How could a school the size of Blair reopen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

Impossible to enforce. What are you going to do if a kid doesn’t have a mask or chooses not to wear one? Send them home? Unlikely.

This, among 5 million other reasons is why MCPS will NOT reopen in the fall. Guaranteed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Given the enormous size - and location in a county hotspot - I’m trying to wrap my head around how Blair (and schools like it) could reopen this fall. Has anyone heard discussion of strategies or is it all speculation at this point?

Probably all speculation, since schools would be the last phase to reopen anyway. And Maryland still hasn’t had that 15 day decrease in cases that Hogan wants to see.

Unlikely Blair, and the other high schools, opens in the fall.

Think about the challenges - lunches served at school, sanitizing buses, ensuring sick kids stay home (impossible even when there is NO pandemic).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

Impossible to enforce. What are you going to do if a kid doesn’t have a mask or chooses not to wear one? Send them home? Unlikely.

This, among 5 million other reasons is why MCPS will NOT reopen in the fall. Guaranteed.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

Impossible to enforce. What are you going to do if a kid doesn’t have a mask or chooses not to wear one? Send them home? Unlikely.

This, among 5 million other reasons is why MCPS will NOT reopen in the fall. Guaranteed.

MCPS isn't going to open, private schools aren't going to open, no schools are going to open.
It's going to be online.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

ES kids can be in classrooms most of the day. Completely different scenario than HS. Much less mixing. Lunch room can be kept by clas...even recess with some changes. Mrs Smiths class in on the basketball courts today. Mr Bs class is on the jungle gyms. Mr Laks class is on the soccer fields. Ideal no..but much better than no education.

[Anonymous]

Schools will not reopen in the fall people. It ain’t gonna happen. So chill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

ES kids can be in classrooms most of the day. Completely different scenario than HS. Much less mixing. Lunch room can be kept by clas...even recess with some changes. Mrs Smiths class in on the basketball courts today. Mr Bs class is on the jungle gyms. Mr Laks class is on the soccer fields. Ideal no..but much better than no education.

If that were the only issue, HS students could all eat in their 4th period classroom, or wherever they last had class. The school went to one lunch last year. But, mostly the issues with Blair are the same as every other HS. The out of boundary students go to Blair every day, just like in boundary kids. That doesn’t increase interactions. Is the real question, why should magnet parents send their kids to 20901?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

Impossible to enforce. What are you going to do if a kid doesn’t have a mask or chooses not to wear one? Send them home? Unlikely.

This, among 5 million other reasons is why MCPS will NOT reopen in the fall. Guaranteed.

MCPS isn't going to open, private schools aren't going to open, no schools are going to open.
It's going to be online.

I agree that MCPS won’t open.

Possible some private schools do open however. Especially in the state. Depending on the number of cases in a particular area?

Private schools can be a little more strict with social distancing and requiring masks. Whereas public schools cannot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Presumably, Silver Spring won't still be a hot spot in the Fall. The numbers for 20906, for example, while high are only slowly going up (ie: 10-25 new cases per day for past week).

That's because we're shut down. If things are going up a little with things shut down, I certainly wouldn't expect them to go down when we stop social distancing.

My kids went to Blair. I can tell you that while you can't feasibly keep kids 6 feet apart in the classroom, that's still a lot better than the spacing in the cafeteria, on buses, or in the halls between class periods.

We're not really shut down. Plenty of people are out and about, in fact increasingly so, and I'm not talking about the people working in essential industries.

Yup. More than half of the Montgomery county cases and deaths are nursing home patients.

Not factual at all. Maybe you can’t do math.

Today’s 5/3 MoCo count:

Total cases: 5,150
Total nursing home cases: 1,099
Staff: 382
Residents: 717

Now do mo co deaths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

ES kids can be in classrooms most of the day. Completely different scenario than HS. Much less mixing. Lunch room can be kept by clas...even recess with some changes. Mrs Smiths class in on the basketball courts today. Mr Bs class is on the jungle gyms. Mr Laks class is on the soccer fields. Ideal no..but much better than no education.

If that were the only issue, HS students could all eat in their 4th period classroom, or wherever they last had class. The school went to one lunch last year. But, mostly the issues with Blair are the same as every other HS. The out of boundary students go to Blair every day, just like in boundary kids. That doesn’t increase interactions. Is the real question, why should magnet parents send their kids to 20901?

I don’t think you understand how HS works. Teachers still have to supervise HS in classrooms and other similar spaces. And teachers are supposed to have a duty free lunch. How are those things supposed to happen simultaneously?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

ES kids can be in classrooms most of the day. Completely different scenario than HS. Much less mixing. Lunch room can be kept by clas...even recess with some changes. Mrs Smiths class in on the basketball courts today. Mr Bs class is on the jungle gyms. Mr Laks class is on the soccer fields. Ideal no..but much better than no education.

If that were the only issue, HS students could all eat in their 4th period classroom, or wherever they last had class. The school went to one lunch last year. But, mostly the issues with Blair are the same as every other HS. The out of boundary students go to Blair every day, just like in boundary kids. That doesn’t increase interactions. Is the real question, why should magnet parents send their kids to 20901?

I don’t think you understand how HS works. Teachers still have to supervise HS in classrooms and other similar spaces. And teachers are supposed to have a duty free lunch. How are those things supposed to happen simultaneously?

Same for ES, no? Just saying lunch isn't the hangup, the number of people that have to be in any public school simultaneously through the course of the day is the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

Impossible to enforce. What are you going to do if a kid doesn’t have a mask or chooses not to wear one? Send them home? Unlikely.

This, among 5 million other reasons is why MCPS will NOT reopen in the fall. Guaranteed.

Give them a mask. I think we need to solve the PPE problem before we re-open schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

ES kids can be in classrooms most of the day. Completely different scenario than HS. Much less mixing. Lunch room can be kept by clas...even recess with some changes. Mrs Smiths class in on the basketball courts today. Mr Bs class is on the jungle gyms. Mr Laks class is on the soccer fields. Ideal no..but much better than no education.

If that were the only issue, HS students could all eat in their 4th period classroom, or wherever they last had class. The school went to one lunch last year. But, mostly the issues with Blair are the same as every other HS. The out of boundary students go to Blair every day, just like in boundary kids. That doesn’t increase interactions. Is the real question, why should magnet parents send their kids to 20901?

I don’t think you understand how HS works. Teachers still have to supervise HS in classrooms and other similar spaces. And teachers are supposed to have a duty free lunch. How are those things supposed to happen simultaneously?

Same for ES, no? Just saying lunch isn't the hangup, the number of people that have to be in any public school simultaneously through the course of the day is the issue. Furthermore, this is just another Blair troll thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone will have to wear masks in school.

How's that going to work for lunch?

You might be able to get HS students to wear masks effectively other times, but what about elementary students? Pre-K?

I think it's likely that we're going to see very different solutions for elementary vs. high school.

There's evidence, but not yet proof, that kids under 10 aren't spreading the virus, or doing so in smaller numbers. So, it may be that there's a decision that masks start at a certain age.

It's also more realistic to set up routines so that elementary students are only exposed to others in their own class. Whether that's specials being done virtually (e.g. teacher projected on whiteboard), eating in the classroom, staggered arrivals and dismissals, assigned seats on the bus so kids are next to others in their class etc . . .

On the other hand, from an economic point of view, reopening elementary schools is key. Right now, if schools are closed, 12.5 percent of the workforce can't work. So, getting those parents back to work means getting care for their kids.

On the other hand, I think we're more likely to see some kind of blended solution for high schoolers. I can imagine, for example, going to a block schedule (4 classes that last a semester, rather than 8 that last all year, or even 2 classes that last a quarter). So, a student might have 4 classes, 2 of which meet on campus, and come to school every other day.

But we're months away from reopening, and hopefully we'll have a lot more information by the end of that period, about whether and how kids spread the virus, and what kind of interventions have the most power to slow down spread.