OSSE keeping cohort/student caps for Fall?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems the problem actually lies with the DC Department of Health which has put out extremely stringent guidance for schools. It’s just guidance, not law. It’s more stringent and less flexible than the CDC. And when looked at holistically, is much more stringent for schools and students than bars, gyms, churches, and many other indoor activities. It makes no sense from a public health perspective to say adults can engage in sports but high school students can’t. Why punish the high school students?

Now with vaccinations on the rise, private schools are finally coming to their senses and saying “Enough. I’m not going to follow this guidance. We are not going to ask our students to keep bearing all the burden of this pandemic.” But OSSE and DCPS are sticking with the “we are following the guidance of the health professionals” line- which is very hard to argue with on its face - even though its clear that the “health guidance” is biased and makes a political decision on where to allocate the risk and where to allocate the burden.

Very well said. The main problem for term 4 seems to be, however, that DCPS signed an agreement with the WTU that codifies that guidance into law for the rest of the school year.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I don't think anyone knows what OSSE will do in the fall. I was on the Wilson feeder call last night (anyone else?) and the DME's office clearly doesn't have a plan – so I guess we don't have a bad plan, but we also don't have a good one either?

FWIW, my older kid has been at in-person pre-school for months. They're super vigilant about mask wearing, outdoor time, ventilation, and safety procedures, plus all the teachers are vaccinated now. But they don't really do social distancing because you can't enforce that with little kids who don't know the difference between six feet and six inches. We've had a couple false alarms, but zero cases and zero exposures. Knock on wood, but my point is ... this is all manageable. DC needs to stop adhering to guidelines that are almost a year old. They haven't changed the reopening metrics since, what, June of last year?

[Anonymous]

I direct a preschool (full day, so not public school) and we must follow OSSE guidelines with group size, etc. We have NO IDEA what the fall will bring. Nor the summer. Nor next week. All we know is what we have NOW.

So we are going to make enrollment offers for this new school year based on what we KNOW NOW. If we can increase group size to more than 10 children (we can have 12 people, but 2 must be teachers, so 10 children) then we'll go ahead and make more offers in late spring, summer, October, whenever.

But at this point, I am not going to go back to our normal 20 or 16 kids per classroom and then have to UNENROLL children in August if OSSE won't allow that. That's crazy!

[Anonymous]

They need to call up NYC and get some advice.