Anonymous wrote:

I'm talking about reasonable precautions in public so it's not spread elsewhere. We can only do so much in schools and that isn't much. Children need school and Internet school is a poor substitute for real school. Children are barely affected by the virus. This could go on for a very long time.

Teachers, administrators, building staff, and the children's family members, on the other hand...

Note that I'm not saying that schools should stay closed. I'm saying that people should stop implying that children are the only ones in schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have really tried to listen and understand both sides. I think the place I get hung up is with the multi-generational households. We know that the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly populations. So what do we do for families who live with elderly people and have young children in the home? It's just not as simple as saying that at-risk people should isolate.

We provide a distance-learning option for them.

That’s a good point. Allow people to opt-in to distance learning. We can’t do this forever. I know it won’t be “forever” and we all hope a vaccine comes later this year or next Spring but those are just hopes. At this point we don’t know when a vaccine arrives. As unlikely as it is, it could take five years for one. Do people want to keep this going for five years? We can’t structure school and the economy around exceptions. The exceptions need to have things done for them as much as possible (online school and grocery delivery for instance) and we need to take reasonable precautions to slow the spread (masks, stay 6 feet apart, don’t have people pack into small rooms) but we cannot function like this for an undetermined time.

I totally agree with you but following and observing those reasonable precautions is where you find the issues with schools. Many people packed in small rooms for a long period of time is the perfect definition for a school setting. How are you going to enforce those precautions? Students should wear masks for all seven hours they spend at school. Students should be in classes of no more than 10 students and spend all day in the same class 6 feet apart from each other. If there is enough room to do that, you are going to need twice or three times the number of teachers to teach those students. Those students that routinely do not follow those precautions or just tell you that they have the right to not wear a mask should stay at home and not allowed to come back. Students should be transported to and from school following social distancing, which may require double the number of buses, …

My point is that I also think that schools should reopen but we need to be aware that it will be something totally different from what school has been until March. We, as parents, need to support, ask for, and enforce those requirements and do not pretend that our children can keep on doing what they used to do at school before (go to get water and to the bathroom at their will, work in group settings, change classes and be with different students in different rooms, share any materials, or even talk to their best friends at all at school because now they are not in the same class so they cannot see one another at any time). I am okay with that for my middle school child, and I sincerely hope everybody claiming to open schools in September are also fine with that to minimize risks for everybody, specially teachers and school staff.

I'm talking about reasonable precautions in public so it's not spread elsewhere. We can only do so much in schools and that isn't much. Children need school and Internet school is a poor substitute for real school. Children are barely affected by the virus. This could go on for a very long time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole fiasco is like a situation where we might have had three straight months of daily two inch snowfalls. All the snowflakes would be fine with 90 straight days of no school due to snowfall.

Switch the situation to the coronavirus. No MCPD student has died or been seriously sick due to the pandemic. None. I keep hearing that children could carry it home and infect mom, dad, or grandma. Has there been any cases where that actually happened?

I suspect that this whole thing has been a huge “scared of my shadow” deal and had it not been for NYC and nursing homes we wouldn’t have missed a day of school.

So far three parents at my child’s school have died.

Did they catch it from their children? Of course not.

Of course they didn’t, they’ve been home for 2.5 months.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have really tried to listen and understand both sides. I think the place I get hung up is with the multi-generational households. We know that the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly populations. So what do we do for families who live with elderly people and have young children in the home? It's just not as simple as saying that at-risk people should isolate.

We provide a distance-learning option for them.

That’s a good point. Allow people to opt-in to distance learning. We can’t do this forever. I know it won’t be “forever” and we all hope a vaccine comes later this year or next Spring but those are just hopes. At this point we don’t know when a vaccine arrives. As unlikely as it is, it could take five years for one. Do people want to keep this going for five years? We can’t structure school and the economy around exceptions. The exceptions need to have things done for them as much as possible (online school and grocery delivery for instance) and we need to take reasonable precautions to slow the spread (masks, stay 6 feet apart, don’t have people pack into small rooms) but we cannot function like this for an undetermined time.

I totally agree with you but following and observing those reasonable precautions is where you find the issues with schools. Many people packed in small rooms for a long period of time is the perfect definition for a school setting. How are you going to enforce those precautions? Students should wear masks for all seven hours they spend at school. Students should be in classes of no more than 10 students and spend all day in the same class 6 feet apart from each other. If there is enough room to do that, you are going to need twice or three times the number of teachers to teach those students. Those students that routinely do not follow those precautions or just tell you that they have the right to not wear a mask should stay at home and not allowed to come back. Students should be transported to and from school following social distancing, which may require double the number of buses, …

My point is that I also think that schools should reopen but we need to be aware that it will be something totally different from what school has been until March. We, as parents, need to support, ask for, and enforce those requirements and do not pretend that our children can keep on doing what they used to do at school before (go to get water and to the bathroom at their will, work in group settings, change classes and be with different students in different rooms, share any materials, or even talk to their best friends at all at school because now they are not in the same class so they cannot see one another at any time). I am okay with that for my middle school child, and I sincerely hope everybody claiming to open schools in September are also fine with that to minimize risks for everybody, specially teachers and school staff.

Anonymous wrote:Online schooling during the fall semester is the responsible thing to do.

Responsible? Not even close, lady.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have really tried to listen and understand both sides. I think the place I get hung up is with the multi-generational households. We know that the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly populations. So what do we do for families who live with elderly people and have young children in the home? It's just not as simple as saying that at-risk people should isolate.

We provide a distance-learning option for them.

That’s a good point. Allow people to opt-in to distance learning. We can’t do this forever. I know it won’t be “forever” and we all hope a vaccine comes later this year or next Spring but those are just hopes. At this point we don’t know when a vaccine arrives. As unlikely as it is, it could take five years for one. Do people want to keep this going for five years? We can’t structure school and the economy around exceptions. The exceptions need to have things done for them as much as possible (online school and grocery delivery for instance) and we need to take reasonable precautions to slow the spread (masks, stay 6 feet apart, don’t have people pack into small rooms) but we cannot function like this for an undetermined time.

Anonymous wrote:I have really tried to listen and understand both sides. I think the place I get hung up is with the multi-generational households. We know that the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly populations. So what do we do for families who live with elderly people and have young children in the home? It's just not as simple as saying that at-risk people should isolate.

We provide a distance-learning option for them.

Anonymous wrote:Online schooling during the fall semester is the responsible thing to do.

Responsible for whom? Not for kids. Kids need school. My parents (both octogenarians) agree.

Anonymous wrote:I have really tried to listen and understand both sides. I think the place I get hung up is with the multi-generational households. We know that the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly populations. So what do we do for families who live with elderly people and have young children in the home? It's just not as simple as saying that at-risk people should isolate.

They do their best to isolate where they live. We can not bankrupt the country and ruin the education of children - our nation’s future - because some small number of elderly are living in multigenerational housing. It’s like vaccines, some people have reactions and die from them but we still give them to people.

Online schooling during the fall semester is the responsible thing to do.

I have really tried to listen and understand both sides. I think the place I get hung up is with the multi-generational households. We know that the majority of deaths are occurring in the elderly populations. So what do we do for families who live with elderly people and have young children in the home? It's just not as simple as saying that at-risk people should isolate.

Everyone's lives are important including the elderly and immune-crompromised. Children are the future and we cannot afford to lose years of education until a vaccine is available. We don't have any definite answer when we will have one. People hope next year but that's not a sure thing. Young people rarely die from this disease so it's not the end of the world to allow them or their parents to be exposed to it. For the at-risk population and those known to have an active COVID-19 infection should be the only ones in quarantine. Grocery delivery should be reserved for those in quarantine and should not be allowed for anyone else because right now you cannot schedule delivery because of all the paranoid people ordering groceries online. People that care for at-risk individuals should also be quarantined (such as those that work at nursing homes) and allowed grocery delivery. Aside from that, we should wear masks when inside buildings together, continue to be six feet apart, allow restaurants at 50% capacity. Places where people breath heavily, which would spread the virus far should continue to be closed. This includes churches where people sing, gyms where people breath hard while exercising, and indoor play areas like trampoline parks.

Children are the future of the country and they are at extremely low risk from the virus. We should not disadvantage our future generations just so the elderly feel better. The elderly can continue to shelter in place and be first in line for a vaccine. They can continue to use Skype, Zoom, FaceTime, etc. Online education is not as good as classroom instruction and the occasional technical problems make it even worse. If this was a mass outbreak of some horrible childhood disease like Polio and we have no vaccine for it then I could understand keeping kids at home but it's not. It has very minor effects on children and most kids don't even experience any symptoms. Some kids will get sick and some may die and that's awful but some kids die from vaccines but we don't stop the use of them.

There has to be a balance between slowing the spread, protecting at-risk people, and keeping schools and the economy going. You can't open up, business as usual. You can't shut everything down for years. You have to figure out a middle ground. Elected officials in MoCo are doing a bad job leading and making hard decisions.

Anonymous wrote:

But teachers get paid in full whether schools return or not. Why would they want to go back and assume any risk at all when they can stay home, get paid, do less work, and not have to interact with your bratty kids AT ALL! Win

If you believe this then you have no idea why teachers go into the profession. Although we're doing our very best to make this time of online instruction as meaningful as possible, we miss our students and want to be in the classroom with them again. Making connections with students is one of the most important aspects of our profession. Teaching and learning just aren't the same without in-person interaction. - MCPS High School Teacher