Reply to Howard County remote until April 2021.

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

You need to have an arrangement. The school  system is not a day care provider.  The school  system is not going to endanger everyone's lives  because  this is difficult. The federal and state government  need to provide funding for  the things people need during  an unprecedented global pandemic .
As for me? No, it's not great, it's not  easy.  I would not ever presume it should be. [/quote]

What? This poster never signed up for being an unpaid educational aide. The school system needs to acknowledge that they cannot provide a good education to their students at the moment without outside help from a parent, daycare provider or extended family member. You can teach whatever you want to a google meet but if someone hasn't found the link and the meeting code to help a kindergartener log on, you are teaching to no one.
No one could plan for a pandemic and virtual learning for a year. It's ridiculous to think that somehow this family should have found someone available and affordable to help their children all day when for years, the public school system was the bedrock of the community which did so. It's more than "daycare". It's an unpaid teaching assistant role. 
[/quote]

DP here.  What you are describing is not an unpaid teaching assistant role, it's being a parent.

While the public education system provides most of what students need, it has never provided all that students need.  Yes, in normal times, most students get most of what they need with fairly little parental involvement, but the public school system has never been meant to be a complete and self-sufficient education for their students.  Parents have always been expected to pay attention and address what is not being covered.  In some cases, like children with special needs, parents need to do a lot, ranging from getting diagnoses for their children, arranging for IEP's and 504's to arranging for special educator assistance, be it private tutors, or public plans like county and state resources for children with special needs.  Even in the case of students without special needs, parents have been responsible for determining if their child needs remedial assistance, enrolling them in such programs like summer school or camps.  Parents have to pay attention to the school calendar and arrange for childcare when school cannot meet in person, so for teacher training days, holidays, school closings, snow days, and summer vacation.

Assisting your child in accessing school is part of your parental responsibilities.  Trying to say that parents are not prepared to be an unpaid teaching assistant is as outrageous as those who insist that fathers are helping when they feed their children, babysit their child or help with household chores.  No, that is called parenting and while mothers do most of parenting, fathers are expect to parent their children sometimes as well.  Likewise, while teachers do the bulk of teaching children, parents sometimes need to step up and provide some of their child's education or assist with their child's education.  It's parenting.

I can certainly understand people who are unprepared for the strain that the pandemic has caused on their lives, but this is no different than if a school had an environmental problem like a gas leak, fire or structural damage and the building was unusable.  If that were to happen, and the school implemented remote learning, parents would need to cope with the situation.  This is a world-wide pandemic that makes in-person learning dangerous.  While the children themselves are less susceptible and in less danger, they can be carriers of the disease and can infect their family members and others that their family members come into contact with.  How would you feel if you became ill because your child was exposed in school and while your child was fine, she came back and infected you.  How would you feel if a child took the illness home and infected their grandparent who lived in their house?  Or their mother was pregnant and lost the sibling because of exposure to the virus?  How would you feel if your child was exposed, and exposed you; you and your child were fine, but you took the virus to work and infected a coworker who became seriously ill or died?

It's not just the risk to the teachers, but the fact that this is an extremely virulent virus and children can become carriers to infect teachers, family members, friends and coworkers.  This is also problematic because carriers can be asymptomatic and infectious and can also be infectious for 2-4 days before any symptoms appear.

I sympathize with the PP's problem, but providing support for your child's education is a part of parenting.  Yes, I understand that the additional burden of assisting your child is not normal, but part of parenting is learning to adapt to the change of situation and find a backup solution that allows you to work and to provide for your child's participation in school.  Endangering thousands of people unnecessarily is not an option just because your child needs assistance with distance learning.[/quote]

Except schools are open all around the country. No outbreaks. Private schools in the area are open. No outbreaks. 
It's a pandemic and life has changed, but it has also exposed serious issues with the public school system and it's inability to re-open safely like other districts and organizations. I don't agree that it's an unpaid teaching role, but it's much more than most families can handle. It's also not working well for my own family, but we are managing.  It's difficult seeing our neighbors trot their kids off to their school every day knowing my own kids are not doing well with virtual learning. 
Here's to 2021. Maybe we will figure it out and get kids back in schools.
[/quote]

PP that you are quoting.  Yes, schools are open all around the country.  But you are wrong about "no outbreaks".  There are schools in at least 12 states that are closing due to outbreaks.  There are schools where some students are in person and some are at home quarantining and the schools are not set up for a mismatch of home and distance learning.  Teachers are struggling to adapt when the situation is changing on a weekly basis.  I know teachers who designed a hybrid curriculum back in August and September and in November had their schools closed and had to redo their lessons and assignments around kids being home full-time.  And schools where some kids are weeks ahead of their peers because some classrooms are open and others are quarantined.  I know school districts where teachers have become infected and died (I have two friends who are teachers in other states who have had a co-worker die from Covid-19 after being exposed at school).  The amount of trauma being introduced to those school systems from teachers infected at school and dying is horrible.

I think the HCPSS model of being virtual by quarter is a good one.  The one element I can see possibly revising is trying to get small groups of special needs students to return to school as the students that need the in-person education the most, provided that they can find a qualified teacher that is neither high-risk themselves or have family members that are high-risk to teach the classes, and they should move their classes to rooms like cafeterias, gymnasiums and other large rooms with good ventilation.  In small group settings where you can ensure that you have distance and ventilation, you can adapt to small groups, but there is no real way to safely handle more than about 1/4 of the student population in more than half of the HCPSS schools.  There is no way to discuss the wide-spread return to class for the majority of the student body under the current conditions.[/quote]

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