In-person school plans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hans Reimer’s email:

“ Evidently early stage groups are not showing up at the rate expected; whether because outreach hasn’t been strong enough, people just need time to schedule, or they are hesitant. But the outcome is clear and untenable.

That is why I am urging County officials to open up Group 1B and begin making vaccination doses available to residents over age 75.”

We won’t be going back a long while if even health care professionals are hesitant.

There's all the logistical issues of vaccine distribution too.

Teachers vaccinated does not matter. It’s about community spread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My brother teaches at an Urban school district in PA not far From NY. His particular school has high poverty - lots of ESL though the school district overall is middle income. The whole area got hit hard With COVID in the spring coming from NY and covid rates worse then here - still. But they have been hybrid all fall until planned break in December. As planned, they Restarted hybrid this week. All the teachers will be vaccinated Jan 25 week.

I just don’t understand why MD is so different.

And, how many families actually signed up for hybrid? The issue is we don't have enough teachers to do both beyond the safety issues. We have 35 kids per MS class on a good day. We don't have enough classrooms for each teacher to have their own classroom. Kids are mixed up in different classes so they change classrooms multiple times a day plus lunch. Some classrooms don't have windows (not sure how that is safe from a fire standpoint but its still allowed). We have an old boiler system, no HVAC.

If you check the building plans, they are probably listed as supply closets and not classrooms or offices. This is the case at my school. If a storage space fit at least 8 desks, it was turned into a classroom. A hallway is being used as a classroom. There was some discussion about turning the shower rooms into classrooms since students do not shower after PE. The opposition has been that it has to be entered through the locker rooms which are single sex. If we ever had a single sex self-contained class, that’s where it would be. Last year, we had a special ed support class with just one girl.

I’d rather have my child dL than in a supply closet where it is a fire safety risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hans Reimer’s email:

“ Evidently early stage groups are not showing up at the rate expected; whether because outreach hasn’t been strong enough, people just need time to schedule, or they are hesitant. But the outcome is clear and untenable.

That is why I am urging County officials to open up Group 1B and begin making vaccination doses available to residents over age 75.”

We won’t be going back a long while if even health care professionals are hesitant.

There's all the logistical issues of vaccine distribution too.

Teachers vaccinated does not matter. It’s about community spread.

If teachers are vaccinated, then schools should open. If bars and restaurants are open, then we are not making an effort to curb community spread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If you pulled those stats from the School at a Glance I would encourage you to look at it with a grain of salt. The statistic is generated by taking the total number of students and dividing it by the total number of staff, regardless of whether or not the staff members are certified teachers. So it includes paraeducators and special ed. paras. It also assumes that all teachers are teaching classes that are the same size, which is not true. Special education teachers will teach smaller class sizes. Speech language pathologists provide pull-out support but their presence does not affect the overall class size. Same thing for ESOL teachers and specialists in ES.

A K - 2 school has 600 students and could easily have 40 staff members with teaching certification, but they don't have 15 students per class. Instead they probably have been 20 - 25 per teacher and the rest of the staff are a combination of special educators, ESOL teachers and specialists (PE, music, art etc.)

No, that is incorrect. This is how the average class size is calculated for middle school and high school: "The regular student enrollment divided by the number of classes, excluding special education, reported for two areas: English (required courses) and all other academic subjects (other English, mathematics, world languages, science, and social studies)."

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/glance/definitions.aspx

So K - 2 wasn't a great example (thanks for the link BTW I didn't realize that the definition of class size was different for ES and MS and HS). For that reason I would guess that the class sizes on the School at a Glance documents are more accurate for ES than for MS and HS.

[Anonymous]

The "At A Glance" documents are a joke. The numbers referring to class sizes include other educators (media, specials) in the school, it is not a "real time" student to teacher ratio. Our ES school would show 25 to 1, but in truth there were 32 kids in a class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The "At A Glance" documents are a joke. The numbers referring to class sizes include other educators (media, specials) in the school, it is not a "real time" student to teacher ratio. Our ES school would show 25 to 1, but in truth there were 32 kids in a class.

No, they don't. Read the definition posted above.

[Anonymous]

Look at LA where CNN reports “ Things are so bad in Los Angeles County that health officials are now advising all essential workers to wear masks inside their own home to prevent spreading Covid-19 within their household.

"Right now, because there is so much spread, we're recommending that people wear their face coverings while they're inside the home," Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer said in a news conference Monday. That's for people who are either leaving their home every day for work or who are running errands regularly for their family, Ferrer said.”

But people want to hold full-size classes five days a week once teachers are vaccinated. Do you really think you personally are invincible to Covid?

[Anonymous]

If people don’t want to send their kids to school, they can choose virtual for the rest of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hans Reimer’s email:

“ Evidently early stage groups are not showing up at the rate expected; whether because outreach hasn’t been strong enough, people just need time to schedule, or they are hesitant. But the outcome is clear and untenable.

That is why I am urging County officials to open up Group 1B and begin making vaccination doses available to residents over age 75.”

We won’t be going back a long while if even health care professionals are hesitant.

R I E M E R

Sorry, Mr. Riemer. It autocorrects my name, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hans Reimer’s email:

“ Evidently early stage groups are not showing up at the rate expected; whether because outreach hasn’t been strong enough, people just need time to schedule, or they are hesitant. But the outcome is clear and untenable.

That is why I am urging County officials to open up Group 1B and begin making vaccination doses available to residents over age 75.”

We won’t be going back a long while if even health care professionals are hesitant.

There's all the logistical issues of vaccine distribution too.

Teachers vaccinated does not matter. It’s about community spread.

Ok. But then teachers should not be singled out to receive it before my dad. Right? There has to be a good reason to put that group before people who have a higher likelihood of getting hospitalized and thereby straining the healthcare system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you check the building plans, they are probably listed as supply closets and not classrooms or offices. This is the case at my school. If a storage space fit at least 8 desks, it was turned into a classroom. A hallway is being used as a classroom. There was some discussion about turning the shower rooms into classrooms since students do not shower after PE. The opposition has been that it has to be entered through the locker rooms which are single sex. If we ever had a single sex self-contained class, that’s where it would be. Last year, we had a special ed support class with just one girl.

Stedwick has several full sized classrooms that have no windows that open. This is not unusual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hans Reimer’s email:

“ Evidently early stage groups are not showing up at the rate expected; whether because outreach hasn’t been strong enough, people just need time to schedule, or they are hesitant. But the outcome is clear and untenable.

That is why I am urging County officials to open up Group 1B and begin making vaccination doses available to residents over age 75.”

We won’t be going back a long while if even health care professionals are hesitant.

R I E M E R

Sorry, Mr. Riemer. It autocorrects my name, too.

No, I'm just tired of seeing references on DCUM to Councilmember Reimer and Mayor Ehrlich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work for MCPS. It is sounding more and more like the "support model" will be used if schools return. Like others have posted, students who opt in for returning to school will be in a classroom with an adult. The student will be spaced six feet away from the other kids and will log onto Zoom and continue learning the same way he/she did at home. The adult in the room might be a para who is supporting them (i.e. - babysitting) or could be a teacher who is also leading their own Zoom class. I can't imagine being a seven year old sitting in a classroom on Zoom being distracted by the teacher at the front of the room who is teaching another set of kids on Zoom who are learning at home or in another room.
The way it was explained to us is that most classrooms would only have 12 students. In my second grade classroom, I might be teaching my 21 students on Zoom. Of my 21 students, many of them will be virtual (based on their responses) but I'll have a mix of kids in my physical classroom. Some of them will be on Zoom with me (in the same room) while the rest will be on Zoom with my teammates who are teaching from home.
Personally, I wish we could do the direct model. 12 kids in the classroom with a teacher who is leading direct instruction like "normal". I know parents/teachers don't want to lose their classes but this support model looks like a disaster. I'd much rather have a new set of kids with me in my physical space if it means we can stay off Zoom and learn together in a traditional sense.

Thank you for posting this and thank you for teaching our kiddos. Most of the discussion is about ES. It would be great to hear about MS/HS. My DS would be very upset if some of his 6th grade teachers switch, as he managed to build rapport with them online and highly respects them (KUDOS to the teachers, I have no clue how they pulled that off honestly). Keeping teachers/cohort is the reason why we chose full DL for the rest of the year. So far our MS only shared that ONLY 6th graders are expected back for time being and 200 student chose hybrid. Nothing else yet.

[Anonymous]

I demand the free daycare that I'm owed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I demand the free daycare that I'm owed!

Have you considered needlepoint or woodworking?