Classrooms for kids <12 will close for 10 days w/ any positives; will there be virtual instruction?

[Anonymous]

PP again. Also if you’re over the age of 12 and unvaccinated, stay home for distance learning or get vaccinated. Yes we lost a lot of DL students last year who we need to have back in school this year. But if you’ve chosen to not get the vax, we can offer it at school. If you still don’t get it, maybe we just can’t help you. You don’t get to force a bunch of restrictions on others. The problem is proof of course. Plus we don’t have enough virtual teachers for all the great unvaxed. So get yourselves vaccinated! We have a solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

A couple of things--

OSSE would need to mandate that 'reasonableness' based on science, best practice whatever.

Also, it is beginning to sound like breakthrough infections of Delta are not that rare...just serious symptoms. Unfortunately, the viral load in someone with a breakthrough infection is the same as someone unvaccinated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the guidance differ for vaccinated children in a cohort with a positive case? Or are all kids quarantining for two weeks, regardless?

I'm not speaking with authority on the matter, however as a teacher I was allowed to return to the classroom last spring after a known exposure because I am vaccinated, while the ES students in the class where I was exposed stayed home. As a parent of a MS & HS student (both vaccinated) I hope there is some consideration for vaccinated students not having to quarantine. Unvaccinated teachers and quarantine, well I guess that's another reason to argue for vaccination status of teachers.

So let's say you are taking Calculus and a classmate tests positive. The vaccinated teacher and 12 vaccinated kids stay in school but the 15 kids who are unvaccinated go home for 10 days and learn nothing? Does the class continue to learn without them?

Yes. And hopefully they get the vaccine during those 10 days.

[Anonymous]

Teachers should be required to be vaccinated, and vaccinated kids should not have their education disrupted. Over the course of the fall, vaccinations for elementary students will come online as well. The long-term is that there will be 9 months ahead of an increasingly vaccinated student population and that is who IPL needs to cater to. if DCPS wants to set up a separate track for uvaccinated to enroll in, they should do so now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers should be required to be vaccinated, and vaccinated kids should not have their education disrupted. Over the course of the fall, vaccinations for elementary students will come online as well. The long-term is that there will be 9 months ahead of an increasingly vaccinated student population and that is who IPL needs to cater to. if DCPS wants to set up a separate track for uvaccinated to enroll in, they should do so now.

How would that work for 5th/6th grade where some are eligible for vaccines and others are not? Redshirted kids get to have school while normal aged kids don't?

The timeline for elementary school age eligibility is winter not fall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

Thank you for your reasonable perspective. I hope OSSE comes to its senses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

A couple of things--

OSSE would need to mandate that 'reasonableness' based on science, best practice whatever.

Also, it is beginning to sound like breakthrough infections of Delta are not that rare...just serious symptoms. Unfortunately, the viral load in someone with a breakthrough infection is the same as someone unvaccinated. [/quote]

Source for the bolded?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

I'm assuming you mean the exposed class members, not everyone all the time, right? If so, yes, thank you for this reasonable perspective.

I think this was the method done in Germany or UK, but I can't remember which.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

A couple of things--

OSSE would need to mandate that 'reasonableness' based on science, best practice whatever.

Also, it is beginning to sound like breakthrough infections of Delta are not that rare...just serious symptoms. Unfortunately, the viral load in someone with a breakthrough infection is the same as someone unvaccinated.

I think it's important to recognize that a "breakthrough infection" doesn't mean you just test positive and have no symptoms. It means you are symptomatic:
""I think we are misusing the term breakthrough," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "If someone who is fully vaccinated is subsequently hospitalized or killed by the virus, that's a breakthrough case." He said he wouldn't call an "asymptomatic or relatively mild case" a "breakthrough case."

Additionally, from the same article:

"If you do get infected (which is not likely but possible), the vaccine should help you keep from getting seriously sick. "Breakthrough infections, they tend to be mild — they tend to be more like a cold," said Dr. Carlos del Rio, professor of medicine and infectious disease epidemiology at Emory University.

"Those mild breakthroughs, according to a New England Journal study three weeks ago, are accompanied by lower viral loads and less — much less — symptoms," added Dr. Monica Gandhi, infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco. In particular, the study "showed that if you get a mild breakthrough with any variant, you have a 40% lower viral load in your nose after vaccination than you do if you had a natural infection," she said."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/21/1018872469/worried-about-breakthrough-covid-cases-heres-what-to-know

[Anonymous]

And one other quote from that article:

"In fact, the CDC doesn't even recommend routine testing of asymptomatic vaccinated people for the coronavirus. As Gandhi of UC San Francisco explains, positive tests might just be picking up "dead viral particles in your nose," she said. "Vaccinated people may get it in their nose, but they're going to kill it — that's actually what the immune system does."

[Anonymous]

Also:

"In general, people who are vaccinated and get infected have less virus. "That lower viral load makes it less likely for you to transmit — not impossible by any means but less likely," Gandhi said.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser on COVID-19 for President Biden and the nation's top infectious disease expert, told reporters Friday that research on "whether or not the transmission occurs is a large study that's ongoing right now," referring to Prevent COVID U, a study of transmission among about 12,000 college students vaccinated with the Moderna vaccine.

While there aren't yet results from that study, Fauci added, the lower viral load in breakthrough cases suggests "it would be less likely that that vaccinated breakthrough person would transmit, compared to an unvaccinated person."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

I'm assuming you mean the exposed class members, not everyone all the time, right? If so, yes, thank you for this reasonable perspective.

I think this was the method done in Germany or UK, but I can't remember which.

+1

This is a really measured, practical response. The whole idea of social distancing at recess is unreasonable and unfair to kids, not to mention not science based. Kids are at playgrounds all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

A couple of things--

OSSE would need to mandate that 'reasonableness' based on science, best practice whatever.

Also, it is beginning to sound like breakthrough infections of Delta are not that rare...just serious symptoms. Unfortunately, the viral load in someone with a breakthrough infection is the same as someone unvaccinated.

This. So even if vaccinated, one would need to quarantine if exposed because you are just as potentially contagious as someone who is unvaccinated and exposed, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a dcps elementary teacher I think we’re all just going to have to keep our wits about us and be reasonable. Do we all eat lunch together in the cafeteria? No. Do we play outdoors with maybe one other class ( know that it’s not reasonable to expect that students will maintain distance at recess)? Probably. Three other classes? Probably not. If there’s a reported case in a classroom should whole class quarantine for 10 days? No. Let’s test whole class daily and remain in school. We should not be worrying about students carrying the virus home to adults because they should be vaccinated ( barring medical reasons)! Breakthrough infections are rare. We must be sensible here.

A couple of things--

OSSE would need to mandate that 'reasonableness' based on science, best practice whatever.

Also, it is beginning to sound like breakthrough infections of Delta are not that rare...just serious symptoms. Unfortunately, the viral load in someone with a breakthrough infection is the same as someone unvaccinated.

This. So even if vaccinated, one would need to quarantine if exposed because you are just as potentially contagious as someone who is unvaccinated and exposed, right?

This is untrue; read above.

[Anonymous]

It's not just Janney. Banneker shut down its entire Summer Institute earlier this month after a positive test--and the entire student body is presumably old enough to be vaccinated. No teaching, distance learning, emailed homework, or anything occurred while it was closed.