Surreal... Zoom capacity email in Regional Quarantine Program

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not even going to say anything... I will just post the MCPS email I received from my kid's elementary school yesterday at 9:00PM!

"We apologize for the late email, but we just received some important information about the regional quarantine instructional program. The zoom capacity has been reached for each grade level and the program is making changes for the remainder of the week. Please see below.

If you have a student accessing regional quarantine instruction for tomorrow, please note that the anticipated enrollment exceeds the current capacity of our Zooms. We will be adjusting the model to accommodate an unlimited number of students starting next week, but for tomorrow and Friday, please note the following changes.

Math: Instructors will break the 9:45-10:45 session into two parts. If you try to log in at 9:45 and cannot access the Zoom, the limit has been reached. Please try to log in to the 2nd session at 10:20 am.

Literacy: Instructors will break the 11:00-12:15 session into two parts. If you try and log in at 11:00 am and cannot access the Zoom, please try again at 11:35 am.

We do apologize for the disruption this will create for your families, as we look for flexible ways to support all of the families who want to access quarantine instruction while unable to attend school due to COVID safety protocols.

Why are some schools doing a centralized Virtual Program and others are doing virtual school just within the school? My first-grade son is home on quarantine since testing positive with the take-home tests on Monday and his first-grade teacher sent him a link for him to join for virtual reading and math instruction along with the schedule of times of the classes. He joined yesterday and today and it is only a few other kids from the first grade with a first-grade teacher who said they take turns each day teaching math and reading virtual class. He is working on the same exact things he would be in class and since it was only 5 other kids in the zoom class he had a lot of direct teacher interaction. He would prefer to be in person with his friends but at least he is still able to keep up with the same curriculum he would be in class.

Some schools don't have the staff available to do that kind of virtual instruction for kids in their school only. They have to opt into the county-wide virtual program instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I really have no idea why anyone would want to be part of the regional zoom quarantine program. Zoom school is a waste of time. Better to study directly from textbooks.

Ha! There are no textbooks!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, the workaround they came up with on short notice seems pretty good to me.

I deal with Zoom capacity at my workplace though (everyone's licenses have capacity up to 1,000, but we have a special shared license up to 3,000 for the 6 - 10 meetings a year we need it for - and the licensing is quite complex so it isn't just "go click a button online and add more capacity"), so I'm sympathetic to this.

This is not a "workaround they came up with on short notice". The regional quarantine instructional program has been in place since September. Once cases and quarantine numbers started to skyrocket, no one bothered to figure out whether the program's Zoom licenses would be sufficient to handle the uptick. How can you be sympathetic to elementary school kids who are in quarantine having access to only 30 minutes of reading instruction and 30 minutes of math per day? That's it. 1 hour of school. Sympathetic? It's inexcusable, embarrassing and sad.

They wouldn’t have to quarantine if they were vaccinated.

Not true - at our elementary school, our principal continued sending letters to the community instructing ALL kids to quarantine regardless of vaccine status if they were a close contact. It wasn't until parents called, complained, asked for the process to be updated for the new guidance did the practice change. Also, if you're vaccinated but have the sniffles, you need to quarantine. Also, if a vaccinated kid is deemed a close contact during an unmasked, high risk activity (i.e. lunch), s/he has to quarantine. Stop blaming parents and kids for the utter failure of MCPS to get even the most basic things right.

I’m sorry, this is incorrect. Vaccinated students absolutely do not need to quarantine even after a high risk activity exposure (lunch). Consult the mcps flowchart. You also do not need to quarantine if you are vaccinated and have “the sniffles.” You stay home if you are sick. If you had strep in the before times you would stay home, no zoom, and you’d catch up on your work when you return. This quarantine zoom is literally for kids who are exposed and remain unvaxxed.

LOL. Schools aren't following "the flow chart". It's a complete mess. Some are, some aren't. Wake up and check your privilege - have some empathy for those who are being screwed by MCPS incompetence. You have no idea how bad it is. Check the flow chart. Unreal.

I was told by my twin's school that one twin who is fully vaccinated did not have to quarantine since they tested negative (At home test and PCR) and they could return to school even though the twin tested positive with the at-home test. They are in the same class and would have had the same exposure so I kept the twin who tested negative home on Tuesday so I could take them to the doctor and get PCR and the school won't excuse it because they did not test positive and only excused the one that tested positive since I choose to keep them home and they told instructed me that they can return to school since they were vaccinated. They said there is a code in the attendance system for which absences are excused and which are not so it is not true that if you choose to keep a child home due to caution it will be excused.

Be a parent and tell them to how stupid that is. You have twins, they both have it.

[Anonymous]

MCPS clarified that if you keep your child home to be cautious it will be excused.

I don't think it's necessarily true both twins have it because there may be biological differences to how they react to the exposure or one might have been exposed more than the other which might make one infected and the other not. Are they fraternal or identical?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, the workaround they came up with on short notice seems pretty good to me.

I deal with Zoom capacity at my workplace though (everyone's licenses have capacity up to 1,000, but we have a special shared license up to 3,000 for the 6 - 10 meetings a year we need it for - and the licensing is quite complex so it isn't just "go click a button online and add more capacity"), so I'm sympathetic to this.

This is not a "workaround they came up with on short notice". The regional quarantine instructional program has been in place since September. Once cases and quarantine numbers started to skyrocket, no one bothered to figure out whether the program's Zoom licenses would be sufficient to handle the uptick. How can you be sympathetic to elementary school kids who are in quarantine having access to only 30 minutes of reading instruction and 30 minutes of math per day? That's it. 1 hour of school. Sympathetic? It's inexcusable, embarrassing and sad.

They wouldn’t have to quarantine if they were vaccinated.

Not true - at our elementary school, our principal continued sending letters to the community instructing ALL kids to quarantine regardless of vaccine status if they were a close contact. It wasn't until parents called, complained, asked for the process to be updated for the new guidance did the practice change. Also, if you're vaccinated but have the sniffles, you need to quarantine. Also, if a vaccinated kid is deemed a close contact during an unmasked, high risk activity (i.e. lunch), s/he has to quarantine. Stop blaming parents and kids for the utter failure of MCPS to get even the most basic things right.

Our school said this isn't true. Very simple rule. Vaccinated? No qurantine. Not vaccinated? Quarantine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, the workaround they came up with on short notice seems pretty good to me.

I deal with Zoom capacity at my workplace though (everyone's licenses have capacity up to 1,000, but we have a special shared license up to 3,000 for the 6 - 10 meetings a year we need it for - and the licensing is quite complex so it isn't just "go click a button online and add more capacity"), so I'm sympathetic to this.

This is not a "workaround they came up with on short notice". The regional quarantine instructional program has been in place since September. Once cases and quarantine numbers started to skyrocket, no one bothered to figure out whether the program's Zoom licenses would be sufficient to handle the uptick. How can you be sympathetic to elementary school kids who are in quarantine having access to only 30 minutes of reading instruction and 30 minutes of math per day? That's it. 1 hour of school. Sympathetic? It's inexcusable, embarrassing and sad.

They wouldn’t have to quarantine if they were vaccinated.

Not true - at our elementary school, our principal continued sending letters to the community instructing ALL kids to quarantine regardless of vaccine status if they were a close contact. It wasn't until parents called, complained, asked for the process to be updated for the new guidance did the practice change. Also, if you're vaccinated but have the sniffles, you need to quarantine. Also, if a vaccinated kid is deemed a close contact during an unmasked, high risk activity (i.e. lunch), s/he has to quarantine. Stop blaming parents and kids for the utter failure of MCPS to get even the most basic things right.

I’m sorry, this is incorrect. Vaccinated students absolutely do not need to quarantine even after a high risk activity exposure (lunch). Consult the mcps flowchart. You also do not need to quarantine if you are vaccinated and have “the sniffles.” You stay home if you are sick. If you had strep in the before times you would stay home, no zoom, and you’d catch up on your work when you return. This quarantine zoom is literally for kids who are exposed and remain unvaxxed.

LOL. Schools aren't following "the flow chart". It's a complete mess. Some are, some aren't. Wake up and check your privilege - have some empathy for those who are being screwed by MCPS incompetence. You have no idea how bad it is. Check the flow chart. Unreal.

I was told by my twin's school that one twin who is fully vaccinated did not have to quarantine since they tested negative (At home test and PCR) and they could return to school even though the twin tested positive with the at-home test. They are in the same class and would have had the same exposure so I kept the twin who tested negative home on Tuesday so I could take them to the doctor and get PCR and the school won't excuse it because they did not test positive and only excused the one that tested positive since I choose to keep them home and they told instructed me that they can return to school since they were vaccinated. They said there is a code in the attendance system for which absences are excused and which are not so it is not true that if you choose to keep a child home due to caution it will be excused.

Be a parent and tell them to how stupid that is. You have twins, they both have it.

at this point in the pandemic, there are plenty of stories where only some household members got covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, the workaround they came up with on short notice seems pretty good to me.

I deal with Zoom capacity at my workplace though (everyone's licenses have capacity up to 1,000, but we have a special shared license up to 3,000 for the 6 - 10 meetings a year we need it for - and the licensing is quite complex so it isn't just "go click a button online and add more capacity"), so I'm sympathetic to this.

This is not a "workaround they came up with on short notice". The regional quarantine instructional program has been in place since September. Once cases and quarantine numbers started to skyrocket, no one bothered to figure out whether the program's Zoom licenses would be sufficient to handle the uptick. How can you be sympathetic to elementary school kids who are in quarantine having access to only 30 minutes of reading instruction and 30 minutes of math per day? That's it. 1 hour of school. Sympathetic? It's inexcusable, embarrassing and sad.

They wouldn’t have to quarantine if they were vaccinated.

Not true - at our elementary school, our principal continued sending letters to the community instructing ALL kids to quarantine regardless of vaccine status if they were a close contact. It wasn't until parents called, complained, asked for the process to be updated for the new guidance did the practice change. Also, if you're vaccinated but have the sniffles, you need to quarantine. Also, if a vaccinated kid is deemed a close contact during an unmasked, high risk activity (i.e. lunch), s/he has to quarantine. Stop blaming parents and kids for the utter failure of MCPS to get even the most basic things right.

I’m sorry, this is incorrect. Vaccinated students absolutely do not need to quarantine even after a high risk activity exposure (lunch). Consult the mcps flowchart. You also do not need to quarantine if you are vaccinated and have “the sniffles.” You stay home if you are sick. If you had strep in the before times you would stay home, no zoom, and you’d catch up on your work when you return. This quarantine zoom is literally for kids who are exposed and remain unvaxxed.

LOL. Schools aren't following "the flow chart". It's a complete mess. Some are, some aren't. Wake up and check your privilege - have some empathy for those who are being screwed by MCPS incompetence. You have no idea how bad it is. Check the flow chart. Unreal.

I was told by my twin's school that one twin who is fully vaccinated did not have to quarantine since they tested negative (At home test and PCR) and they could return to school even though the twin tested positive with the at-home test. They are in the same class and would have had the same exposure so I kept the twin who tested negative home on Tuesday so I could take them to the doctor and get PCR and the school won't excuse it because they did not test positive and only excused the one that tested positive since I choose to keep them home and they told instructed me that they can return to school since they were vaccinated. They said there is a code in the attendance system for which absences are excused and which are not so it is not true that if you choose to keep a child home due to caution it will be excused.

Be a parent and tell them to how stupid that is. You have twins, they both have it.

Actually the other twin had tested negative 3 times. 2 Rapid and 1 PCR. So not they do not both have it. No one else in our household has it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS clarified that if you keep your child home to be cautious it will be excused.

I don't think it's necessarily true both twins have it because there may be biological differences to how they react to the exposure or one might have been exposed more than the other which might make one infected and the other not. Are they fraternal or identical?

Fraternal. No one else in our household tested positive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If this is not an equity-related reason to switch to virtual, I don't know what its.

MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING.

Um. What?

Yes, let's switch to virtual, so half of the kids in virtual "school" don't even log on because, wait for it, they have little support at home. Your post makes zero sense.

It's amazing how people have such short memories for all the ways that virtual School absolutely failed kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really have no idea why anyone would want to be part of the regional zoom quarantine program. Zoom school is a waste of time. Better to study directly from textbooks.

Ha! There are no textbooks!!

You can get the eureka and benchmark books to take home and work on them

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If this is not an equity-related reason to switch to virtual, I don't know what its.

MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING.

+1

There is no equity in the current situation. Some are getting instruction and some are not getting it. All the big talk about equity and then we have this.

[Anonymous]

I posted about this earlier this week that a colleague of mine who is part of the regional zoom program almost 400 eligible students assigned to her for one day and there was just no plan to how to actually teach 400 kids on zoom effectively. The zoom crashing was just the most prominent of problems.

I know there has been some conversation around central office staff getting pulled to support schools I don't know if they could have assigned some central office staff to teach virtually too

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Hogan and others refused to restrict businesses in time, so I said before Christmas that an organized pivot to virtual would be necessary for two weeks in January, to mitigate hospital saturation and ensure that families could plan.

Parents yelled that it wasn't fair that schools should close before businesses, some claimed they preferred the daily uncertainty and potential chaos, others said they'd already closed too long in 2020-21, etc...

I know some families are regretting that a better planned and organized pivot wasn't executed.

It's sad that people come up with reasons that have nothing to do with our current situation (continuity of learning) to reject common sense measures. We didn't need to shut down for Delta, despite the spike in cases and hospitalizations. We needed to shut down briefly for Omicron, given the historic peak of hospitalizations.

Well said!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If this is not an equity-related reason to switch to virtual, I don't know what its.

MY BRAIN IS EXPLODING.

Um. What?

Yes, let's switch to virtual, so half of the kids in virtual "school" don't even log on because, wait for it, they have little support at home. Your post makes zero sense.

It's amazing how people have such short memories for all the ways that virtual School absolutely failed kids.

It did not absolutely fail kids but keep telling yourself that to make yourself feel better. Was it ideal? No. Is NORMAL in person better? Duh. This year is far from normal and the kids would benefit more from virtual than what they are getting in person under the current conditions. Most people with critical thinking skills can recognize this. Then there’s the mindless “reopen no matter what” crowd who just refuse to listen to students, staff, and admin actually in buildings right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I posted about this earlier this week that a colleague of mine who is part of the regional zoom program almost 400 eligible students assigned to her for one day and there was just no plan to how to actually teach 400 kids on zoom effectively. The zoom crashing was just the most prominent of problems.

I know there has been some conversation around central office staff getting pulled to support schools I don't know if they could have assigned some central office staff to teach virtually too

Of course a teacher can’t effectively teach 400 kids. Just post a video that kids can access whenever is convenient and call it done.