How is MCPS determining red, yellow, green?

[Anonymous]

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/Coronavirus/dashboaird/MCPS%20COVID-19%20Cases%20Winter%20Break%20Through%206%20am%20January%203%202022%20with%20Categories.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So parents have to find childcare solutions in two-week increments? How is that possibly going to work?

Ironic isn't it? Liberals who don't care about education, children, or working families. They have put the public health bueracracy and teachers unions on a pedestal and don't give a s**t about you or your kids.

-A Democrat

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

Based on real-time, school-level case counts. Some backdoor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

Based on real-time, school-level case counts. Some backdoor.

Based on unverified, self-reported case counts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you look at the dashboard some of the schools going virtual have a similar number of cases to schools that are open.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/coronavirus/dashboard/index.aspx

This is a joke. We are relying on imperfect data (parent self-report). Parents who are unable to secure home tests or get tested aren't able to report + cases. Many parents purposely will not report to avoid school quarantine. What a mess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who's sending their kids into a yellow zone? Show of hands..

I'm not even sending my kid into her "green" school because it's clear there's a reporting problem.

Our school is one of only 10 schools in MCPS (the least-positive 5%) that is reporting a <1.5% rate.

There is absolutely no way we have less COVID than all of the surrounding schools, which are reporting about double our rate. Actually, there's one way, but it's unlikelier than:

-Fluke
-Temporary "good luck"
-Especially terrible communication/reporting

The last bit is related to the one weird (but unlikely) reason we could actually have a rate that reflects half of the rate of neighboring schools.

That is that our school may have the highest proportion (1/3) of immigrants from a specific country, and thus:

-There's probably a lot of information being missed by or miscommunicated to them

and/or, much less likely IMO

-It's possible they've been far more cautious than average or a lot had COVID in early December or something

Even if so, that shouldn't explain the huge disparity.

I need to reach out to folks in the school that I know from that country to find out if any of this is the case.

But then again, it may have nothing to do with our specific demographics.

I think I am at that school too. I find it highly suspicious that we have only had 5 cases all year and that we are less than 1.5% positivity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the press conference, they are looking at reported positives from the last 4 days among total school population.
Green <3%
Yellow 3-5%
Red >5%

List to be updated by 7pm each day.

(And of course they can't post that before the press conference - people would flip out with no explanation to go with it. They'll still flip out, but at least there is context now.)

Just how are they doing this? For instance my Title One school has many nonEnglish speaking parents. Are they getting all the info in how to report, testing, etc? We had many +s prior to break. Why so many upcountry schools?

Rich people test more?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

I don't see it that way. If anything, it will discourage people from reporting so we will have lower estimates to keep schools open

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the press conference, they are looking at reported positives from the last 4 days among total school population.
Green <3%
Yellow 3-5%
Red >5%

List to be updated by 7pm each day.

(And of course they can't post that before the press conference - people would flip out with no explanation to go with it. They'll still flip out, but at least there is context now.)

Just how are they doing this? For instance my Title One school has many nonEnglish speaking parents. Are they getting all the info in how to report, testing, etc? We had many +s prior to break. Why so many upcountry schools?

Rich people test more?

Yep, they were able to get their hands on more tests, actually afford RATs, and probably travelled over break so tested more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

I don't see it that way. If anything, it will discourage people from reporting so we will have lower estimates to keep schools open

I agree, but you only need 5% to flip it. Whatever side you're on, this is literally an insane way of going about this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

I don't see it that way. If anything, it will discourage people from reporting so we will have lower estimates to keep schools open

I don't know what to think honestly. On the one hand, I am very angry and am tempted to view this as a backdoor way to close schools while they say they are keeping them open. On the other hand, I like to think MCPS has gotten the message that schools need to be open and will realize in a couple of weeks this system is flawed and figure a way to pivot out of it. Arbitrary metrics for closing make no sense as they do not take into account changing information and the fact that this variant is no worse for children than other variants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

I don't see it that way. If anything, it will discourage people from reporting so we will have lower estimates to keep schools open

I agree, but you only need 5% to flip it. Whatever side you're on, this is literally an insane way of going about this.

It cannot be implemented. Schools will be flip flopping between virtual and in person constantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

What does this mean? People who "pressed for" schools to go virtual by these 5% metrics that were set weeks (months?) ago?

Or people who "pressed" for virtual to ever be an option, instead of "Oh well, too bad, doesn't matter if 100% of people have COVID, your only option is in-person?

This is some weird twisting of logic.

A couple of weeks ago, before break, most people weren't paying all that much attention to this. They weren't too heated because they hoped or assumed the rate wouldn't rise above 5%. Now nothing has changed except the rate has increased, quite predictably.

But the anger at having to go virtual is being aimed at people who didn't influence the development of the metric at all.

I want my kid's school to go virtual for 2-4 weeks, given the circumstances at the moment. But I had no influence on creating this policy, nor did I help to spread COVID, because we haven't been anywhere in weeks except to visit only my very COVID conservative parents, stay inside their house, and return right after.

How is someone like me responsible for any of this?

Did I will it to happen?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is complete BS. Everyone will be red and in virtual until Spring. This is a way to be open and not be open at the same time. Congrats to everyone who pressed for virtual. This sucks big time. MCPS is a joke. Education has become a joke. Everyone knows that the green schools will be red in a matter of days.

Yep, the virtual crowd won. MCPS manufactured a system to backdoor into virtual.

I don't see it that way. If anything, it will discourage people from reporting so we will have lower estimates to keep schools open

I agree, but you only need 5% to flip it. Whatever side you're on, this is literally an insane way of going about this.

5% of unrelated cases, and reliance on parental self report and/or shabby testing. Policy decisions need to be made using "robust" data. Right now we don't have that so everyone, regardless of perspective, is pissed off.