Time to start loking seriously into Double shift school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A previous poster suggested every other day, but if we are throwing out big ideas just for the hell of it, I'd suggest half the school population goes to the physical school for 2 weeks while the other half does online learning. Then they switch.

At each switch, you have a weekend for a deep cleaning of the school. The every other day or the half day proposals don't acknowledge that the virus stays on surfaces for at least a few hours and up to a few days.

The bonus is that students would be more isolated for 14 days every 14 days so any burbling re-emergence of the virus in the school population would be hindered/slowed down before it really took off (reducing R-nought).

Students in the two week online cycles could work on longer projects, have homework assignments from their teachers, watch lesson videos... basically what is going on right now. But it would be for 2 weeks at a time. Then they could get into the classrooms for interaction/instruction from the teachers in person.

Is it an ideal situation? No. But I could see it work for a year while we wait on having a vaccine.

It would beat having to shut down school for a month every month or two due to detecting a resurgence of COVID-19 community transmission. It would be scheduled and predictable, which would be awesome for these kids whose lives seem to be totally up in the air with indeterminacy at this point.

This is the best idea of the thread. It won’t happen, but it’s the best

[Anonymous]

I’m a fan of the 2 week cycle pp suggested. It will allow teachers to stay with their kids and everyone goes on a 14 day social distancing at home period. If it takes the first half of week one and the last half of week two to transition, then I think the teacher is pretty bad. Maybe an hour to settle everyone, but the communication during the remote weeks shouldn’t result in big ramp up times.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All kids grades 6-12 continue distance learning.

Grades PreK K and 1 go to the elementary schools (and ride the elementary school bus) That cuts the bus rider population down by more than 50% which allows more distancing there.

Grades 2-3 go to the middle school (and ride the middle school buses)

Grades 4-5 go to the high school (and ride the high school buses)

This allows everyone enough room to spread out on the bus and in the schools. Each class is split into half or thirds so only a small number of kids per classroom and per teacher (no specials -- music, pe etc cancelled and those teachers need to take a class)

Kids in grades 6+ are old enough to stay home alone.

When certain triggers are met, bring back grades 2 and 3 to the elementary school, and allow grades 6,7 and 8 to go to the middle school on the middle school buses.

When more triggers are met, put the grads 4 and 5 back on the elementary bus and send them to elementary school, and then the high schoolers can stop distance learning and can go back to high school.

Distance learning isn't working for the middle-schoolers or high-schoolers either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the idea of split shifts and 4 day weeks. School is not daycare. It never was until around 30-40 years ago when families decided it was, because both partners chose to work outside the home and use one income to supplement the job of a homemaker, thinking they would have so much extra money. Fast forward to today and now it is basically forced.

Two overworked parents expecting FT daycare, food, mental health care, etc... with school because the economy caught up to two parents working. Constant cries of days off, no cheap camps, extra holidays, overpriced aftercare etc... Now everything but salaries has risen in the last 30 years and poverty has increased. Parents raising kids instead of daycare providers has decreased. Families barely surviving on two salaries and tons of credit card and mortgage debt. So many depending on the government for help.

Maybe this pandemic will make some families realize priorities need to change. This won’t be the last pandemic. Life can change drastically. Be prepared.

All valid points, but you will be attacked in DCUM for even mentioning them.

I don’t understand what your solution. Parents who are barely scraping by on 2 incomes should reduce to 1 and be even more broke, take in more debt?

Really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps ESs could focus on the self contained classrooms and MSs and HSs could have split days without the need for childcare. The days would have to be short though because of the teachers.

Teaching could switch to 10 hour days, 4 days a week like nursing. I would be fine with that. I could run errands, go to the doctor, and have home repair visits done without needing to get a substitute. DH is also a teacher so we don’t have someone who can easily come home an hour earlier to meet the cable guy.

I'd do this in a heartbeat. I'm already in the building 10 hours anyways, what difference would 2 more hours make? But it won't solve the issues with Covid, social distancing, cleaning, etc, and meet the needs of working parents. I don't know what the solution is, but it isn't this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a fan of the 2 week cycle pp suggested. It will allow teachers to stay with their kids and everyone goes on a 14 day social distancing at home period. If it takes the first half of week one and the last half of week two to transition, then I think the teacher is pretty bad. Maybe an hour to settle everyone, but the communication during the remote weeks shouldn’t result in big ramp up times.

An hour to settle everyone? Please, please, please "I've never stepped foot as a leader in a classroom in my whole life" poster, please come show me how it is done. Please. I'll bring the popcorn. It'll be entertaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
A big problem with this is that it effectively means parents will have to pay for childcare throughout elementary school. Instead of getting a full day of childcare with a slight aftercare supplement for a couple hours, they would need to spend much more.

If nothing else, this pandemic has shown that school is primarily for childcare and other social functions. Logistically, it’s also more difficult because you’re transporting children more frequently.

+1
Additionally, MCPS would need to hire more teaching staff (including paras) and buy a lot more buses. It would be the end of most field trips and make assemblies less common.

Many of the immigrant population already work during the day and would gladly switch to night school or more online in PG!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps ESs could focus on the self contained classrooms and MSs and HSs could have split days without the need for childcare. The days would have to be short though because of the teachers.

Teaching could switch to 10 hour days, 4 days a week like nursing. I would be fine with that. I could run errands, go to the doctor, and have home repair visits done without needing to get a substitute. DH is also a teacher so we don’t have someone who can easily come home an hour earlier to meet the cable guy.

I'd do this in a heartbeat. I'm already in the building 10 hours anyways, what difference would 2 more hours make? But it won't solve the issues with Covid, social distancing, cleaning, etc, and meet the needs of working parents. I don't know what the solution is, but it isn't this.

Well for one thing, the non-instructional work you need to do, would not get done during the extra two hours you already spend at school because you would spend those two hours with classes. So now, you either spend 4 extra hours in the building or you spend them working at home. You can’t double the number of class periods you teach without shunting the other things like planning and meetings to another time in the day. MCPS isn’t going to tell parents that we can’t do meetings for their kids anymore because we split each class in half and now teach 10 classes a day instead of 5.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
A big problem with this is that it effectively means parents will have to pay for childcare throughout elementary school. Instead of getting a full day of childcare with a slight aftercare supplement for a couple hours, they would need to spend much more.

If nothing else, this pandemic has shown that school is primarily for childcare and other social functions. Logistically, it’s also more difficult because you’re transporting children more frequently.

In theory the whole society should shift to adjust to the new needs.

1. The schools would go first and double shift.
2. Parents would have choice to pick a shift.
3. Workplaces would need to support the hours so parents could work in sync with the kids school.

You can’t expect teachers to work 2 shifts? Unless full school day is 2 shifts

[Anonymous]

School is mainly used for Childcare. It is not used for giving children good education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the idea of split shifts and 4 day weeks. School is not daycare. It never was until around 30-40 years ago when families decided it was, because both partners chose to work outside the home and use one income to supplement the job of a homemaker, thinking they would have so much extra money. Fast forward to today and now it is basically forced.

Two overworked parents expecting FT daycare, food, mental health care, etc... with school because the economy caught up to two parents working. Constant cries of days off, no cheap camps, extra holidays, overpriced aftercare etc... Now everything but salaries has risen in the last 30 years and poverty has increased. Parents raising kids instead of daycare providers has decreased. Families barely surviving on two salaries and tons of credit card and mortgage debt. So many depending on the government for help.

Maybe this pandemic will make some families realize priorities need to change. This won’t be the last pandemic. Life can change drastically. Be prepared.

School was never daycare and should never be treated as such. It shouldn’t be a home and a way for kids to be fed for free either. It shouldn’t offer parenting courses, free aftercare, ESOL, parent ESOL classes, and TED talks for free either. The amount of money that is now spent NOT on education in the MCPS budget is disgusting. Let MCPS do the teaching and the county and town budget do social services.

I agree with you on all of this. Other agencies should be responsible for feeding/clothing/teaching English. Not schools. MCPS is already too big, and this makes it even harder to run such a large school system.

However, voters and the public support all of this being the responsibility of the schools. It is not favorable public opinion to leave this to other entities.

So, not much you can do.

Why not? Kids are in school for six hours. It behooves the schools to educate both parents and kids such that the kids have the tools to be better students. Teaching doesn't happen in a vacuum, as much as we want it to. Whether the county/state allocate the funds to CPS or some other organization to provide those services, it's still funds coming out of the budget.

Now, I don't agree that teachers themselves should be providing most of those services, but how do you feed a child lunch during the middle of the school day if the school isn't the one providing it? Should the child leave the school during lunch time to get that meal some place else? Who is going to get that child to that place to get the meal?

It would be great if all parents care and have enough money to provide food and a stable home life to their kids, but that's not reality. If your attitude is "tough sh1t then", well, I'll just remind you that it costs us taxpayers a lot more to pay for someone to be in prison than to pay for wrap around services from K-12 such that the child gets an education, and eventually becomes contributing member of society.


State prison cost per inmate, 2015 - Average cost per inmate $44,601/yr

Pretty sure free birth control is a lot cheaper too. Why do poor people pop out more kids than middle income and the rich? It is completely ridiculous. If you can not afford to raise a child from 0 to 17yrs old, than be a responsible human being and use birth control or not have sex. It is amazing how hard that is for idiots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the idea of split shifts and 4 day weeks. School is not daycare. It never was until around 30-40 years ago when families decided it was, because both partners chose to work outside the home and use one income to supplement the job of a homemaker, thinking they would have so much extra money. Fast forward to today and now it is basically forced.

Two overworked parents expecting FT daycare, food, mental health care, etc... with school because the economy caught up to two parents working. Constant cries of days off, no cheap camps, extra holidays, overpriced aftercare etc... Now everything but salaries has risen in the last 30 years and poverty has increased. Parents raising kids instead of daycare providers has decreased. Families barely surviving on two salaries and tons of credit card and mortgage debt. So many depending on the government for help.

Maybe this pandemic will make some families realize priorities need to change. This won’t be the last pandemic. Life can change drastically. Be prepared.

All valid points, but you will be attacked in DCUM for even mentioning them.

I don’t understand what your solution. Parents who are barely scraping by on 2 incomes should reduce to 1 and be even more broke, take in more debt?

Really?

I think the whole point is why are 2 income families scraping? You either didn't educate yourself enough to support a family in advance or popped out too many kids to afford with the education you had.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of families confuse needs and wants. No one "needs" to own a home, go on a vacation, go out to eat, own more than 1 car per family, go to starbucks, get their nails done, buy clothes new, etc. People want those things and it is fine to want them. But they aren't needs. A family of 4 can easily live in a 500 square foot 1 bedroom apartment. If one parent stays home, he or she can prepare all meals homemade. Public transportation is available in most major cities, Goodwill and thrift stores sell clothes really cheap.

My family lived on 40K a year in HCOL city for about 5 years. We lived within our means. Now, it helped that we didn't have college loans, but I'll tell you that neither of us had parent help with college either. We both worked our rears off, got scholarships and went to the schools that offered us free rides. We lived with no car for a long time. We sacrificed and scraped. We had no daycare costs because I stayed home. We bought or borrowed any baby gear we needed. It worked just fine. Now, if one of us were to lose our job, even as homeowners, we'd be fine on 80K a year. We know how to live cheap. If both of us lost our jobs, we could make it a few years on unemployment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A previous poster suggested every other day, but if we are throwing out big ideas just for the hell of it, I'd suggest half the school population goes to the physical school for 2 weeks while the other half does online learning. Then they switch.

At each switch, you have a weekend for a deep cleaning of the school. The every other day or the half day proposals don't acknowledge that the virus stays on surfaces for at least a few hours and up to a few days.

The bonus is that students would be more isolated for 14 days every 14 days so any burbling re-emergence of the virus in the school population would be hindered/slowed down before it really took off (reducing R-nought).

Students in the two week online cycles could work on longer projects, have homework assignments from their teachers, watch lesson videos... basically what is going on right now. But it would be for 2 weeks at a time. Then they could get into the classrooms for interaction/instruction from the teachers in person.

Is it an ideal situation? No. But I could see it work for a year while we wait on having a vaccine.

It would beat having to shut down school for a month every month or two due to detecting a resurgence of COVID-19 community transmission. It would be scheduled and predictable, which would be awesome for these kids whose lives seem to be totally up in the air with indeterminacy at this point.

Except the staff would be the same group of people, so anything that someone in group A transmits through the staff like when Larla coughs on Mrs. Jones on the second Thursday of her 2 week rotation. Mrs. Jones is at school on Friday, the following Monday and Tuesday until she starts feeling sick on Wednesday and realizes she has a fever on Wednesday evening when she gets home. Now kids in group B are exposed, not to mention all staff in the building. Are we forgetting that staff members are also human and susceptible to this virus?

Also, who is teaching the students online? Teaching in person and teaching online are incredibly different and require different types of planning and prepared materials. So Mrs. Jones is now responsible for delivering instruction in two completely different ways? While risking her own health?

This scenario ever being a possibility is incredibly slim to very none, because you wouldn't have enough teachers willing to stay in the profession if they were expected to do this kind of craziness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
A big problem with this is that it effectively means parents will have to pay for childcare throughout elementary school. Instead of getting a full day of childcare with a slight aftercare supplement for a couple hours, they would need to spend much more.

If nothing else, this pandemic has shown that school is primarily for childcare and other social functions. Logistically, it’s also more difficult because you’re transporting children more frequently.

+100 and I say that with no disrespect to teachers. The system is broken. Teachers are hamstrung. The diversity of classroom issues today is too much (multiple languages with ESOL kids, multiple IEP and 504 Accomodatikns) in a single classroom. Teachers are called into multiple meetings during the school week which disrupts the classroom. Not to mention that parents treat teachers as if wrong before proven otherwise A LOT. Are teachers perfect? No. But there has been a heck of a lot more wrong with the system before SIP orders. The FCPS IT fiasco finally. Fought some attention to problems parents were will to ignore because they just need the kids in school so they can work.