In-person school plans

[Anonymous]

Man getting kids back into buildings whether it happens this spring or fall is going to be tough. Luckily taxpayers are paying $400k a year to Jack Smith to figure it out and make hard decisions. What’s that now? He’s retiring in June so has no skin in the game and won’t take the fall for kids not being back in September?

[Anonymous]

PP mentions this. As I understand it, hybrid (doing virtual 2 days and in person 2 days) is off the table.

Is that true?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP mentions this. As I understand it, hybrid (doing virtual 2 days and in person 2 days) is off the table.

Is that true?

Don't know if it's off the table everywhere, but my kids' elementary school principal told us that the plans they were working on were 4 days a week in-person (with direct instruction for younger grades and "supervised virtual learning" for the older grades - I'm the OP of this thread). Wednesdays would be distant for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Man getting kids back into buildings whether it happens this spring or fall is going to be tough. Luckily taxpayers are paying $400k a year to Jack Smith to figure it out and make hard decisions. What’s that now? He’s retiring in June so has no skin in the game and won’t take the fall for kids not being back in September?

What did you have in mind for him taking the fall? Putting him in the stocks?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mentions this. As I understand it, hybrid (doing virtual 2 days and in person 2 days) is off the table.

Is that true?

Don't know if it's off the table everywhere, but my kids' elementary school principal told us that the plans they were working on were 4 days a week in-person (with direct instruction for younger grades and "supervised virtual learning" for the older grades - I'm the OP of this thread). Wednesdays would be distant for everyone.

Yeah I'm the PP. As far as I know, if you agree to in-person elementary you go in 4 days a week and are asychoronous on Wednesday. Schools are not doing 2 days on/2 days off which was suggested earlier in the year and used by some other districts/private schools. I think this is out of concern for students needing a consistent schedule plus issues with some students getting more in person days depending on which days are off because of holidays/in service days.

Some principals tried to float the idea of having a morning cohort and an afternoon cohort but that got shot down due to transportation refusing to add different routes (even though the majority of students would be transported by parents.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP mentions this. As I understand it, hybrid (doing virtual 2 days and in person 2 days) is off the table.

Is that true?

Don't know if it's off the table everywhere, but my kids' elementary school principal told us that the plans they were working on were 4 days a week in-person (with direct instruction for younger grades and "supervised virtual learning" for the older grades - I'm the OP of this thread). Wednesdays would be distant for everyone.

Yeah from what I'm learning about a return to in-person, the staffing issues are a nightmare since if you switch to a direct learning model (one teacher for 12 kids) you end up with really large virtual-only classes. If you do concurrent you end up tying extra staff up (two teachers per class) so it becomes harder to provide ESOL/SPED services if the co-teacher is tied up in one classroom. So getting a para to babysit is just easier and cheaper. And this doesn't take into account teachers who requested ADA accommodations to telework.

[Anonymous]

Our elementary has 4 classes per grade. Since overall the numbers are around 50/50 and I'm sure we aren't that different, can't we just say two virtual classes and two in person classes per grade and be done with it? Sure, some kids will have to switch teachers but that's nothing after what theyve been through already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our elementary has 4 classes per grade. Since overall the numbers are around 50/50 and I'm sure we aren't that different, can't we just say two virtual classes and two in person classes per grade and be done with it? Sure, some kids will have to switch teachers but that's nothing after what theyve been through already.

No, because the in-person classes can only be half the size of normal in order to maintain the size/distance needed in the classroom. So you need twice as many teachers for the in-person classes. Exceptions are possibly the lower grades in focus elementary schools, which have smaller class sizes to begin with.

[Anonymous]

ES would be 4 days.

Secondary would be 2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ES would be 4 days.

Secondary would be 2.

Ok, so for ES, 4 days in person ( either concurrent or direct teaching) is not too bad for hybrid.What do they do for Wednesday, a day off for kids? I was worried about 2 days in person and 2 days virtual for incoming kindergartener.

Do you know if direct teaching is still on the table or off the table for hybrid model?

If kids are allowed to go in full time, I assume it will be direct teaching, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our elementary has 4 classes per grade. Since overall the numbers are around 50/50 and I'm sure we aren't that different, can't we just say two virtual classes and two in person classes per grade and be done with it? Sure, some kids will have to switch teachers but that's nothing after what theyve been through already.

No, because the in-person classes can only be half the size of normal in order to maintain the size/distance needed in the classroom. So you need twice as many teachers for the in-person classes. Exceptions are possibly the lower grades in focus elementary schools, which have smaller class sizes to begin with.

Exactly


If teacher A and teacher B both have 20 kids in their class and you shuffle everybody around into virtual and in person then one teacher is dedicated to only teaching 12 kids and the other kid and the other teacher is going to teach 28. I know this is doable in some circumstances but depending on the school it would not be allowed because of rules about class sizes for title 1/focus

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ES would be 4 days.

Secondary would be 2.

Ok, so for ES, 4 days in person ( either concurrent or direct teaching) is not too bad for hybrid.What do they do for Wednesday, a day off for kids? I was worried about 2 days in person and 2 days virtual for incoming kindergartener.

Do you know if direct teaching is still on the table or off the table for hybrid model?

If kids are allowed to go in full time, I assume it will be direct teaching, right?

As I understand it each school is trying to figure out how to allocate staff to different models of in-person learning so it could be very much up in the air as it could be a different model depending on the grade or depending on the student cohort. and since your kid will not be going into kindergarten until the fall I think there's still a lot of things that are subject to change so take some deep breaths because I don't know what kind of decisions are going to be made until closer to July and August

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Man getting kids back into buildings whether it happens this spring or fall is going to be tough. Luckily taxpayers are paying $400k a year to Jack Smith to figure it out and make hard decisions. What’s that now? He’s retiring in June so has no skin in the game and won’t take the fall for kids not being back in September?

Really, this is what the new blame game will be? Not COVID? Not in a pandemic? Not that people will not stay home when they can to help stop the spread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our elementary has 4 classes per grade. Since overall the numbers are around 50/50 and I'm sure we aren't that different, can't we just say two virtual classes and two in person classes per grade and be done with it? Sure, some kids will have to switch teachers but that's nothing after what theyve been through already.

No, because the in-person classes can only be half the size of normal in order to maintain the size/distance needed in the classroom. So you need twice as many teachers for the in-person classes. Exceptions are possibly the lower grades in focus elementary schools, which have smaller class sizes to begin with.

Exactly


If teacher A and teacher B both have 20 kids in their class and you shuffle everybody around into virtual and in person then one teacher is dedicated to only teaching 12 kids and the other kid and the other teacher is going to teach 28. I know this is doable in some circumstances but depending on the school it would not be allowed because of rules about class sizes for title 1/focus

So, you punish the virtual kids who are doing their part to reduce the spread? Nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:ES would be 4 days.

Secondary would be 2.

Ok, so for ES, 4 days in person ( either concurrent or direct teaching) is not too bad for hybrid.What do they do for Wednesday, a day off for kids? I was worried about 2 days in person and 2 days virtual for incoming kindergartener.

Do you know if direct teaching is still on the table or off the table for hybrid model?

If kids are allowed to go in full time, I assume it will be direct teaching, right?

I wouldn't plan on this happening as it is? If Wednesday is a day off, you need to figure out child care which will be an issue if they remove child care from the schools.