TEACHERS- what reasonable accommodations would you like for IN PERSON school?

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

For any proponents of 100% DL/ families of high risk or immunocompromised persons etc. This thread is not for you.
[/quote]

One thing that would make a huge difference to me would be if parents who are seeking more time in school didn’t discount members of our community in this way. As a teacher, what I want is for our whole community to be together. Those people you are so eager to dismiss are my students, my colleagues, my family members, my loved ones. One of the reasons I support 100% DL is because I hope that we can get to the point where we are all together, and our community is complete.

Any parent who would post what you wrote isn’t coming from the same place as me, ant that makes me worried that you wouldn’t make the choices I need to trust you to make, such as keeping your family out of risky situations and keeping them home with any symptoms.
[/quote]

Hi! Op here- sorry if that "not for you" came off the wrong way. I only posted to help stop so many negative comments from posters who were not interested in returning to school in the next few months. The negative comments are frustrating!

I think when higher risk students do choose return to school that special accommodations should be made for them. For example- why cant all teachers or students with documentation medical conditions have a plexiglass cubicle like in stores? Just a random thought.

And for the record I work with covid+ patients sometimes and have been since march. That in itself is a risky situation. You will never know what ANY family is truly doing or who denied the vaccine and who didnt. If you "need me" to make the "choices" that "you trust me to make" then respectfully possibly in person school now (or anytime in the near future? ) is not for you. There are just some things that are out of your control and that includes anyone's decision for their family.[/quote]

You can't walk this back OP.

Let's start with this:
Black Americans are 4x more likely to die of COVID than whites
Latinx Americans 3-4x more likely to die of COVID than whits
20% of Americans live in multigenerational homes
1 in 3 Americans has hypertension
37% of men and 35% of women in the U.S. are obese
Over 15% of adults have lung disease
Nearly 10% of kids have asthma (1 in 13)

Would you like me to continue listing all the various people your initial post happily discriminates against? Or should we just kick every last one of these people out of school and society? So inconvenient, they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the school nurses can easily be trained to perform the test? Do you know what these tests involve do you know the training necessary to perform these test the accuracy do the school nurse is needed???
When does this testing training take place

Op here- i dont know the answers to all of your questions but they trained our nurses in less than a week and i think this summer they trained pharmacists to give them? Not a bad idea.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

For any proponents of 100% DL/ families of high risk or immunocompromised persons etc. This thread is not for you.
[/quote]

One thing that would make a huge difference to me would be if parents who are seeking more time in school didn’t discount members of our community in this way. As a teacher, what I want is for our whole community to be together. Those people you are so eager to dismiss are my students, my colleagues, my family members, my loved ones. One of the reasons I support 100% DL is because I hope that we can get to the point where we are all together, and our community is complete.

Any parent who would post what you wrote isn’t coming from the same place as me, ant that makes me worried that you wouldn’t make the choices I need to trust you to make, such as keeping your family out of risky situations and keeping them home with any symptoms.
[/quote]

Hi! Op here- sorry if that "not for you" came off the wrong way. I only posted to help stop so many negative comments from posters who were not interested in returning to school in the next few months. The negative comments are frustrating!

I think when higher risk students do choose return to school that special accommodations should be made for them. For example- why cant all teachers or students with documentation medical conditions have a plexiglass cubicle like in stores? Just a random thought.

And for the record I work with covid+ patients sometimes and have been since march. That in itself is a risky situation. You will never know what ANY family is truly doing or who denied the vaccine and who didnt. If you "need me" to make the "choices" that "you trust me to make" then respectfully possibly in person school now (or anytime in the near future? ) is not for you. There are just some things that are out of your control and that includes anyone's decision for their family.[/quote]

You can't walk this back OP.

Let's start with this:
Black Americans are 4x more likely to die of COVID than whites
Latinx Americans 3-4x more likely to die of COVID than whits
20% of Americans live in multigenerational homes
1 in 3 Americans has hypertension
37% of men and 35% of women in the U.S. are obese
Over 15% of adults have lung disease
Nearly 10% of kids have asthma (1 in 13)

Would you like me to continue listing all the various people your initial post happily discriminates against? Or should we just kick every last one of these people out of school and society? So inconvenient, they are.
[/quote]

Oh goodness...
Im AA
Ive sadly been working in rooms woth covid+ patients on ventilators who most don't survive.
I have to counsel on obesity every day in my job.
I wont keep listing.
I get it.
Im not walking anything back.
Feel free to continue listing..this is an open space.

Just hoping to continue with some great ideas that will help us down the line. My goal is to collect and submit these to BOE. It seems like they do read their emails!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teacher here. I was in favor of trying to make a hybrid system work, until I found out we could not enforce masks. Students get in power struggles for the sake of power struggles over hats, hoods, cell phones, backpacks, ANYTHING. Without serious enforcement, mask compliance was going to be low. When I heard that, I joined the distance learning camp. Not because I'm lazy or don't want to work. Distance learning is way more work for me. It is less face to face time with any given student, but more work. I can see how from the parent perspective it seems like less work. I much preferred my job in the classroom. It's really insulting the way we get called lazy here. I can only speak for myself, but if I wanted to be lazy, I would not have chosen to teach middle school special education.

The other big request I would have is for substitutes. If you really need us to be in school in person, please recruit substitutes who will be willing to come in for us. It was hard enough to get a sub in middle school special ed before the pandemic hit. Most of the people who are willing to sub for me are 60+. I would not want them to come sub for me. However, if I need to quarantine, I need someone to teach for me. Plus, I need the right to take a day off when life happens and I have to take care of something. I don't take vacations or take off to have fun, but we need substitutes.

I agree with the above. I voted to go F2F, but then realized that we were missing some key items. Therefore, items I need include:

1. Supplies
* extra masks
* n95 masks for staff in higher risk situations (younger kids, some special education classrooms, anyone in higher risk categories)
* hand sanitizer in every classroom / office
* cleaning supplies in every classroom / office
* soap and paper towels in all rest rooms
* enough chromebooks for each student's personal use (some may opt to bring in computer from home)

2. Policies - all thought out and shared with staff / parents / students before start of year
* mask policy - what to do if you refuse to wear it
* positive test procedure - what to do if student / staff tests positive
* lunch policy - high school students cannot just roam about school - there is no social distancing - might need to have multiple lunch periods, this is a big issue due to space constraints
* cleaning room - how we are going to get rooms cleaned in between classes to ensure they are actually ready to go
* school transportation - how many on a bus / how many walkers / how many car riders - this is hard because roads around schools are so congested - could we have a staggered start for students who have their own transportation (ex: half day schedule for seniors with internships, but the student starts period 2 instead of period 1 if they provide own transportation)

[Anonymous]

This is a good starter. Make sure everyone has loads of instant at-home tests they can spit on every morning.

But also paid leave and the ability (and frankly consequences if they don’t) for people to actually take sick leave rather than just “oh well Johnny didn’t test positive only Daddy so we’ll drop him off at school so Daddy can rest.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests.amp.html

[Anonymous]

Since lunch time seems hard to manage, I noticed a lot of MCPS schools have courtyards or large outdoor spaces. Can we not get picnic tables and have kids eat outside for lunch? That makes it less transmissible than being inside in a poorly ventilated space.

I also would like for some classes to be staggered outside. This reduces how many kids are inside at one time and changes hallway flow patterns.

[Anonymous]

To keep our paras and assistants employed, they can supervise staggered lunches in the classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the school nurses can easily be trained to perform the test? Do you know what these tests involve do you know the training necessary to perform these test the accuracy do the school nurse is needed???
When does this testing training take place

Op here- i dont know the answers to all of your questions but they trained our nurses in less than a week and i think this summer they trained pharmacists to give them? Not a bad idea.

Not all schools have fully staffed nurses you do realize that right?
You do realize that was an issue before Covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

2. A holding room for students who get sent to school sick. Too many parents give their sick kids fever reducing medication so we don't know they are sick until lunchtime. Then they won't pick up their sick child. We need a "sick room" where these kids can be sent until the end of the day.

Perhaps parent volunteers could staff this?

[Anonymous]

I would like to have in person school when the rate of spread is as low as it is in the Eropean countries that have reopened school.

So less than 20 new cases per million per day in the county or state, as an average of the past 7 or 14 days. It isn't enough to have 14 days of declining new cases, if that rate is super high (like 130 new cases per million per day.) It needs to be down below 20 new cases per million per day. And the positivity rate for testing needs to be below 2% again expressed as an average of the past 7 days. That's an indication we are doing enough testing.

If those conditions are met, I'd like to see schools reopened. That's a low enough rate that you shouldn't have a lot of cases coming to school and if you have one or two students or teachers test positive, that school can be closed for 14 days. Everyone at that school do distance learning while they are quarantined so no worried about taking sick leave or losing pay.

That school closes, but all the other schools can remain open.

If there is another positive case in the same town, all the schools in that town should be closed for 14 days.

If there's a bigger outbreak in town, like 50-100 new cases, that one town needs to be on a pretty serious lockdown for 14 days (only leaving for groceries or essential medical care, or to check on the elderly etc).

You can do stuff like that if you have a lot of spread but you CAN do it if you have just 20 new cases per million per day.

[Anonymous]

Don’t send in your kids when they are sick. Pack a good quality mask and train your kid to use it if a teacher asks them to wear it. Teach your children to wash hands frequently into not pick their nose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How do you know the school nurses can easily be trained to perform the test? Do you know what these tests involve do you know the training necessary to perform these test the accuracy do the school nurse is needed???
When does this testing training take place

Op here- i dont know the answers to all of your questions but they trained our nurses in less than a week and i think this summer they trained pharmacists to give them? Not a bad idea.

Not all schools have fully staffed nurses you do realize that right?
You do realize that was an issue before Covid.

No i didnt- another poster suggested school nurses having the ability to give covid tests. So possibly for now work with the available nurses.

Im intrigued by PPs link to home covid test at a relatively inexpensive price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

2. A holding room for students who get sent to school sick. Too many parents give their sick kids fever reducing medication so we don't know they are sick until lunchtime. Then they won't pick up their sick child. We need a "sick room" where these kids can be sent until the end of the day.

Perhaps parent volunteers could staff this?

Op here LOL.

[Anonymous]

How about lunch? Our middle school is so huge that we need 3 lunch periods in which the kids are packed into the cafeteria like sardines!!

- Will kids be allowed to eat in their classrooms or outdoors if they are not eating cafeteria food?

- What about schools that are 50% FARMS and get breakfast, lunch and dinner at schools?

[Anonymous]

I think teachers should have the right to have disruptive students removed from their class. They don't have to deal with the totally ineffective restorative justice shit!