Should we prepare for virtual schooling starting in January?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m talking FCPS or MCPS. Baltimore city is a small school system so it’s doable.

Its completely doable.

[Anonymous]

There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

What does it matter if COVID is in school buildings if students and staff have it anyway, whether you let them in the building or not? Is it worse for COVID to be in school buildings vs everywhere else?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

What does it matter if COVID is in school buildings if students and staff have it anyway, whether you let them in the building or not? Is it worse for COVID to be in school buildings vs everywhere else?

What about the kids and staff who don’t have it? What about the staff who get sick enough to need leave? What about those with health issues?

We are talking about mcps not MoCo. MoCo Is a different topic. The issue is keeping staff, students and families safe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The best option is to go virtual just the first two days after break- make every kid pcr test to come back. That way, kids in school, but slows spread in the school. Privates require testing, public should too.

Totally agree with this. Schools as testing sites and require staff to test as well. Most reasonable approach I’ve heard.
—mcps teacher

There are 160,000 students in MCPS, not even counting staff. Do you know how laboratory covid tests the entire county does a day? 10,000. The entire state? About 50,000 tests a day.

No, we're not testing students before they return.

Are these people trolls? Or are they just spreading wildly impractical ideas in hopes of trying to argue that mcps needs to close because they can't do the equivalent of building a perpetual motion machine?

That PP must be a parent in a private school bubble. Private schools are so small that they can easily test all the students in a few days and get the results (that’s what our private is doing too). That would be absolutely impossible to do for a public school system.

And yet Baltimore city public schools provided an extra day of winter break just so students could test.

No. They're testing staff, not students. Stop spreading misinformation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m talking FCPS or MCPS. Baltimore city is a small school system so it’s doable.

Its completely doable.

What is? Obviously not testing students. Name a large school district requiring tests to return to school after break.

With a couple months of work, they might have been able to buy and distribute rapid tests, and hire a contractor to come in to schools to test students whose parents didn’t self-report. Though, I doubt the people screaming for testing would have agreed to self-reporting at-home tests, particularly two months ago. PCR, or even supervised antigen, testing always would have been wildly impractical to do after break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

What does it matter if COVID is in school buildings if students and staff have it anyway, whether you let them in the building or not? Is it worse for COVID to be in school buildings vs everywhere else?

What about the kids and staff who don’t have it? What about the staff who get sick enough to need leave? What about those with health issues?

We are talking about mcps not MoCo. MoCo Is a different topic. The issue is keeping staff, students and families safe.

The best way to keep students safe is to keep them in school. You’re obviously not interested in what is best for students here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

Wrong! That's crazy talk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

What does it matter if COVID is in school buildings if students and staff have it anyway, whether you let them in the building or not? Is it worse for COVID to be in school buildings vs everywhere else?

What about the kids and staff who don’t have it? What about the staff who get sick enough to need leave? What about those with health issues?

We are talking about mcps not MoCo. MoCo Is a different topic. The issue is keeping staff, students and families safe.

The best way to keep students safe is to keep them in school. You’re obviously not interested in what is best for students here.

So you're saying the best way to keep them safe is to expose them to COVID?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

What does it matter if COVID is in school buildings if students and staff have it anyway, whether you let them in the building or not? Is it worse for COVID to be in school buildings vs everywhere else?

What about the kids and staff who don’t have it? What about the staff who get sick enough to need leave? What about those with health issues?

We are talking about mcps not MoCo. MoCo Is a different topic. The issue is keeping staff, students and families safe.

The best way to keep students safe is to keep them in school. You’re obviously not interested in what is best for students here.

Safe from what. Parents who cannot be bothered? What about illness? What about them bringing illness home to their families?

We get it, you don’t want your kids home and the responsibility but that is not justification for spreading Covid. Get a nanny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no point to requiring a PCR test to return to school when your school community is in the middle of a widespread outbreak of a disease.

Requiring testing makes sense when you area has little community spread, but students might have traveled to areas of spread.

But if COVID is widely circulating in the community, a single test on a single day is pretty meaningless, as they can just pick COVID up from the community that afternoon.

If you don't want COVID in the schools, either switch to virtual until COVID spread in the community is no longer widespread, or acknowledge that COVID is widespread and make KN95 masks mandatory and don't allow kids to eat near each other (this part is very hard). Or just allow spread during the lunch time and hope for the best.

What does it matter if COVID is in school buildings if students and staff have it anyway, whether you let them in the building or not? Is it worse for COVID to be in school buildings vs everywhere else?

What about the kids and staff who don’t have it? What about the staff who get sick enough to need leave? What about those with health issues?

We are talking about mcps not MoCo. MoCo Is a different topic. The issue is keeping staff, students and families safe.

The best way to keep students safe is to keep them in school. You’re obviously not interested in what is best for students here.

So you're saying the best way to keep them safe is to expose them to COVID?

And their families and community.

And not to mention there are not enough medical staff for appointments to see everyone.

[Anonymous]

The one thing that will keep schools open no matter what the positivity rate is at individual schools is the lack of contingency planning by school administrators and central office. They don’t have a thought out plan on how to pivot to online learning.

[Anonymous]

Folks, students and staff live in MoCo and nearby. Closing schools does not protect them from the virus. If that were the goal, we'd have to shut down everything else. But it's not, because we can't. The virus I here and extremely transmissible.

I truly think everyone who pushed for schools to stay closed for 18 months and participated in the politization of Covid (MCEA, I'm looking at you) should rot in hell. Honestly, I don't think anyone fully realizes the extent of the damage you've done by insisting in person education is non essential. Won't be voting for Apple Ballot candidates for BOE ever again. The Steve Austin types are terrible, but you are no better.

[Anonymous]

We are all going to get it.

[Anonymous]

Possibly. But we will not know until the last moment or until after the first week of school?