Reply to Allegedly there are several options for the fall none of which include being back full time?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When this tread started about a month ago, the county likely still had the opportunity to make some decisions about how open in the fall.  It's now 2 months before MCPS is scheduled to start the new year on Aug 31, and I'd wager that shortly after July 14 (when it is scheduled to release its plan) is the latest they can truly commit and have enough time to implement.  Which to me means that MCPS has already made a decision and is now just working to present and support it.  Yes, I realize it is taking a survey, but that seems like eyewash.  The survey should have been out in early May.

Regardless of the merits, it's impossible to see MCPS simply re-opening as usual in the fall.  Yes, the COVID-19 situation seems to have been managed decently here, but has deteriorated rapidly elsewhere, and last I checked, we haven't instituted mandatory quarantines for persons traveling into the area from TX, FL, AL, etc.  (Conversely, I know many, many families traveling out-of-state for vacation this summer.)  I'm no fan of the MCPS administration, but they would be foolhardy to assume the continued improvement necessary to open schools full-time in-person on Aug. 31.  We're not even in Phase 3 in MoCo, and I have my doubts that we will get there by the end of summer.

The best the system could accomplish is a hybrid model, but even that is going to be a challenge.  I agree with others that creating enough space will require some group of students (HS) to go mostly DL, but the logistics of planning who goes where, including teachers and support personnel (not to mention transportation), is going to be enormous, and to give families enough lead time, you'd want to announce specifics by Aug 14 at the very latest.  Which means starting that planning now.  Of course, the worse case scenario is full-time DL.  I'm sure (hope) that the county can do better than in the spring, but the same equity and access issues aren't going to be better in fall.  Given the impact of the pandemic on the economy, they will be more acute.

I hope I'm proven wrong in all of this, and that it will be a great fall.  It's just very hard to see that given how little time remains before the new year starts and the trajectory of the pandemic nationally.

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We have been moving through phases every 1-3 weeks in Moco so far. We are a week into phase 2 with things still being stable/getting better each day. There is no reason we won't be in phase 3 in a week or two when we will still be in early July. That still leaves nearly 2 months before school. Test positivity has been hovering around 6-7% for at least a couple weeks. If that number was down to let's say a 3 or a 4 by mid August it's pretty safe to say things are moving in the right direction.

Again-the goal was never to completely get rid of Covid which most logical people know is not a realistic goal and we have zero control over the virus's longevity. The only thing we have control over is trying to contain/reduce the spread of it. Yet somehow flattening the curve/getting it under control and stable has gone out the window and now it seems school re-opening is 100% dependent on the virus being GONE. I'm not understanding why school administrations/teachers and staff seem to have a new unattainable goal for re-opening that nobody else sees as realistic in the least.[/quote]

I’m very much for opening schools and agree that our long term goal needs to be herd immunity in some sort of controlled fashion, as brutal as some may view that. We know we can do that (perhaps without the controlled part) versus a vaccine. I just don’t see the system taking the political risk of fully opening with reasonable safety measures, nor do I see there being any more time to make that decision. The system has 160,000 students. Any decision other than opening as normal is going to take every day left available to implement. Nine days ago I would have agreed with you about Phase 3. In fact, I would have bet on it. I’m not as sanguine about that anymore because the rest of the country has become a cautionary tale for Elrich. [/quote]

The states that are doing poorly are because of their own mistakes with their shutdown plan or lack therof. It should not influence our counties decisions. [/quote]

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