WTU is demanding a "plan & policy for next week & Jan"

[Anonymous]

It seems like everyone is missing the point. It doesn't matter if Omnicrom is mild or not, it is still COVID. If teachers or students test positive, then unless rules are changed, they cannot come into school and I think it is a 10 day waiting period.

You can have a bunch of kids test positive and kept from school and keep schools open, but if you have a bunch of teachers positive (even if asymptomatic) that are then required to quarantine you cannot keep the school open as there are no subs available. My understanding is teacher positive cases are closing the various schools, more so than too many students.

We are nowhere near the point right now where anyone is going to decide that COVID is endemic and you just carry-on because you are asymptomatic or have an extremely mild case. Since DC does regular testing of students and faculty, and there are many asymptomatic cases, the positive cases are going to jump.

I want schools to stay open as long as they can, but Omnicrom is clearly way more contagious then Delta. The one upside (if you can really call it that) is that it will burn through the population much quicker so we should be on back-end of this by end of January / early February.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our charter has outlined an universal "test to return" policy for January including the dates the PCR test must be taken, how to submit results, and options/information for anyone who doesn't want to test. They (smartly) did not try to limit it base on travel/vax status - it applies to all people (students, teachers, staff). Obviously its not perfect (as it's possible to test on a Friday, and become infected on a Sunday) but it's a really good, common-sense way to start the next year.

This was me - adding to clarify - this applies to everyone returning to school after the break. This policy is not about later positive test results.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our charter has outlined an universal "test to return" policy for January including the dates the PCR test must be taken, how to submit results, and options/information for anyone who doesn't want to test. They (smartly) did not try to limit it base on travel/vax status - it applies to all people (students, teachers, staff). Obviously its not perfect (as it's possible to test on a Friday, and become infected on a Sunday) but it's a really good, common-sense way to start the next year.

We are likely at the same charter. As much as this board warbles on about charters being bad, in this case, the charter really does seem to be able to be more nimble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, not sure what the panic is about. If you have een vaccinated then breakthroughs are very mild. Get vacinated. Do not close schools. COvid is never going away. How many of these break through cases are serious?

Be careful with your terminology. "Mild" meaning no death or hospitalization is very different from how most people use the word mild colloquially. Do you think that ongoing impacts like fatigue out shortness of breath are mild? It's not a cold. Turn off Fox News.

Oh man. I'm not sure what new source you are getting YOUR information from, but many many sources are reporting the omicron (particularly) is "mild", particularly amongst the vaccinated.

Gosh, where is my data on long term impacts of a variant that is just now spreading and hasn't been around anywhere long enough to judge long term effects. I guess I'll just tune into Fox News with you for their opinion of what we should think. Baaaa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like everyone is missing the point. It doesn't matter if Omnicrom is mild or not, it is still COVID. If teachers or students test positive, then unless rules are changed, they cannot come into school and I think it is a 10 day waiting period.

You can have a bunch of kids test positive and kept from school and keep schools open, but if you have a bunch of teachers positive (even if asymptomatic) that are then required to quarantine you cannot keep the school open as there are no subs available. My understanding is teacher positive cases are closing the various schools, more so than too many students.

We are nowhere near the point right now where anyone is going to decide that COVID is endemic and you just carry-on because you are asymptomatic or have an extremely mild case. Since DC does regular testing of students and faculty, and there are many asymptomatic cases, the positive cases are going to jump.

I want schools to stay open as long as they can, but Omnicrom is clearly way more contagious then Delta. The one upside (if you can really call it that) is that it will burn through the population much quicker so we should be on back-end of this by end of January / early February.

Yes, you can keep the school open unless every single teacher tests positive simultaneously (or within a 10-day period). It's conceivable that that might happen, but unlikely.

I'm not saying this isn't going to be rough for a month, but this is a better option than closing schools (since we know how hard it is to open them again).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, not sure what the panic is about. If you have een vaccinated then breakthroughs are very mild. Get vacinated. Do not close schools. COvid is never going away. How many of these break through cases are serious?

Be careful with your terminology. "Mild" meaning no death or hospitalization is very different from how most people use the word mild colloquially. Do you think that ongoing impacts like fatigue out shortness of breath are mild? It's not a cold. Turn off Fox News.

Oh man. I'm not sure what new source you are getting YOUR information from, but many many sources are reporting the omicron (particularly) is "mild", particularly amongst the vaccinated.

Gosh, where is my data on long term impacts of a variant that is just now spreading and hasn't been around anywhere long enough to judge long term effects. I guess I'll just tune into Fox News with you for their opinion of what we should think. Baaaa.

This tired argument. You think 1) anyone who has read something different is reading Fox news (I'm impressed that you haven't immediately labeled the person a Trumper), and 2) we should preemptively close things down because we don't know about future variants.

[Anonymous]

Realistically, I think if you probably have 15% - 20% of the teachers out (maybe even as low as 10%?) they switch to virtual...at least probably at the higher grade levels. Would be interesting to know the thresholds they are using to move McKinley et al to virtual.

I am not agreeing with it, but that is the reality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Realistically, I think if you probably have 15% - 20% of the teachers out (maybe even as low as 10%?) they switch to virtual...at least probably at the higher grade levels. Would be interesting to know the thresholds they are using to move McKinley et al to virtual.

I am not agreeing with it, but that is the reality.

But are you just making those numbers up? Are you actually being realistic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Realistically, I think if you probably have 15% - 20% of the teachers out (maybe even as low as 10%?) they switch to virtual...at least probably at the higher grade levels. Would be interesting to know the thresholds they are using to move McKinley et al to virtual.

I am not agreeing with it, but that is the reality.

But are you just making those numbers up? Are you actually being realistic?

These sound reasonable to me. You can’t combine classes with COVID precautions. How many teachers is 20% at a certain school and how many extra non classroom staff do they have to pull to cover classes? Remember younger grades also need an aide in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems like everyone is missing the point. It doesn't matter if Omnicrom is mild or not, it is still COVID. If teachers or students test positive, then unless rules are changed, they cannot come into school and I think it is a 10 day waiting period.

You can have a bunch of kids test positive and kept from school and keep schools open, but if you have a bunch of teachers positive (even if asymptomatic) that are then required to quarantine you cannot keep the school open as there are no subs available. My understanding is teacher positive cases are closing the various schools, more so than too many students.

We are nowhere near the point right now where anyone is going to decide that COVID is endemic and you just carry-on because you are asymptomatic or have an extremely mild case. Since DC does regular testing of students and faculty, and there are many asymptomatic cases, the positive cases are going to jump.

I want schools to stay open as long as they can, but Omnicrom is clearly way more contagious then Delta. The one upside (if you can really call it that) is that it will burn through the population much quicker so we should be on back-end of this by end of January / early February.

I appreciate your points, but we need to stop acting from a place where we assume dcps is regularly testing students and staff. Class spit tests get thrown out regularly. Testing barely exists anywhere else in the city at the moment. It’s really hard for people to be and feel safe when they don’t have all the info

[Anonymous]

We need "test to stay" upon return and the federal government needs to provide widely available free rapid tests to all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Realistically, I think if you probably have 15% - 20% of the teachers out (maybe even as low as 10%?) they switch to virtual...at least probably at the higher grade levels. Would be interesting to know the thresholds they are using to move McKinley et al to virtual.

I am not agreeing with it, but that is the reality.

But are you just making those numbers up? Are you actually being realistic?

These sound reasonable to me. You can’t combine classes with COVID precautions. How many teachers is 20% at a certain school and how many extra non classroom staff do they have to pull to cover classes? Remember younger grades also need an aide in the classroom.

I don't understand why, with 20% of teachers out, that would mean closing the entire school. Please explain. I would expect the classes of those teachers to go virtual, not ALL of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Realistically, I think if you probably have 15% - 20% of the teachers out (maybe even as low as 10%?) they switch to virtual...at least probably at the higher grade levels. Would be interesting to know the thresholds they are using to move McKinley et al to virtual.

I am not agreeing with it, but that is the reality.

But are you just making those numbers up? Are you actually being realistic?

These sound reasonable to me. You can’t combine classes with COVID precautions. How many teachers is 20% at a certain school and how many extra non classroom staff do they have to pull to cover classes? Remember younger grades also need an aide in the classroom.

I don't understand why, with 20% of teachers out, that would mean closing the entire school. Please explain. I would expect the classes of those teachers to go virtual, not ALL of them.

How does that work for middle school and high school where teachers change classes? And I also wonder how they would cover a specials/teacher work periods. But I generally agree with you for elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our charter has outlined an universal "test to return" policy for January including the dates the PCR test must be taken, how to submit results, and options/information for anyone who doesn't want to test. They (smartly) did not try to limit it base on travel/vax status - it applies to all people (students, teachers, staff). Obviously its not perfect (as it's possible to test on a Friday, and become infected on a Sunday) but it's a really good, common-sense way to start the next year.

We are likely at the same charter. As much as this board warbles on about charters being bad, in this case, the charter really does seem to be able to be more nimble.

Lmao. Charters have higher covid cases and more are closed this week and many are closed longer than the length of winter break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our charter has outlined an universal "test to return" policy for January including the dates the PCR test must be taken, how to submit results, and options/information for anyone who doesn't want to test. They (smartly) did not try to limit it base on travel/vax status - it applies to all people (students, teachers, staff). Obviously its not perfect (as it's possible to test on a Friday, and become infected on a Sunday) but it's a really good, common-sense way to start the next year.

We are likely at the same charter. As much as this board warbles on about charters being bad, in this case, the charter really does seem to be able to be more nimble.

Lmao. Charters have higher covid cases and more are closed this week and many are closed longer than the length of winter break.

No? There are multiple DCPS and charter schools that are closed for the next 2/3 days, and DCPS also closed for longer than winter break (3rd and 4th). There's a single charter -- CMI -- that it announced it would close until Jan. 18th.

Also, notably, many of the charters do far more testing than DCPS, so we would expect cases to be higher at charters.