Reply to Covid Update from Central Office

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Y'know, I really want my kid in in-person school.  She's vaccinated, we're boosted, the whole family is going to get COVID eventually, and I'm not too worried about us.  What I DON'T want is to watch the slow but accelerating collapse of our educational infrastructure for reasons that were completely predictable and obvious, and it feels like that's what's happening.

Because of an "unexpected" (seriously?) lack of bus drivers, you've got kids who live too far to walk whose shift worker parents couldn't scramble to find a carpool last minute getting - not in-person learning, not virtual learning - nothing.  MCPS dropped the ball and now those kids are getting nothing.  You've got other kids who live with young, unvaccinated siblings or frail, elderly grandparents who are being forced to risk their family's well-being for the privilege of sitting in a cafeteria all day doing asynchronous busy-work.

Meanwhile staffing shortages continue to grow, so we're barreling toward closures and virtual anyway, but in the most chaotic and disruptive way possible.  (The new quarantine guidelines might help, won't be it fun to see if that can outrun [b]the exponential spread[/b] of Omicron before it flames out?  I can't wait!)

I would have taken 2-weeks of virtual to slow the spread over this (although we all know half of y'all would have gone to the Bahamas and ruined it for us anyway).  I would have taken DCPS' test-to-stay program over this - in fact I'd still take it!  Instead we got a terrible "case-by-case assessment" of schools once they reach 5% that backfired spectacularly because it didn't account for the exponential spread of the virus that we all knew was happening.

And now we get, "Oh...don't worry...we're doing something else...we won't tell you exactly what, just that it's definitely not what we were doing yesterday, BOY do we have terrible ideas sometimes, lol!  Also no, we won't release positivity data anymore, because then you'd know how bad our idea was."  I mean...Jesus.  I get wanting in-person.  I want in-person.  But HOW can anyone think this is an acceptable way to run things?[/quote]

The "exponential" spread part is over. It's been leveling out in MoCo and regionally. It'll likely grow (and recede), but it's already ripped through a lot of the public over December. You're not going to get multiple days of "doubling" (or more) on an extended basis.[/quote]

DP. Fingers crossed that you are right. But this also means that we could’ve switched to DL for two weeks and don’t start the paranoid shit about not ever coming back. [/quote]

You can't say don't start the paranoid shit because that's implicit to all this. MCPS clearly changes its mind all the time. After a virtual pivot, it would be so easy for them to say "we invested quite a bit of ramp-up time into successful DL...it's going so well right now and the kids are happy and learning...cases are still a bit high around the country...we've made the decision to stay with it until Spring Break". In what world is this not a very likely outcome? I bet a lot of people here could stomach two weeks of virtual. But after the last 1.5 years (and various flip flopping since then), they know that it's not going to stop there.[/quote]

I'm not that PP, but just because you can dream up a scenario in your quoted text doesn't mean it's reality.

I'll fully concede it's a thing that could happen.

But I won't concede it's a "very likely outcome"

As long as we're dreaming up scenarios that confirm our biases, I could have said say it would be "so easy" for MCPS to say, "Well, since like every school went red? ummmmm maybe we won't so much use that as a metric anymore and keep schools open with really high community spread?"  Actually, I did say that, and it may be happening, so bad example.

ANYWAY

Why aren't people addressing that this could happen anyway if all or most schools go virtual after reopening?

I'll concede that maybe [i]all [/i]schools won't go virtual as I expected-- though I always ceded the possibility that they wouldn't if MCPS changed their metrics, which they may be doing. And I'm sure these snow days helped.

But going on the information we had a week ago, I still do not understand the response that if we let them take 2 weeks, they would take 3 months or more. Again, fine, let's say that's true. How is that different if they took 2 weeks as of Jan 3, than if they take 2 weeks as of Jan 10?

Even 2 rolling weeks, depending on schools (which sounds like a nightmare for both admins and parents with kids in more than one school)...? In addition to the logistical nightmares, how does that prevent MCPS from deciding they want to stay in virtual longer?

I guess it MAY make some difference now, if it's actually true that they're not going to pivot that many schools to virtual at once. Some difference. Although I never thought they'd turn 2-4 weeks into 3-6 months, so if they don't do it now, will people crow that they were right not to support a pre-emptive 2-4 weeks? Even though many schools will end up with 2-4 weeks of virtual anyway?

Like...

"I don't think MCPS will stay virtual for 3-6 months if they proactively go virtual for 2-4 weeks."

*this sh!tshow happens, and many schools do go virtual for 2-4 weeks anyway*

"See! MCPS didn't go virtual for 3-6 months! That's because we didn't let them go proactively virtual for 2-4 weeks! Thank goodness! Or else they totally would have, because I had already decided they totally would have."

Sigh.[/quote]

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