Anonymous wrote:Why are you gaslighting us about something that happened three years ago? We all have functioning memories.
I live in Chicago and in Feb 2022 school was not back to normal. I did not get my first grader the shot which meant any sniffles required 10 days out of school and a negative PCR to return (vaccinated kids just needed 24 hours fever free). I kept up at home with workbooks that I purchased myself since no paper allowed at school because paper spreads germs. Filthy cloth masks on every child and windows went unopened though there were windows in every room. Seething resentment about having to return to in person teaching (one teacher announced at a school boardmeeting that as long as any parents WFH, she should be allowed to as well because her dog preferred it.) Gym and music class were led by a teacher on a screen in another room. No book fair, no field day, and if you had an idea about how to do these things safely you must be MAGA.

Okay, Chicago. 99.9% of people on DCUM didn't live in Chicago in early 2022, hence asking where you were, because that did not track with the experience of the DC area.

But also.....you opted not to vaccinate your vaccine-eligible. There were consequences to that decision, you just didn't like them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Winter 2022? What school? At that point everyone should have been vaccinated. Life was very much back to normal. Social distancing had been scrapped and almost no one masked--except on planes or if families had very young child who weren't eligible for the vaccine.

I don't disagree that the interruption of in-person learning resulted in a massive backlog of testing for various learning disabilities and the ripple effect of that was felt for a long time. The current 3rd and 4th grade cohorts have a reputation for being unusually difficult because of Covid impacts.

School was more normal in Nov/Dec 2022. But in Jan/Feb 2022 masking was still mandatory and there were a ton of COVID measures.

Right. And schools were certainly not closed.

Anonymous wrote:Why are you gaslighting us about something that happened three years ago? We all have functioning memories.
I live in Chicago and in Feb 2022 school was not back to normal. I did not get my first grader the shot which meant any sniffles required 10 days out of school and a negative PCR to return (vaccinated kids just needed 24 hours fever free). I kept up at home with workbooks that I purchased myself since no paper allowed at school because paper spreads germs. Filthy cloth masks on every child and windows went unopened though there were windows in every room. Seething resentment about having to return to in person teaching (one teacher announced at a school boardmeeting that as long as any parents WFH, she should be allowed to as well because her dog preferred it.) Gym and music class were led by a teacher on a screen in another room. No book fair, no field day, and if you had an idea about how to do these things safely you must be MAGA.

The blatant LIE was that "many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

Which Virginia schools were still closed in the winter of 2022?

The closures definitely had an impact and we should discuss that, but exaggeration isn't necessary.

And the pandemic doesn't account for the poor performance of students in K-3, as discussed above.

NONE. No schools were closed in winter of 2022. Kids were back in the classrooms by Feb/Mar 2021.

Republicans are LYING POSs.

I'm not a Republican. Not even close. But I do remember what was happening in my kids' schools.

In winter of 2022 they were keeping the windows open in my kid's classroom to reduce the chance of COVID spread. I sent fingerless gloves to school because it was often 40-50 degrees in the classroom. They also weren't using paper to do work because it could spread COVID. Kids had to stay 6' apart to avoid spreading COVID, so no group work or moving around the classroom. Teachers wouldn't move around the classroom either and stayed at their desk, distanced from kids. Kids were also pulled out for weekly COVID tests. Kids had to keep their masks on at all times and washed hands many times a day. It wasn't close to normal at all.

There was also a huge backlog in testing needed for younger grades, as many kids had missed screening for dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD and other LD. So lots of issues socially and academically for teacher to handle.

So your kid was in the classroom?

Thanks for admitting that you are a lying POS.

Why are you gaslighting us about something that happened three years ago? We all have functioning memories.
I live in Chicago and in Feb 2022 school was not back to normal. I did not get my first grader the shot which meant any sniffles required 10 days out of school and a negative PCR to return (vaccinated kids just needed 24 hours fever free). I kept up at home with workbooks that I purchased myself since no paper allowed at school because paper spreads germs. Filthy cloth masks on every child and windows went unopened though there were windows in every room. Seething resentment about having to return to in person teaching (one teacher announced at a school boardmeeting that as long as any parents WFH, she should be allowed to as well because her dog preferred it.) Gym and music class were led by a teacher on a screen in another room. No book fair, no field day, and if you had an idea about how to do these things safely you must be MAGA.

Anonymous wrote:Winter 2022? What school? At that point everyone should have been vaccinated. Life was very much back to normal. Social distancing had been scrapped and almost no one masked--except on planes or if families had very young child who weren't eligible for the vaccine.

I don't disagree that the interruption of in-person learning resulted in a massive backlog of testing for various learning disabilities and the ripple effect of that was felt for a long time. The current 3rd and 4th grade cohorts have a reputation for being unusually difficult because of Covid impacts.

School was more normal in Nov/Dec 2022. But in Jan/Feb 2022 masking was still mandatory and there were a ton of COVID measures.

Winter 2022? What school? At that point everyone should have been vaccinated. Life was very much back to normal. Social distancing had been scrapped and almost no one masked--except on planes or if families had very young child who weren't eligible for the vaccine.

I don't disagree that the interruption of in-person learning resulted in a massive backlog of testing for various learning disabilities and the ripple effect of that was felt for a long time. The current 3rd and 4th grade cohorts have a reputation for being unusually difficult because of Covid impacts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

Which Virginia schools were still closed in the winter of 2022?

The closures definitely had an impact and we should discuss that, but exaggeration isn't necessary.

And the pandemic doesn't account for the poor performance of students in K-3, as discussed above.

NONE. No schools were closed in winter of 2022. Kids were back in the classrooms by Feb/Mar 2021.

Republicans are LYING POSs.

I'm not a Republican. Not even close. But I do remember what was happening in my kids' schools.

In winter of 2022 they were keeping the windows open in my kid's classroom to reduce the chance of COVID spread. I sent fingerless gloves to school because it was often 40-50 degrees in the classroom. They also weren't using paper to do work because it could spread COVID. Kids had to stay 6' apart to avoid spreading COVID, so no group work or moving around the classroom. Teachers wouldn't move around the classroom either and stayed at their desk, distanced from kids. Kids were also pulled out for weekly COVID tests. Kids had to keep their masks on at all times and washed hands many times a day. It wasn't close to normal at all.

There was also a huge backlog in testing needed for younger grades, as many kids had missed screening for dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD and other LD. So lots of issues socially and academically for teacher to handle.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

Which Virginia schools were still closed in the winter of 2022?

The closures definitely had an impact and we should discuss that, but exaggeration isn't necessary.

And the pandemic doesn't account for the poor performance of students in K-3, as discussed above.

NONE. No schools were closed in winter of 2022. Kids were back in the classrooms by Feb/Mar 2021.

Republicans are LYING POSs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

European studies conducted in European cities don't transfer to our environment. European schools are much, much smaller than American ones and their classrooms have windows that can be opened for ventilation, unlike the giant windowless prison bunkers our children attend.

Uh what? There are 450 million people in the EU and children go to schools of all sizes, in urban areas and in rural areas. Virtually all of them opened after the initial ~6-8 week closures and yet had much lower levels of COVID spread than we did in the US in 2020. Time to admit extended school closures were an enormous mistake.

The schools are much smaller and there are many more of them. The classrooms have windows and can be easily ventilated. Not like our cattle cars.

My son's private also did not close. They all wore masks, and everyone got vaccinated when possible. They spent a lot of their day outside, in giant tents, and reduced enrollment numbers for two years in order to keep classes as small as possible (classrooms were already much larger than in public school). There was never an outbreak. Even when kids got COVID (which was tracked and reported), it didn't spread to anyone else within the school. They had free optional daily covid testing, too. No public school could do any of that, of course. They haven't got the funds or the organization, and wouldn't be able to get the compliance. But European schools are much more like our privates than our publics.

+1

The things you needed to do to mitigate the risks weren't scalable for our supersized public schools. Another disadvantage of oversized schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

This conversation is about Virginia schools, where schools had an in-person option by March 2021 (per the governor's orders) and every school was open full-time in September 2021 (https://www.wavy.com/news/education/all-virginia-school-districts-open-full-time-for-in-person-learning-gov-northam-says/).

Our school was still teaching "in person" students virtually. The fully vaccinated teachers were afraid to be in the same classroom with the kids so they sat elsewhere and the kids used their iPads with headphones from in person classrooms.

Even though it was spring and the weather was mostly lovely, they even did virtual PE and kids watched the PE teacher exercise from their desks with the suggestion they try the exercises at home later. The teachers had decided that kids doing exercises in the classroom was too dangerous because kids would exhale more and it was too dangerous to take them outside because they'd have to pass other kids in the hallway.

Was this all ridiculous? Absolutely yes, but I don't consider that spring 2021 to be in person education. My 7 yo didn't get any in person instruction from a teacher. Only classroom aides supervised the class.

Even fall of 2021 was crazy. Teachers weren't allowing kids to do work on paper and turn it in because they considered the work to potentially transfer COVID. They also couldn't get up out of their seats to get a book or paper because that would disturb the 6' spacing and someone could get sick. Then there was also the weekly COVID testing, with kids missing class regularly. Not at all normal school.

This was APS, btw. Not all APS schools were like this, but the Duran let each principal choose what they wanted to do and Ventilation Lady's kid went to my kid's school, so we ended up with terrified teachers and a crazy plan.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

European studies conducted in European cities don't transfer to our environment. European schools are much, much smaller than American ones and their classrooms have windows that can be opened for ventilation, unlike the giant windowless prison bunkers our children attend.

Uh what? There are 450 million people in the EU and children go to schools of all sizes, in urban areas and in rural areas. Virtually all of them opened after the initial ~6-8 week closures and yet had much lower levels of COVID spread than we did in the US in 2020. Time to admit extended school closures were an enormous mistake.

The schools are much smaller and there are many more of them. The classrooms have windows and can be easily ventilated. Not like our cattle cars.

My son's private also did not close. They all wore masks, and everyone got vaccinated when possible. They spent a lot of their day outside, in giant tents, and reduced enrollment numbers for two years in order to keep classes as small as possible (classrooms were already much larger than in public school). There was never an outbreak. Even when kids got COVID (which was tracked and reported), it didn't spread to anyone else within the school. They had free optional daily covid testing, too. No public school could do any of that, of course. They haven't got the funds or the organization, and wouldn't be able to get the compliance. But European schools are much more like our privates than our publics.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

European studies conducted in European cities don't transfer to our environment. European schools are much, much smaller than American ones and their classrooms have windows that can be opened for ventilation, unlike the giant windowless prison bunkers our children attend.

Uh what? There are 450 million people in the EU and children go to schools of all sizes, in urban areas and in rural areas. Virtually all of them opened after the initial ~6-8 week closures and yet had much lower levels of COVID spread than we did in the US in 2020. Time to admit extended school closures were an enormous mistake.

Most of Europe had much lower rates of COVID than the US did, thanks to Donald Trump's "herd immunity" plan, where he actually tried to get as many people infected as possible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

European studies conducted in European cities don't transfer to our environment. European schools are much, much smaller than American ones and their classrooms have windows that can be opened for ventilation, unlike the giant windowless prison bunkers our children attend.

Uh what? There are 450 million people in the EU and children go to schools of all sizes, in urban areas and in rural areas. Virtually all of them opened after the initial ~6-8 week closures and yet had much lower levels of COVID spread than we did in the US in 2020. Time to admit extended school closures were an enormous mistake.

The schools are much smaller and there are many more of them. The classrooms have windows and can be easily ventilated. Not like our cattle cars.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Studies in Sweden and Norway showed us by the end of 2020 and before vaccines that it was safe to open schools with some basic precautions. But many school districts in blue states kept out school closed until late 2022 despite the plethora of empiric evidence saying it wasn’t necessary as well as growing evidence of harm from the school closures.

None of these people have been held accountable for this malfeasance.

European studies conducted in European cities don't transfer to our environment. European schools are much, much smaller than American ones and their classrooms have windows that can be opened for ventilation, unlike the giant windowless prison bunkers our children attend.

Uh what? There are 450 million people in the EU and children go to schools of all sizes, in urban areas and in rural areas. Virtually all of them opened after the initial ~6-8 week closures and yet had much lower levels of COVID spread than we did in the US in 2020. Time to admit extended school closures were an enormous mistake.