes.

It's the furious denial that there were mistakes is what in part makes people so stuck on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People also want to have the other side concede. Parents want schools to say, we were wrong to have closed for so long and we know that by doing so we caused lots of harm, so we're sorry and we will do our best to fix it.

But Like so many divisive issues, that is never going to happen because that's not how "the other side" sees it.

I don't necessarily think that people are looking for an apology, but rather a plan for addressing the harm moving forward, and a plan for ensuring that these measures are not used again during a future event. But I think you make an important point, obliquely--that it's hard for policy-makers to say that they won't use this tool again, simply because that would be an acknowledgment that it was a mistake to use it in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People also want to have the other side concede. Parents want schools to say, we were wrong to have closed for so long and we know that by doing so we caused lots of harm, so we're sorry and we will do our best to fix it.

But Like so many divisive issues, that is never going to happen because that's not how "the other side" sees it.

Who concedes to whom? You want the Chancellor to bow down and kiss the feet of the angriest anti-mask moms?

The fact of the matter is that we are in a very good position these days because of the vaccines. It took time to get shots into arms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People also want to have the other side concede. Parents want schools to say, we were wrong to have closed for so long and we know that by doing so we caused lots of harm, so we're sorry and we will do our best to fix it.

But Like so many divisive issues, that is never going to happen because that's not how "the other side" sees it.

I don't necessarily think that people are looking for an apology, but rather a plan for addressing the harm moving forward, and a plan for ensuring that these measures are not used again during a future event. But I think you make an important point, obliquely--that it's hard for policy-makers to say that they won't use this tool again, simply because that would be an acknowledgment that it was a mistake to use it in the first place.

I feel like I’m screaming into the void here - but DCPS *still* to this moment has extremely harmful quarantine policies that are really hurting kids (and per some teachers on here, hurting their ability to teach.) This is right now, in the present. We know test-to-stay works; and we know vaccination does a poor jov in preventing infection. Vaccine based quarantine is just wrong. Until DCPS changes this policy, I will have zero confidence that they truly learned that excluding kids from school is a very last resort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

Yes, you are correct. That hadn't occurred to me for unknown reasons. TTS for unvaccinated kids would make sense.

But if we are trying to do sane things in the future, then we have to acknowledge that it makes no sense to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, in terms of exposure. Add to that, masks seem to do jack all for transmission in schools (and they aren't coming back, anyway, aside from the charters). TTS requires knowing who was exposed, but it's sort of useless to contact trace in high schools, and in most schools, no? So you'd have to TTS everyone in the entire school whenever there's a case, meaning all of the time.

Now I've talked myself into believing that TTS isn't a good, rational solution, particularly since it has costs (not just the tests themselves, but also the time in tracking, etc.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

Yes, you are correct. That hadn't occurred to me for unknown reasons. TTS for unvaccinated kids would make sense.

But if we are trying to do sane things in the future, then we have to acknowledge that it makes no sense to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, in terms of exposure. Add to that, masks seem to do jack all for transmission in schools (and they aren't coming back, anyway, aside from the charters). TTS requires knowing who was exposed, but it's sort of useless to contact trace in high schools, and in most schools, no? So you'd have to TTS everyone in the entire school whenever there's a case, meaning all of the time.

Now I've talked myself into believing that TTS isn't a good, rational solution, particularly since it has costs (not just the tests themselves, but also the time in tracking, etc.)

I think by the end of the year they were just saying all unvaccinated kids unmasked in a classroom with a case had to quarantine. so basically very little contact tracing.

Oh and can we get rid of the stupid daily entry chart?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

Yes, you are correct. That hadn't occurred to me for unknown reasons. TTS for unvaccinated kids would make sense.

But if we are trying to do sane things in the future, then we have to acknowledge that it makes no sense to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, in terms of exposure. Add to that, masks seem to do jack all for transmission in schools (and they aren't coming back, anyway, aside from the charters). TTS requires knowing who was exposed, but it's sort of useless to contact trace in high schools, and in most schools, no? So you'd have to TTS everyone in the entire school whenever there's a case, meaning all of the time.

Now I've talked myself into believing that TTS isn't a good, rational solution, particularly since it has costs (not just the tests themselves, but also the time in tracking, etc.)

I think by the end of the year they were just saying all unvaccinated kids unmasked in a classroom with a case had to quarantine. so basically very little contact tracing.

Oh and can we get rid of the stupid daily entry chart?

Yes, I know that's what they were doing. But separating the vaxxed and the unvaxxed doesn't makes sense any more, since we see that the vaccines don't do much to limit transmission among school-age kids. So if we acknowledge this very real fact, then everyone is a close contact of everyone in a class, and at most schools that doesn't even make sense, since kids don't stay with their same cohort all day. Ergo, everyone has to TTS?

Agree that the daily entry chart is pure theater and needs to end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

Yes, you are correct. That hadn't occurred to me for unknown reasons. TTS for unvaccinated kids would make sense.

But if we are trying to do sane things in the future, then we have to acknowledge that it makes no sense to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, in terms of exposure. Add to that, masks seem to do jack all for transmission in schools (and they aren't coming back, anyway, aside from the charters). TTS requires knowing who was exposed, but it's sort of useless to contact trace in high schools, and in most schools, no? So you'd have to TTS everyone in the entire school whenever there's a case, meaning all of the time.

Now I've talked myself into believing that TTS isn't a good, rational solution, particularly since it has costs (not just the tests themselves, but also the time in tracking, etc.)

I think by the end of the year they were just saying all unvaccinated kids unmasked in a classroom with a case had to quarantine. so basically very little contact tracing.

Oh and can we get rid of the stupid daily entry chart?

Yes, I know that's what they were doing. But separating the vaxxed and the unvaxxed doesn't makes sense any more, since we see that the vaccines don't do much to limit transmission among school-age kids. So if we acknowledge this very real fact, then everyone is a close contact of everyone in a class, and at most schools that doesn't even make sense, since kids don't stay with their same cohort all day. Ergo, everyone has to TTS?

Agree that the daily entry chart is pure theater and needs to end.

Yes I’d rather get rid of quarantine entirely, but I wad thinking at least TTS would keep kids in school!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

Yes, you are correct. That hadn't occurred to me for unknown reasons. TTS for unvaccinated kids would make sense.

But if we are trying to do sane things in the future, then we have to acknowledge that it makes no sense to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, in terms of exposure. Add to that, masks seem to do jack all for transmission in schools (and they aren't coming back, anyway, aside from the charters). TTS requires knowing who was exposed, but it's sort of useless to contact trace in high schools, and in most schools, no? So you'd have to TTS everyone in the entire school whenever there's a case, meaning all of the time.

Now I've talked myself into believing that TTS isn't a good, rational solution, particularly since it has costs (not just the tests themselves, but also the time in tracking, etc.)

I think by the end of the year they were just saying all unvaccinated kids unmasked in a classroom with a case had to quarantine. so basically very little contact tracing.

Oh and can we get rid of the stupid daily entry chart?

Yes, I know that's what they were doing. But separating the vaxxed and the unvaxxed doesn't makes sense any more, since we see that the vaccines don't do much to limit transmission among school-age kids. So if we acknowledge this very real fact, then everyone is a close contact of everyone in a class, and at most schools that doesn't even make sense, since kids don't stay with their same cohort all day. Ergo, everyone has to TTS?

Agree that the daily entry chart is pure theater and needs to end.

Yes I’d rather get rid of quarantine entirely, but I wad thinking at least TTS would keep kids in school!

I am totally in favor of keeping kids in school, and I'm not one of those "but ONLY after we give everyone a pony and eliminate covid" types. I'm just thinking that if we were going for acknowledging mistakes of the past and moving forward without them, it would make the most sense to just end quarantine. I wonder when that will happen.

[Anonymous]

What are the hurdles to hiring more support staff to aid with the learning losses? My understanding of the issues is:
1) no one to hire
2) pay probably sucks = no one to hire
3) DCPS is slow at hiring

But is there a lack of funding for such positions, even if there were people to hire? Because funding seems like something parents could advocate for. The finding of people seems like it would require maybe a training program. Idk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Priority #1 is getting rid of quarantines.
For me, priority #2 is staffing up special ed and support staff. They are so burned out - and gaps there will make it hard to catch kids up.
#3 is ensuring the kids that missed all or part of K and 1st can read - however that happens.
#4 is encouraging kids that missed all or part of junior/senior year to enroll in college or finish HS if they dropped out.

I think #1 is important for kids, families, and teachers. I can't imagine it is good for classroom continuity that kids are in and out for weeks at a time. I'd imagine that might somehow get weighted into teachers' assessments, too, such that they don't like them.

But to end quarantines we'd have to accept covid as an illness like any other that we do not quarantine for. Is that even remotely possible?

Right now, only unvaccinated kids quarantine. We can institute test to stay.

Yes, you are correct. That hadn't occurred to me for unknown reasons. TTS for unvaccinated kids would make sense.

But if we are trying to do sane things in the future, then we have to acknowledge that it makes no sense to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, in terms of exposure. Add to that, masks seem to do jack all for transmission in schools (and they aren't coming back, anyway, aside from the charters). TTS requires knowing who was exposed, but it's sort of useless to contact trace in high schools, and in most schools, no? So you'd have to TTS everyone in the entire school whenever there's a case, meaning all of the time.

Now I've talked myself into believing that TTS isn't a good, rational solution, particularly since it has costs (not just the tests themselves, but also the time in tracking, etc.)

I think by the end of the year they were just saying all unvaccinated kids unmasked in a classroom with a case had to quarantine. so basically very little contact tracing.

Oh and can we get rid of the stupid daily entry chart?

Yes, I know that's what they were doing. But separating the vaxxed and the unvaxxed doesn't makes sense any more, since we see that the vaccines don't do much to limit transmission among school-age kids. So if we acknowledge this very real fact, then everyone is a close contact of everyone in a class, and at most schools that doesn't even make sense, since kids don't stay with their same cohort all day. Ergo, everyone has to TTS?

Agree that the daily entry chart is pure theater and needs to end.

Yes I’d rather get rid of quarantine entirely, but I wad thinking at least TTS would keep kids in school!

I am totally in favor of keeping kids in school, and I'm not one of those "but ONLY after we give everyone a pony and eliminate covid" types. I'm just thinking that if we were going for acknowledging mistakes of the past and moving forward without them, it would make the most sense to just end quarantine. I wonder when that will happen.

It’s a good question. Some things seemed to change very quickly, like reopening, ditching masks, etc. But then sometimes things can linger if it’s nobody’s priority. Except for parents of kids in daycare pre-vaccine, you don’t hear anyone saying anything about the kids excluded due to quarantine.