Reply to Can Lafayette with 1,000 kids re-open in the Fall?

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Reply to "Can Lafayette with 1,000 kids re-open in the Fall?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nope. Sorry people. Now is the new normal for a few years at least. I know people don’t want to hear it but I think false hope is not helpful. This is a paradigm change across the globe. Better to have time to plan for how things will be then to waste time hoping things will go back to how they were.[/quote]

They need to make morning shifts and afternoon shifts. No recess. breakfast for the morning shift, lunch for the afternoon shift. No group more than 15.
Group A goes to school for 3 hours, teachers get a 45-minute lunch, then comes group B. Parents need to find a way to get some type of childcare and pick up their kids from school on time.
 No in-school afternoon activities for kids, no need for long daily meetings for teachers.
It's being done in a few countries overseas. Why can't it be done here?[/quote]

Which countries are you thinking of?  Denmark is managing by only inviting the very youngest kids to school, and many families are keeping their kids home.  They also have about 20% of the deaths/million (the only way to measure because we aren't testing enough) of DC.  So, our situation is 5 times worse than theirs.

If we did a Danish style opening, with only the kids under 10, I could see that working.  [b]Move the 2nd to 4th graders to Deal or Wilson,[/b] 5th graders don't go to school, provide options for everyone who wants to keep their kids home to keep their home, and you could probably manage social distancing similar to Denmark.  But is that what we actually want?  Not bringing back 5th grade and up seems like a difficult choice.

Australia is having kids come one day a week.

[/quote]

The probalem isn't primarily buildings - it's staffing.  There aren't enough good teachers for every 1-4th grader to have 15 student classrooms. That's about double the teachers. And it would cost a fortune.  I could see classes of 10-13 on staggered days MW TR with online/home work on the off days and friday a day of online specials at home. This wouldn't require additional buildings or classrooms and size of school wouldn't matter except in proceedures to get the kids saftely to their classrooms at drop off and out of teh building at pick up. Bathroom passes might also be harder at bigger schools. Ditto cleaning. But big schoosl will have more resoruces for these things so it's a wash.

There is no recess - students are in the classroom the whole time - eat lunch there.  But with 11-13 students in a classroom, it would be managebale. The teaching/learning might even be better. What we woudl be giving up on is the idea of school as daycare.  I personally would be OK with this for a year if it means 1) my kids are learning and 2) they get another 10-15 years with their grandparents.[/quote]

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