2-day school schedule Request

[sdlaura]

I’m still hopeful that school will go back full-time, but I think the base case is two days of in person instruction and 3 days of homework packets. The school is making sure siblings are on the same schedule but otherwise you can request either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday.

I’m not sure whether to request specific days. I could reach out to some other moms in the neighborhood to see what they’re requesting in case we wanted to try to coordinate instruction or childcare somehow.

Based purely on my work schedule, Thursday is my busiest day for work meetings, so maybe Tuesday/Thursday would be better. Would you try to request specific days?

[hocus2]

Our school is doing cohort requests to keep kids together but is not currently allowing specific days.

I think a 2 day scheduled is doing to be hugely challenging and I am assuming schools will not allow parents to pick days given all the issues that need to be managed.

[sdlaura]

hocus2 our principal used language like ‘we can’t guarantee requests, but let us know if you have a preference and we’ll do our best’ or something like that.

[edwardo123]

I think ours will be half on Monday-Tuesday, Wednesday cleaning day, then the rest on Thursday-Friday.

I teach in our school, so if this happens I will be sending my kids to daycare three days, trying to find a nanny, or possibly taking a leave of absence. Our district did ask for any interested staff in teaching fully on line to let administration know. I let them know of my interest. It’s strange not knowing what the school year will look like.

I would request days that were convenient with your work schedule. It can’t hurt to try. One of girls will be in private and the other in public, so I would request lining up their schedules if offered.

[sdlaura]

edwardo123 yes we’ll have to hire people/use daycare as well for the off days if we’re not in school everyday. In our district, parents and teachers who wanted 100% online already had to commit to it.

[waverly]

If you have childcare for the other days then maybe it doesn’t matter. I would ask around and weigh the pros and cons.

I think Monday’s are my busy days. Also there are lots of holidays on Mondays so would they be in school less?

[edwardo123]

Jun 16, 2020 20:28:06 GMT -5 waverly said:

If you have childcare for the other days then maybe it doesn’t matter. I would ask around and weigh the pros and cons.

I think Monday’s are my busy days. Also there are lots of holidays on Mondays so would they be in school less?

I think that’s why my district is looking at M-T and Th-F. I’m guessing the number of Monday’s and Fridays missed are close in number. I think this also allows a deeper clean on Wednesday between the two groups. I also read that if a child in the class tests positive, the kids are quarantined at home 14 days. If they have a fever for any other illness, they need to be fever free for 3 days and symptom free for 10. These are just hypothetical guidelines at this point, but my kids who are fairly healthy still get a fever 2-3 times a school year. That’s several weeks at home without childcare. This doesn’t seem sustainable for any family. Also, there is no way that most districts will be able to provide enough substitute teachers, paras, bus drivers, etc to keep up.

[twinmomma]

If you don't have any really pressing, specific reasons why you need a certain day, I'd probably just not bother requesting anything and see how things fall.
Our district presented two options to the school board last night: 2 days in, 3 days remote OR all kids wear masks and they install plexi glass shields around every single desk since we can't distance properly in our classrooms. They'll announce the decision in July. Ugh.

[sdlaura]

So I ran into another mom while out walking last night and she said the district is planning to divide groups alphabetically, since that’s simple and keeps siblings together. I hope she’s right since that’s would put us with most of our kids’ close friends, and since we’re the second half of the alphabet, we’d probably be Tues/Thurs.

I agree with all the issues you mentioned edwardo123. But I do like that our district is telling us now that either we’ll be back full time like normal, like we hope, or at least giving us a concrete idea of what the fall will look like at two days a week, so we can be reasonably confident we’ll end up with one of those two options.

twinmomma like k3am had said before, I don’t like the idea of kids wearing masks all day, but I’d take it if it meant school everyday.

[twinmomma]

sdlaura, I feel like masks all day is a sacrifice we can make if it means kids are in school and families aren't completely screwed on figuring out child care and work schedules again. My kids don't really mind wearing them, they just get annoyed when their glasses get fogged up. This spring during remote learning, everything was shut down so parents were just home anyway. Now that states are reopening, how are parents supposed to manage remote learning while also being expected to be back at work?

[librarychica]

Jun 17, 2020 8:18:56 GMT -5 twinmomma said:

sdlaura, I feel like masks all day is a sacrifice we can make if it means kids are in school and families aren't completely screwed on figuring out child care and work schedules again. My kids don't really mind wearing them, they just get annoyed when their glasses get fogged up. This spring during remote learning, everything was shut down so parents were just home anyway. Now that states are reopening, how are parents supposed to manage remote learning while also being expected to be back at work?

My kids also don’t mind wearing masks, especially inside. It’s hot and humid here so I don’t think they could handle them outside but I have not seen that recommended anywhere.

I am confused on the proposed two day schedule (though it’s looking like our district will not be doing it— we will either be open 4 days, 5 days with a split day or as normal but in “pods”.) Most states have reopened some so most people are back to work in some form. Ergo, most people will need childcare. So if people are sending their kids to school part of the week and then sending them to a separate childcare facility or to family or to whatever pop-up programs inevitably pop up part of the week, doesn’t that just cross-pollinate the germs more? It seems to make more sense to keep people in consistent groups as much as possible.

[twinmomma]

librarychica, I have the same questions. Now we expect people to coordinate childcare for the off days, have that childcare provide remote learning support, and parents have to be back out in the world? Seems like we're setting everyone up for failure there.

[phdmomma]

What I've heard as likely for our district is either Monday/Tuesday or Thursday/Friday, with Wednesday as a cleaning day. I will pick Monday/ Tuesday if given the choice, because I teach on Monday/ Wednesday and faculty meetings are on Tuesdays. So, I am trying to line it up with my schedule. I sincerely hope that siblings will be given the same days, because we will hire someone (likely a college student) for the off days. And there are fewer college classes that meet on Friday on my campus. So Wednesday - Friday would probably be feasible to hire someone for. Or maybe we would hire two college students based on their course load.

librarychica, twinmomma, that is my question as well. Our aftercare programs here typically have waitlists (as do the summer camps). So people will need care on those days which the kids aren't in school. I feel like we are setting everyone up for failure as well.

[rere]

The plan put out for us last night had a delayed start, but us going to school normally by the end of August. I am a little shocked. I expected more of a hybrid and going the way of the colleges and trying to extend winter break.

[k3am]

One of my biggest questions is coordinating days of distance learning. Some parents will be able to do it, but a large chunk of parents won't. Which means that potentially up to 12 students on their distance days doing some kind of alternative care with up to 12 students, so each half of the class could be exposed to up to 144 kids? Some of those kids might also be kids that are in their class, but it's not guaranteed. Wouldn't it be better to just.. have a normal size class that doesn't social distance but has limited exposure to the same consistent group of kids?

[sdlaura]

Same k3am. I think it would be safer, from a COVID risk perspective, to do a non distanced school class and keep them together all week.

[k3am]

sdlaura, for better or worse, they are stuck with following what the health department suggests in general, and can't veer away from that. Our health officer is super conservative, especially compared to the state, so I don't see them making any allowance. (But.. I've been wrong at just about all my covid predictions in regards to how state/local government will respond, so hopefully wrong here.)

[waverly]

I've shockingly been right on my covid predictions by watching other countries that had it prior to us. I could literally feel it coming.

However, if I look to other countries the way they are reopening schools is all over the place. The only real standard is that they do it slowly. www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/europe/reopen-schools-germany.html. This is a NYT article so it might be behind a paywall if you have reached your monthly limit.

[sdlaura]

waverly I wish there was more research available, but I think everything we do know about kids and COVID points to kids not being asymptomatic super spreaders. While kids obviously spread other illnesses widely, and theoretically they should be able to spread COVID given similar viral loads to adults, for whatever reason they don’t seem to be major sources of transmission for this one.

I think the outstanding question is then how you handle school closings when COVID has spread to a school from the larger community.

I think it’s interesting that as we learn more, we find out that some areas of society that we thought would be major sources of transmission haven’t turned out to be - I thought the news about the two hairstylists in Missouri who cut the hair of over 100 people while symptomatic and didn’t infect a single one was interesting. It was also an argument for close contact being a lot safer with masks.

[mommyatty]

I think the tough thing here is we aren’t testing and doing contact tracing. Plus, Texas is home to the “You can’t tell me what to do” culture, so it’s insane and our numbers in every critical category are climbing. I’m struggling with our curve because right now it looks like we will peak just in time for school to start. So even our Trumpy governor might balk at opening schools under those circumstances.

I just answered a survey on how distance learning went and one is coming soon on what reopening should look like and what our major concerns are. We just don’t know what to expect. One thing I’m going to ask for is that every faculty and staff member be tested a week before school starts because what I’ve seen of our faculty leads me to believe they are the WORST role models at social distancing. It’s absurd how bad they are. I think we will have teachers test positive. Possibly a lot of them.

[sdlaura]

mommyatty that’s a good idea on testing staff. I think it’s unreasonable to expect that we could test all students here, but testing staff would be more manageable.

Two teachers in our district had COVID around the time we shut down schools. Both contracted it from other adults (one from a Colorado ski trip and the other from her brother-in-law) and didn’t infect any students that anyone knows of.

[waverly]

mommyatty, we are doing testing in our state. Contract tracing is not as perfect as we would like, but they are hiring more and more people to do it to get there.

I like the one school that tests twice a week. I am sure that is prohibitively expensive, but it seems like a good idea (barring costs).

[k3am]

Some interesting articles..

www.wired.com/story/the-case-for-reopening-schools/

"We are in a peculiar situation where we have a president and a segment of the population rabidly rooting for a full opening of society. At the same time, another segment wants everything to remain closed until we have vaccines, effective treatments or mass testing and contact tracing in place—none of which seems likely to appear on the immediate horizon. In the middle, with rare exceptions, governors across the nation appear to be considering action on every front except schools. This policy doesn’t make sense logistically or medically. And considering the negative effects it has on children, it doesn’t make sense ethically, either."

thehill.com/opinion/education/500349-science-says-open-the-schools

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that of the first 68,998 U.S. deaths from COVID-19, only 12 have been in children under age 14 — less than 0.02 percent. Nor is coronavirus killing teenagers. At last count, the fatality total among children under 18 without an underlying condition is one; only ten of the 16,469 confirmed coronavirus deaths in New York City were among those under the age of 18. That’s similar to the fatality rate for those under 20 in France, estimated at 0.001 percent, and in Spain.
...
But what about the adults — the teachers, guidance counselors, bus drivers and kitchen staff? No one wants to endanger the health of educators but, fortunately, risks to adults in schools are much less than those encountered in grocery stores, pharmacies and other essential businesses. As is shown across the world, including Switzerland, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Iceland, the UK, Australia and now Ireland, children seldom if ever transmit the disease to adults, even to their parents. Several epidemiologists recently denounced the widely cited April publication that erroneously concluded that children can transmit COVID-19 just as readily as adults. Its author, German virologist Christian Drosten, previously had been featured as a COVID-19 hero, abetting the panic to close schools.

[waverly]

In places where cases are rising I can see the hesitation, but not in states where cases are falling.

More research to be done but there was also some promising results on a cheap steroid. It’s early still, but if something like that could treat the virus in early days preventing the disease from becoming misery at home and/or hospitalization and/ or ventilator- it could be a game changer. Most of the research is on those very ill- let’s just try this one thing. I would love to see some drugs studied given at the time of the diagnosis to see if they can somewhat block virus replication.

[waverly]

I know you are all tired of hearing my daily case counts, but I’m going to tell you anyway we were in the 500’s again today- 18 days after we moved to phase 3!

I’m so excited considering our peak was May 15 and 4000 cases. I can’t explain what’s happening in CA. But the rest of the states with increasing cases opened too early (as you all probably know).

[mommyatty]

waverly- I’m not even positive we opened too early. We just opened stupidly. Like the governor won’t let cities require masks in public even though even mayors of Republican strongholds are begging for that power. So mask wearing went from virtually everyone during the lockdown to like 30% of people. So we are spreading like a MFer.

[waverly]

Jun 17, 2020 18:41:20 GMT -5 mommyatty said:

waverly- I’m not even positive we opened too early. We just opened stupidly. Like the governor won’t let cities require masks in public even though even mayors of Republican strongholds are begging for that power. So mask wearing went from virtually everyone during the lockdown to like 30% of people. So we are spreading like a MFer.

Unfortunately this needed at least 11 weeks, but yes also open very slowly with masks consistently through the state. I think when they did it county by county it probably is harder- although I appreciate some counties have less cases, but I think it creates hotspots if the counties are all different (barring places where social distancing is impossible and those are inevitable hot spots).