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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]100% agree.

I am tired of being screamed at by both sides for wanting a pragmatic approach to this longterm problem. The people who are arguing that we cannot open schools until a vaccine are doing a terrible disservice to all the many, many families who do not have the resources to weather a school shut down of that length. And meanwhile, the people who claim Covid is overblown and advocate for full opening with little to no precautions only undermine efforts to open schools in a responsible way.

I'm exhausted. We live across the street from our kid's school and it just sits there empty every day, a wasted resources, as the kids who should be attending it are cared for and provided educations by parents (some of whom have had to quit or scale back jobs, putting family finances at risk), in group care that pose the exact same risks of exposure as school but at greater financial cost to parents, or in-home care that also carries exposure risks. It is baffling to me. It reminds me of back in May when we were told to social distance but all the city parks were closed so we were all crowded onto sidewalks together.

I[b] do not understand why we can't have a rational conversation about how to best balance the competing risks[/b], not just Covid but also the risks of children falling behind, the risks to parents and lower-paid childcare workers of becoming the defacto early education system, and the risks to families of bearing the brunt of the Covid crisis. I really do not understand.[/quote]
There is a trust element that has been lost over the years.
Parents sent kids in sick.   A child would be picked up from school one afternoon with a high fever and back at school the next day.  The rule was 24 hours fever free - which clearly was not the case.

Parents time and again lied about the health of their child as it was inconvenient for them.   Now the stakes are a lot higher. [/quote]

That is a policy question that could be addressed via better policy. The reason parents send sick kids to school is because the parents do not have sick leave at work. So you do a two-pronged policy. Require temp and symptom checks at the door to the school (by a school nurse, not a teacher) and then DC has a policy in place that forces employers to allow sick leave to employees who much care for a sick kid. A lot of the problem will already be addressed because so many office-dwelling parents are now working from home, and could handle having a kid home sick without having to take a full day off. And DC could provide assistance to employers/employees who must be in person, by accommodating families that need someone at home with a kid who can't go to school.

To say "Oh, parents send kids to school sick all the time because parents are evil" is to ignore the actual underlying problems, which are solvable. It's laziness on the part of policy-makers to stop at the first road bump. If you work in municipal government or public school administration, this should be precisely the kind of problem-solving you embrace.[/quote]

Good points. It would be also helpful to make it easier for kids who miss school due to illness to make up work. Our school's policy was always "ask your friends what you missed" unless it was an absence of more than 4 days. Let's just say that 7th grade boys aren't the greatest at giving accurate information. [/quote]

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