4.4 percent of MCPS staff report having COVID

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you cannot make your point in a couple sentences it’s not a point worth making because no one will read it.

Your well thought out posting may be cogent and even helpful - but anything longer than one or two text messages WILL be skipped over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For goodness sake.

I should have made quitting DCUM my New Year's resolution. Maybe there's still time.

That number includes some who tested positive at the beginning of winter break and who are now out of the quarantine stage and able to return to work.

Source? Proof?

I can tell you that from Dec 24 to Jan 2, parents at my ES got 6 notifications for different staff members that had COVID. The MCPS pdf that circulated yesterday said we had 2 staff cases.

Regardless, MCPS is still doing a 10-day quarantine, correct? If so, 10 days from Dec 24 is exactly Jan 3, but any later than Dec 24, the person may still be in quarantine.

Just looking at this data point, it strikes me how these numbers mimic the community maps of COVID (by zip code) which might be indicative of lesser vacations and access to boosters. MCPS should work with DHHS to increase vaccinations and boosters for these communities.

...what? The data point that shows that most schools are very close to each other, especially with regard to raw numbers? Enough that the variation between 9 (Whitman) and 11 (Wheaton) could easily be explained by random chance? Even 7 (Churchill) vs 13 (Gaithersburg). It's almost double, but it's also only 6 people.

This is a really small sample size and very small actual numbers. At most, there is a small association. And maybe there is a correlation if some of these staff members got it from their student populations before break.

But you do realize that teachers and staff don't often live very near the schools they teach at anymore, right?

And these are staff numbers. These aren't a special population of poor, disadvantaged people who need more outreach and vaccine education because they live in poor, disadvantaged Silver Spring or w/e-- not on average.

In a school with 40 teachers that is less than 2 out. Very low. You're nuts.

So here's something interesting about viruses-- COVID in particular, and omicron very specifically. They-- get this-- replicate. They spread. Shocking, I know.

4% becomes 8% quite quickly, which becomes 16% pretty quickly, too, and then 32%. Without mitigation efforts, anyway. Then maybe things slow down a bit because of overlapping exposures and fewer hosts and so on. But it doesn't stop at 4% or even 8%.

When you start with a number that's already the number of typical absences during flu season-- and you're not counting additional people out with colds and flus-- and the disease is far more contagious-- that's not so good.

Barring some quirk, like another week of snow days, it's not going to stop at 4%.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, "Wait two weeks, that's what you said about X and Y and Z, I don't believe you..." Do you believe that it's never true that things will get worse in a week or two? Do you think we haven't already seen that happening with omicron, and rapidly?

The silver lining here, and a big reason that virtual should be appealing, is that it should blow through in just a few total weeks. But if we have kids in virtual during the worst of it, that will actually save lives and reduce disability among our population down the line. Sigh.

You are writing an educated analysis on a forum where education in not valued. This forum is only for people that want their children out of the house. They do not value education, learning, knowledge or analysis. They only value the removal of their children from their lives. Location is not important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For goodness sake.

I should have made quitting DCUM my New Year's resolution. Maybe there's still time.

That number includes some who tested positive at the beginning of winter break and who are now out of the quarantine stage and able to return to work.

Source? Proof?

I can tell you that from Dec 24 to Jan 2, parents at my ES got 6 notifications for different staff members that had COVID. The MCPS pdf that circulated yesterday said we had 2 staff cases.

Regardless, MCPS is still doing a 10-day quarantine, correct? If so, 10 days from Dec 24 is exactly Jan 3, but any later than Dec 24, the person may still be in quarantine.

Just looking at this data point, it strikes me how these numbers mimic the community maps of COVID (by zip code) which might be indicative of lesser vacations and access to boosters. MCPS should work with DHHS to increase vaccinations and boosters for these communities.

...what? The data point that shows that most schools are very close to each other, especially with regard to raw numbers? Enough that the variation between 9 (Whitman) and 11 (Wheaton) could easily be explained by random chance? Even 7 (Churchill) vs 13 (Gaithersburg). It's almost double, but it's also only 6 people.

This is a really small sample size and very small actual numbers. At most, there is a small association. And maybe there is a correlation if some of these staff members got it from their student populations before break.

But you do realize that teachers and staff don't often live very near the schools they teach at anymore, right?

And these are staff numbers. These aren't a special population of poor, disadvantaged people who need more outreach and vaccine education because they live in poor, disadvantaged Silver Spring or w/e-- not on average.

In a school with 40 teachers that is less than 2 out. Very low. You're nuts.

So here's something interesting about viruses-- COVID in particular, and omicron very specifically. They-- get this-- replicate. They spread. Shocking, I know.

4% becomes 8% quite quickly, which becomes 16% pretty quickly, too, and then 32%. Without mitigation efforts, anyway. Then maybe things slow down a bit because of overlapping exposures and fewer hosts and so on. But it doesn't stop at 4% or even 8%.

When you start with a number that's already the number of typical absences during flu season-- and you're not counting additional people out with colds and flus-- and the disease is far more contagious-- that's not so good.

Barring some quirk, like another week of snow days, it's not going to stop at 4%.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, "Wait two weeks, that's what you said about X and Y and Z, I don't believe you..." Do you believe that it's never true that things will get worse in a week or two? Do you think we haven't already seen that happening with omicron, and rapidly?

The silver lining here, and a big reason that virtual should be appealing, is that it should blow through in just a few total weeks. But if we have kids in virtual during the worst of it, that will actually save lives and reduce disability among our population down the line. Sigh.

You are writing an educated analysis on a forum where education in not valued. This forum is only for people that want their children out of the house. They do not value education, learning, knowledge or analysis. They only value the removal of their children from their lives. Location is not important.

That's not true. It's for incessant whiners like you as well. Look, you're contributing some whine right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For goodness sake.

I should have made quitting DCUM my New Year's resolution. Maybe there's still time.

That number includes some who tested positive at the beginning of winter break and who are now out of the quarantine stage and able to return to work.

Source? Proof?

I can tell you that from Dec 24 to Jan 2, parents at my ES got 6 notifications for different staff members that had COVID. The MCPS pdf that circulated yesterday said we had 2 staff cases.

Regardless, MCPS is still doing a 10-day quarantine, correct? If so, 10 days from Dec 24 is exactly Jan 3, but any later than Dec 24, the person may still be in quarantine.

Just looking at this data point, it strikes me how these numbers mimic the community maps of COVID (by zip code) which might be indicative of lesser vacations and access to boosters. MCPS should work with DHHS to increase vaccinations and boosters for these communities.

...what? The data point that shows that most schools are very close to each other, especially with regard to raw numbers? Enough that the variation between 9 (Whitman) and 11 (Wheaton) could easily be explained by random chance? Even 7 (Churchill) vs 13 (Gaithersburg). It's almost double, but it's also only 6 people.

This is a really small sample size and very small actual numbers. At most, there is a small association. And maybe there is a correlation if some of these staff members got it from their student populations before break.

But you do realize that teachers and staff don't often live very near the schools they teach at anymore, right?

And these are staff numbers. These aren't a special population of poor, disadvantaged people who need more outreach and vaccine education because they live in poor, disadvantaged Silver Spring or w/e-- not on average.

In a school with 40 teachers that is less than 2 out. Very low. You're nuts.

So here's something interesting about viruses-- COVID in particular, and omicron very specifically. They-- get this-- replicate. They spread. Shocking, I know.

4% becomes 8% quite quickly, which becomes 16% pretty quickly, too, and then 32%. Without mitigation efforts, anyway. Then maybe things slow down a bit because of overlapping exposures and fewer hosts and so on. But it doesn't stop at 4% or even 8%.

When you start with a number that's already the number of typical absences during flu season-- and you're not counting additional people out with colds and flus-- and the disease is far more contagious-- that's not so good.

Barring some quirk, like another week of snow days, it's not going to stop at 4%.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, "Wait two weeks, that's what you said about X and Y and Z, I don't believe you..." Do you believe that it's never true that things will get worse in a week or two? Do you think we haven't already seen that happening with omicron, and rapidly?

The silver lining here, and a big reason that virtual should be appealing, is that it should blow through in just a few total weeks. But if we have kids in virtual during the worst of it, that will actually save lives and reduce disability among our population down the line. Sigh.

You are writing an educated analysis on a forum where education in not valued. This forum is only for people that want their children out of the house. They do not value education, learning, knowledge or analysis. They only value the removal of their children from their lives. Location is not important.

How ridiculous of a comment to make. Kids learn better at school, for the most part. That's why there are lots of studies showing learning loss from last years virtual learning. Also, not everyone should be staying at home because home is not safe.

[Anonymous]

How many of you know what a normal number or rate of absences is for your school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Related question - are the teachers going to return back to teaching at day 6 (per cdc guidelines of 5 days isolation, 5 days fully masked) or are they returning at day 11?

I'm assuming cdc made this call because most of the transmission happens in the first 5 days and they know basic society cannot function anymore on 10 or 14 days quarantine. Has MCPS recalibrated? I haven't been seeing any information put out on this from the school system.

I was going to ask this.

I am not sure any school system has changed this yet. They should. That would certainly help with all the shortages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How many of you know what a normal number or rate of absences is for your school?

Exactly. High presumptuous of someone to obnoxiously post “Source? Proof?” about someone else and then in the same post make an unsubstantiated claim based on zero evidence about what the “typical” number of absences are during flu season.

Get this, people like to stroke their own egos. Shocking, I know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we post facts, like OP is doing, as well as thoughtful rebuttals, without calling each other names????

As soon as you post an insult and impugn another poster's motives, you lose credibility and appear as an "Open at all costs" or "Close at all costs" troll. Neither of which any reasonable person wants.

Thank you.

Wait, that's on the DCUM style sheet!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except that all schools had trouble filling in with subs before the break - where do you think they are magically going to come from to cover for those teachers? Schools were already doubling up for classes, eliminating planning periods for teachers as they covered for their peers.

Why didn’t Central Office work during winter break to hire additional staff? There were new graduates as colleges held winter commencements. Perhaps new graduates would help fill the substitute rolls or permanent hires.

Oh yeh - Dr. McKnight gave administrators an extra week of vacation. That was more important than dealing with staffing shortages and developing a current plan for the impact of a new COVID variant.

No one is applying over winter break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here- I published the list above…

But here are the large number of cases (double digits)…it’s a lot of schools (staff)

So it’s not 1 or 2 per school. I am not a teacher - perhaps a teacher can comment on how difficult it is to find this many subs. I’m guessing not easy.

Einstein 15
Briggs Chaney 11
Clarksburg HS 11
Magruder 11
Damascus 10
Eastern 14
Gaithersburg HS 13
Gaithersburg MS 10
Blake 11
Lakelands Park 14
NW HS 11
Odessa 11
Paint Branch 11
Parkland 15
QO 14
WJ 16
Waters Landing 10
Watkins Mill 15
Wheaton 11

Interesting the higher numbers are of those with the higher vaccine rates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you cannot make your point in a couple sentences it’s not a point worth making because no one will read it.

That makes perfect sense in a forum where an OP will post something like, "My 6-year-old is bored on weekends-- what activities would you suggest for an only child?"

And more than one response will be like: "Why are you scheduling your teens' weekends for them? My kids just play video games with each other, it's fine."

Post length is not the primary factor when it comes to what people choose to ignore, and why.

Most of it is their own cognitive bias, which is why every. single. thread. in the MCPS forum devolves into the same bickering with the same overwarmed arguments. The post could be specifically about, I don't know, current staff positives, and 2 pages in, it's about basement-dwellers, "Monifa" and free babysitting.

But, hey, at least it's in nice, easy-to-read "couple-sentence" bites!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How many of you know what a normal number or rate of absences is for your school?

Exactly. High presumptuous of someone to obnoxiously post “Source? Proof?” about someone else and then in the same post make an unsubstantiated claim based on zero evidence about what the “typical” number of absences are during flu season.

Get this, people like to stroke their own egos. Shocking, I know.

The reference to a "typical" number of absences during cold/flu season was based on a teacher here who provided that as evidence that these numbers are no big deal. The entire point I was making was that even IF that were so, that would not be good.

And "Source? Proof?" was an obnoxious request for proof that teachers who could be back in school today (assuming no snow) were included in the case counts. That's a completely different issue.

When it comes to absence rates, those are guesses, or even if informed, are estimates and averages. We know that we don't know them all to the decimal point. When it comes to what the MCPS policy is on how to count the pre-Jan 3 cases, one should be able to point to a specific policy or communication from MCPS, or even just offer that they are a teacher and that's what they heard from their principal.

It's a bold statement of fact and policy that I don't think anyone has seen anywhere, so yeah, I'd like some form of source. Something, anything. How obnoxious of me.

Maybe we shouldn't be making any vague assumptions about anything at all in gaming this out. But there's a difference between saying something like

"MCPS policy is X"

vs

"If X teachers are usually out, and now we have X teachers out with COVID, then it would stand to reason that..."

But, yanno... DCUM

[Anonymous]

Central office is being called in to cover classrooms. That is news to me as of today, when I talked to a Central Office employee who is going to be subbing this week!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Except that all schools had trouble filling in with subs before the break - where do you think they are magically going to come from to cover for those teachers? Schools were already doubling up for classes, eliminating planning periods for teachers as they covered for their peers.

Why didn’t Central Office work during winter break to hire additional staff? There were new graduates as colleges held winter commencements. Perhaps new graduates would help fill the substitute rolls or permanent hires.

Oh yeh - Dr. McKnight gave administrators an extra week of vacation. That was more important than dealing with staffing shortages and developing a current plan for the impact of a new COVID variant.

I’m going to guess most new graduates would probably rather work at Starbucks than substitute right now. Heck, they’d probably make more money at Starbucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For everyone on this board who thinks COVID is NBD- 4.4 percent of teachers and staff have COVID. That’s a huge number and IMHO a reason to go virtual for a couple of weeks (971/22,000).

I’m super happy that my kid went back to school last fall, but I don’t hate teachers. I know that people think if MCPS goes virtual they won’t ever go back to in person. I think that’s unrealistic. 5 percent positivity rate is a stupidly high number.

That number is staff not teachers. Where do you get the 22,000 number from?