On Thursday, August 6, Newton parents organized a panel on the risks and rewards of in-person education engagement in the time of COVID. Attendance overflowed capacity on Zoom. For those who were not able to attend, a summary is provided below, with links to the recording and the presentation available on Village 14.
The panel was organized and moderated by Newton North parent Valerie Pontiff, former co-president of the PTSOs of Newton North and Bigelow.
Newton North parent Dr. Stefanos Kales, Professor at Harvard Medical School and TH Chan School of Public Health, provided a presentation with five main points:
1. There is a broad public health and pediatric consensus that the many health, social, emotional and developmental benefits of in-person school far outweigh any COVID-related risks to our children. The DESE re-opening plan was endorsed by the MA Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The national AAP has published a similar document for re-opening schools.
2. Remote school is the least equitable option for vulnerable children, including those with socioeconomic disparities, disabilities and working parents.
3. The teachers can be adequately protected by following the DESE Guidelines. As an occupational medicine specialist who is expert in worker protection, I also suggest simple and affordable additional protections.
4. The pandemic situation in Mass continues to improve with decreasing hospital numbers and deaths, especially when compared to June 25, 2020 (when Massachusetts DESE published its guidelines).
5. Therefore, NPS should follow the DESE guidelines and give a full in-person school option for the students whose parents elect to opt-in (and 70% of NPS parents surveyed by Newton Public Schools said they would).
Newton North parent Dr. Geoffrey Gilmartin, critical care specialist at Beth Israel and former Middle School teacher, spoke about his experiences with realistic delivery timelines for vaccines and realistic expectations for a timeline of a vaccine for COVID-19.
Kimberly Benzen, COO of the West Suburban YMCA, operator of 2020 summer day camps and also inside member operations, spoke about her experiences with the YMCA summer camps this summer, including the positive social and emotional benefits to the kids of in person camp, and the high levels of compliance by the kids with wearing masks.
Newton South parent David Goldstone, who organized a 900+ signature petition focusing on ensuring rigorous education in the schools discussed minimum parental expectations for a quality distance education/learning – which NPS did not provide in Spring 2020. Whether part of an all-remote option or the 3 days per week of the distance portion of a hybrid option, the petition’s minimum expectations for distance education/learning are:
1. A structured program of teaching and assignments for the specific classes in which the students are enrolled based on the curriculum
2. Meaningful live teaching/discussion of the curriculum by their teachers
3. Structured opportunities for meaningful discussion about the materials with their teachers and their peers
4. Meaningful expectations for ongoing and measurable student learning with respect to the curriculum
Opportunity was given in the forum for parents to ask questions of the panelists, and to provide a variety of their own perspectives.
Here’s a recording of the Zoom meeting
and here are two PDF’s of presentations that went along with the meeting:
I empathize with the parents. But the evidence of school openings so far doesn’t give me much confidence it can be done.
And the teachers are the ones really at risk. No good solutions here.
There are good solutions. All at-risk teachers already have waivers from returning to the classroom. Regarding non-at-risk teachers, NPS can take the same precautions as those used for hundreds of millions of workers in the US. The video covers this.
In the video, the West Suburban YMCA COO talks about how they made Camp Chickami work. If NPS can’t figure it out, they should hire her–she can figure it out!
At-risk teachers do not have waivers. This is false. I’m one of those teachers and this is not true. Wondering where you got this information.
Britni, I was told this by an at-risk teacher whom I respect. BTW, I have not heard of any school districts in the USA putting documented at-risk teachers at-risk.
The problems is spreading the disease, not just catching the disease. Common sense tells me it’s not feasible. All it takes is a couple of teachers testing positive and there goes the plan. Don’t see it working.
I’m an at risk teacher and I have no received any communication about the district’s plans for us…I would edit your comment from saying “all” since that is obviously not true.
I’m another at risk teacher at NPS. I have submitted this information to HR and not received a waiver. I know another teacher who submitted a drs. note and has not received a waiver.
I agree with editing comment to remove all. There are many teachers I know fearing for their health and safety who have received no communication from the district.
I am one of those teachers
The same person here appears to be trying to comment using different pseudonyms. Please pick one and stick with it.
Figuring out how to run summer outdoor day camps and September-through-June indoor schools are two vastly different things. Yes, they can figure out how to make Camp Chickami work (with modifications) because almost all activities take place outside, in open space, which lowers the risk dramatically right off the bat. And when they can’t be outside? “We will ask that any families who are able to do so to keep their camper(s) home on inclement weather days”. So, yeah – what they’ve “figured out” is great, but it has little application to an indoor academic setting.
I agree with the last comment- It is a shocking false equivalence to say that the camp scenario that Ms. Benzen describes could be the same as the in-school teaching scenario. She clearly stated that campers were in strict cohorts of ten campers with two counselors. With the numbers of students enrolled in our schools compared to the staff, there is absolutely no way a cohort structure of this sort could be replicated. Further, she noted that many activities were done outside. The tents that will be provided for the schools are only large enough to host mask breaks and would not offer space for multiple classes to have outdoor sessions, and certainly not in any type of inclement weather.
There should be a different plan for elementary school since the chances of kids under the age of 10 to transfer the virus are slim to none and these kids (K-4) are going to be the most affected by a virtual school year. Of course planning and adjustments are still immense, but totally doable. Even if for a fee, I am sure the majority of parents will agree. So sad no one is listening.
Yikes! This smacks of very smart people trying to rationalize sending kids to school to get them out of the house. Yes kids typically don’t get that sick in general, however any person can get it, and get it bad. Any teacher can get it, some may be more at risk than others but evidence has shown that a healthy person can get very very sick. This is not to mention the community spread risk to the rest of the population. A hybrid model is likely the best we can hope for about 2-3 weeks before cases spike and everything goes remote again until a vaccine is widely available.
As the spouse of a Needham teacher I am very concerned for her. As a Harvard staff person I have been told to stay home until January. Our staff in the office interacting with students in any capacity are going to be tested 3 times a week. Are we prepared to launch that level of testing for school teachers? I have not heard anything about districts putting testing protocols into place…
Most of what has been reported relates to fatality but not so much on the long term effects patients experience after recovering. Children may be less affected but they aren’t immune to this virus (paper published https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932e2.htm).
Either way, it would help to know there is some robust plan in place, which I don’t personally think is where we are. The tent solution makes me really nervous on the logistics side (eg what happens if child needs to go to bathroom) and overall safety. We clearly don’t know enough but neighboring schools have thoughtful and detailed plans that makes ours look JV. Not clear either whether parents or teachers feedback was solicited.
Why all the theories? Schools in Asia have been opened for months now.
surely, there are records available to see what happened and how they did it.
Bugek,
I do not think you can compare other countries with the US.
These countries including parts of Europe ( eg Germany, but not Sweden) have the virus much better under control than we do here.
In Singapore 95 percent of the population wears masks – here in the US we are at 55%.
Germany has 800 infections per day (which if you make the population comparable with factor 4 to the US) should be around 3200 for here in the US. We are actually having every single day more than 50000 new cases!!!
Therefore we have huge issues on testing capacities which then turn the concept of contact tracing absolutely impossible. This country is not doing enough to control the virus and therefore it is wide spreading.
And I unfortunately fear that we here in MA cannot stop the virus at the state borders.
250000 bikers are right now celebrating a huge 10 day long party without masks and social distancing in South Dakota.
Some of them will not see the Election Day this year and others will infect their friends and families at home whereas their home can be all over the United States.
Therefore let’s start with the basics
1) masks inside and outside
2) social distancing (even with family and friends who do not live in the same household)
3) wash your hands often
And SPEAK UP if you see friends, family or even strangers not following these easy things.
There will be 70000 additional deaths in the USA because we have people who are not willing to wear a mask.
By doing not wearing a mask all of them are actively contributing to the death of thousands of people.
Not sure what they are thinking as this should be a no brainer.
Also we do need to think not just how we can avoid of people in school getting infected but also how to avoid people not to bring the virus to school.
These days more and more people in Newton are not social distancing not wearing a mask .
It is still only a few but this will be enough to bring over time the infection rate up again.
I saw a basketball game happening about 6 weeks ago with no masks and of course no social distancing.
We need to control the virus first and then we can safely open up the economy and schools.
If we try to open the economy and schools first we will fail.
Let’s all work together to make this happen.
Thank you for everybody joining in!
Things change quickly, and compliance and procedures are different from place to place. But here’s a good summary article from Science in July for your reference:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/school-openings-across-globe-suggest-ways-keep-coronavirus-bay-despite-outbreaks
Ultimately, I believe we’ll find ourselves in a daily battle between the structure that young people and parents really benefit from, and the flexibility we need to adapt to changing disease conditions, anywhere from kids in one classroom all the way up to the district or state level.
To be geeky for a moment: in computer science, there’s a thing called a “context switch” that happens when a computer changes from one task (like reading email) to another one (like starting your sixth hour of zoom meetings for the day). For computers, families, or schools, context switches are disruptive, inefficient, and expensive. You’ve suddenly got to stop what you’re doing, pack up all your work, switch to something different, and only maybe later get back to your original task.
Sometimes you come up out ahead doing things a little less optimally (such as choosing a more virtual school option that’s more resistant to disruption even though it’s not anyone favorite ideal choice) but avoiding context switches like unexpectedly having to change between in-person and remote teaching.
Predictability is also important. Even if in-person learning starts the year, I can’t see how it works through the winter. That’s true even if there’s a vaccine. If that’s the consensus of school and public health officials as well, let us know as early as possible so we can plan. People who know they’ll have a few more months at home may choose to relocate to support their extended families, particularly over the winter holidays. Remote work gives us that flexibility.
A beautiful spring was one of the only saving graces of the early lockdown phase of the pandemic.
Pretty sure we had below average temperatures this spring. I don’t think it was beautiful, it was pretty dreary really.
TJ Maxx has figured out how to reopen. Our grocery stores and pharmacies never closed. Even liquor stores and cannabis dispensaries stayed open. The MBTA and post office are open. Our correctional facilites had to keep running. And yet Massachusetts has brought infection and death rates under control.
Teachers are just as essential to society as employees at the aforementioned businesses and facilities. Everyone who can work is being asked to take a calculated risk.
It is ridiculous to make kids stay at home with substandard learning (or none at all) while their parents shop at TJ Maxx.
Gov. Cuomo has decided to reopen all public schools in New York. If all of New York can do it, why can’t we?
I think it’s odd that this group didn’t include a public educator as part of the panel. What is the explanation for that decision?
Yes, Gov. Cuomo said schools in NY may (not must) open if infections stay low, but it is up to local NY school districts to determine how best to implement.
And it is true that stores remained open but that’s a bit of a false equivalence. Who spends six hours shopping at CVS? There are plexiglass barriers set up and footprints on the floor to keep people distanced. Are we going to install plexiglass cubicles around student desks?
I’m really concerned that we will see growing numbers as local colleges welcome students back to campus. The colleges that are opening to students are doing so with robust testing before students arrive on campus, have rented space to quarantine students, and promise repeat testing with private companies while expecting young people to behave like very mature adults and resist the temptation to – well – act like kids away at college for the first time. Time will tell but I think October could get ugly.
I do hope that the folks who created this Zoom meeting will at least feel that they made their voices heard. I watched most of it and to the extent people did not feel they had a chance for input, I think the organizers did a fine job of putting this together and making it available. And people certainly can communicate with elected officials via email. But, there’s a sharp difference between having your views heard and having people agree with them.
@michael singer when’s the last time you were in a middle school classroom? You can’t compare a 1000 sq ft classroom with 30 active teenagers to a large department store. Or a liquor store for that matter. Not even close.
I’ll predict schools are closed and shutdown again by end of November at the latest. The opening of schools going to cause significant increase in cases in Massachusetts.
My wife was a teacher, my daughter is a teacher in Harlem ( she already has had Covid). They always get the colds and flus the kids bring in even before this virus. School is a Petri dish – almost as bad as a cruise ship.
If you watch the video and read the slides Dr. Kales, an expert, makes the risk tradeoffs clear. Let me bring another notable expert into the discussion–Mark Woolhouse. He is an epidemiologist at Edinburgh University and his work on infectious diseases lead to an appointment as an officer in the British Empire.
This is from a July 21 interview of Dr. Woolhouse by the New York Times. He says that school children “are minimally involved in the epidemiology of this virus….There is increasing evidence that they rarely transmit,… For example, it is extremely difficult to find any instance anywhere in the world a single example of a child transmitting to a teacher in school. There may have been one in Australia but it is incredibly rare.”
I can’t speak for the organizers of the Zoom meeting, but I can speak for myself. Parents who want to send their kids to school have the option for full online learning. Why not allow parents to opt for full in-school learning? If we don’t want to look for extra space, we can give parents this option and still follow the safety recommendations of DESE, the American Association of Pediatricians, and CDC.
Should we take extra precautions to protect teachers? Of course. This should not be an obstacle for giving families the ability to opt in for full day school.
Mr. Pontiff permanently lost credibility with his statement:
“There are good solutions. All at-risk teachers already have waivers from returning to the classroom. Regarding non-at-risk teachers, NPS can take the same precautions as those used for hundreds of millions of workers in the US. The video covers this.
In the video, the West Suburban YMCA COO talks about how they made Camp Chickami work. If NPS can’t figure it out, they should hire her–she can figure it out!”
I’m glad that Camp Chickimi has been able to operate safely this summer – but allowing for limited outdoor summer activities at Camp Chickami, with fewer campers during rainy days, is, of course, absolutely nothing like deciding to force teachers into a building with hundreds of students. They will, at times, be standing too close together. The virus will continue to move from person to person this fall.
There are NO GOOD SOLUTIONS, and we should NOT say that there are good solutions. When the first at-risk or not-at-risk teacher gets sick from Covid-19 in one of our schools, who is going to take responsibility? The answer: nobody will take responsibiiilty. Not Mr. Pontiff – not an elected official – not a school official – not even the teacher herself who had to go back into her classroom. We are deciding to put our teachers at risk, and we are forcing many of our teachers to have to choose between being required to return to school or leaving her job. In the end, I still believe that we will need to go fully remote (even if we try to start with a hybrid approach). It’s not the ideal, of course, but the most important consideration should be the physical health of our staff and students. At some point this academic year, it seems likely that we will have an effective treatment and/or vaccine. At that point, we can feel safe returning to in-person school.
@Jeffrey Pontiff,
Regrettably I can’t post the link, but on July 30th the New York Times published a subsequent article titled “Children May Carry Corinavirus At High Levels” prompted by a JAMA article in which researchers found significantly high levels of COVID in children under 5, and levels equal to adults in ages 5-18. The article refers to other separate studies likewise looking into how much virus is carried by children.
As for transmission from children to adults, the Cherokee School District in Georgia just might provide some further data on that though the situation is still evolving. Schools opened last week and 2 teachers and 11 students, as young as first grade, tested positive already. 260 are in quarantine there.
I don’t envy parents, teachers or the school committee. No one wants to make a wrong decision and feel like they have blood on their hands if a child, teacher or parent dies or suffers long term adverse consequences from contracting COVID through our school system.
There is good scientific evidence (a study with ~60,000 students) on how children transmit CoVid19. This evidence (https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-1315_article) shows that different age children spread the virus giving COVID-19 at different rates, with 0-9 year olds spreading it LESS than adults and 10-19 year olds spreading it MORE than adults.
(Note that the NY Times article about this study, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html, admits that 0-9 year olds spread less but they downplay the HIGHER RISK of spread from 10-19 year olds, instead claiming they spread it at the same rate as adults. Don’t be fooled by the NYT; look at actual medical article on the CDC site.)
Given this science, it is irresponsible to consider reopening the high schools and middle schools for any in-person classes, though it MIGHT be reasonable to take a different approach with elementary schools.
Decisions to re-open need to be driven by science, and this science is clear that re-opening the middle and high schools will lead to significantly higher transmission rates for families in Newton. Middle schools and high schools at least should be fully remote.
Also, there is another major issue here: not just whether to reopen but if so, when to retreat. Given the certainty that there will be SOME transmission of CoVid19 from re-opening schools, I’d like to know what plan those who want to re-open schools (whether private individuals or NPS) have for what will trigger a shift to fully remote learning.
Should schools shift to remote learning when 10 percent of students and teachers are infected? Or 25 percent? Will it even be possible for schools to remain open if 25 percent or more of the students and staff are under quarantine because they were exposed? Or should a shift to fully remote learning require deaths? If so, how many deaths should we tolerate before shifting to remote learning?
I’m not being sarcastic here. There WILL be CoVid19 transmission from re-opening, so there should be a plan for what level of transmission requires a shift to remote learning.
I think that there’s already too much transmission, especially given that the trend is going up. As the parent of an NSHS student who did not thrive with online learning last spring, I know that fully remote learning is going to be rough. But I also recently attended an online funeral & memorial service for a friend’s 23-year-old son, and I’d much rather have a rough time with remote learning than have to attend another such funeral.
Re: “We are deciding to put our teachers at risk, and we are forcing many of our teachers to have to choose between being required to return to school or leaving her job.” I hope and trust that this will not be the case, that, instead, any teacher (or other staff member) who feels at risk from an in-school assignment will have the option of working remotely or in a different setting. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine that this won’t be a part of the MOA signed by the NTA and School Committee. Really, how could we expect otherwise?
+1. And to John’s point of community spread, are there very many teachers who are truly “low risk” when taking into account the people with whom they have regular contact, e.g. elderly parents, family members with asthma, hypertension, or diabetes, etc.? People are being awfully cavalier with a lot of other people’s lives here.
BTW, what is the definition of “remote” learning?
There is a big difference between a teacher providing daily 30 mins vs 5 hours of zoom. Are parents upset because they expect the same “remote” experience as we got in the spring?
How long do people propose students stay with remote learning? Until a vaccine is found and widely distributed? My understanding is there are 2 ways out of the COVID crisis – vaccine or herd immunity. Without spread we will not achieve herd immunity.
It’s possible COVID could be contained if everybody followed the sheltering instructions – but people are going out and about more. Are we willing to have a totalitarian lock down? Even places that had successful lock-downs – like Singapore – are now at CDC high risk levels. https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices/warning/coronavirus-singapore
So big question – remote learning for how long? What are the requirements for it to be safe enough to return to school?
@Bugek – as a parent of a Newton South student that is exactly my fear. The remote experience last spring was terrible. Speaking for my son’s experience only, there was no additional learning once in-school classes were canceled in March. I still haven’t seen anything concrete on what distance learning would be in the fall, so yes, my fear is the experience will be the same as spring. My preference is at least a hybrid approach, with appropriate steps to protect high risk students or teachers.
Lucia, there are two other ways to change the COVID-19 return to work or school equation. They are somewhat independent of either vaccine or herd immunity, because both of those will take time.
The first is treatment. If COVID-19 treatments were sufficient to make the disease less of a risk, that changes the risk-reward balance. Treatment is a very complex thing, though. Many people focus on mortality: the chance of dying from COVID-19. The equation is far more complicated because of the emerging evidence of acute and chronic manifestations of the disease throughout the body. There isn’t likely to be one treatment that will mitigate all the effects of COVID-19, but steps towards further reducing the fatality rate of the disease will of course be welcome.
The second step is testing. I’ve posted about this before. If reasonably accurate but not necessarily perfect tests became low cost, fast, and available, they could change everything. See here:
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/08/covid-19-test-for-public-health
We would still need to deal with risk and establish an effective, ubiquitous, and humane testing regimen. I’m not convinced as a society we’re very good at that any of those right now.
But a $1 a day test that takes minutes to give you a good sense of transmissible disease might let us become “normal with exceptions”, which many people desperately need.
@Bugek: What I mean by “remote learning” is doing all interactions with the school/teachers via internet. And I am definitely concerned about the quality of remote learning.
So far, NPS explanations of their plans have been so thin on details that it’s impossible to tell whether it will be better than last spring, though school officials promise it will be. There’s a school committee meeting tomorrow where hopefully they will finally give some real information about what hybrid and remote learning will look under the NPS plan.
@Lucia: The science needs to indicate when it’s safe to send students back. Based on what I’ve read and heard from epidemiologists, I think that won’t be until the US goes entirely into lockdown for long enough to really flatten the curve. But it doesn’t require either a vaccine or herd immunity.
Taiwan, a country of ~24 million people, had fewer than 500 CoVid19 cases and only 7 CoVId19 deaths because they instituted science-based quarantine, distancing, and masking policies starting in January. (See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Taiwan.)
@Newton Upper Falls Resident – I’m a bit confused by your statement “I think that won’t be until the US goes entirely into lockdown for long enough to really flatten the curve” What do you mean by “flatten the curve”? Which curve? From the data I have see for Massachusetts and Newton in particular, both the case numbers and death curves have not only been flattened, they have both returned to levels that we saw prior to the start of the curve back in April. Do you really mean stop all spread of the virus, and not “flatten the curve”?
@Patrick Foster,
If you look at the state COVID 19 dashboard, you will see that we have for several weeks seen a rise in the percentage of positives (1.9 to over 2.0) as well as cases (from 200 average to approximately 400 a day average). No, the numbers are not where they were but they were high enough for Gov. Baker to roll back some of the restrictions (outdoor gatherings dropped from 100 to 50, pseudo-restaurants that are really bars being shut down), and to indefinitely delay going from stage 3 step one to stage 3 step 2. Flattening the curve as I understand it, means that the RO number is below 1. So for every infected person, they are not spreading the disease to one or more people.
Herd immunity carries a great cost in both morbidity and mortality. And as the situation is fluid, we are learning more almost by the day that there can be long term effects of this disease (e.g. professional athletes diagnosed with post COVID cardiomyopathy, patients exhibiting psychiatric effects, what are the long term effects of lung damage from COVID?). We don’t have and never had a national response to this so we suffer from the patch work success or failures of individual states. And since we can’t close our borders, all the Governor can do is order individuals who come from states with a high incidence (5% positives) to report and quarantine. Not encouraging given the number of students who will be coming here within the next few weeks to start school – even with robust testing.
Herd immunity is a great concept – when we have a vaccine. Without a vaccine, it is a guarantee of a great number of deaths. I personally prefer not to experience a repeat of the great pandemic of 1919.
@Paul Levy on August 9, 2020 at 2:52 pm — Again we waste bits on a screen to dig deeper into each author’s pre-cast tribal beliefs, by way of presuming to logic others to one strongly felt view or the other. How wonderfully provincial of all us highly important people of Newton. Yet, none have proposed an alternative solution to “No! My way is better!”.
Instead, let’s accept without agreeing that both in-person classroom teaching and distance learning teaching are the right answer. That is to say, let’s identify the problem to be solved as being the monolithic decision being made by NPS-cum-School Committee, which will be inherently “the wrong public policy” for (to pick a number) half of parents and half of teachers/employees. And then, let’s focus on how to well-educate NPS-eligible students without succumbing to the false (IMHO) dichotomy.
NPS could (and should) run both systems simultaneously in parallel starting on Day 1 of back-to-school in September. Parents should be free to choose either system for each child, and NPS should refuse no one either choice. And to make the budget dollars work, parents should be asked to make as much of a financial contribution to their local school as they want .. no questions asked, no hand wringing about equity and undie influence and control and the other dead horses that get flogged.
Run NPS as something other than a cost center. Make it turn its attention to providing two educational service products and let the market (i.e., parents) make its/their own best decisions.
I believe that parents know what is best for their children. NPS should be helping parents fulfill those values. If we stop hobbling ourselves, the money can be made to work out without overrides and orher such appleals to Boogiemen.
Current course and speed, “the Commonwealth knows best” or “NPS knows best” will be sub-optimal for a significant portion of Newton households. Not good.
@ Lisap
I actually do look at the state dashboard, almost daily. As I looked at it yesterday, the % positivity rate for the past two days was 1.8%. So, the positivity rate was 1.8% on July 10th and 1.8% on August 8th, with highs of 2.2% and lows of 1.7% during that period. Overall a pretty flat curve. From my understanding, flattening the curve was never based on an R0 number. I would expect flattening the curve to mean exactly that – flattening a curve. The curves we look at during the pandemic are variable versus time. Even if you focus on R0, you would look at the curve of R0 over time, and from the data I have seen we have significantly reduced the R0 since April. The original “flatten the curve” push was to minimize hospitalizations so that ICU units would not be overwhelmed. That was an understandable strategy, and it appears to have worked. However, it now appears that to some that “flatten the curve” means bringing transmission to zero. I’m not sure that is feasible even if a vaccine is approved. For me, it’s important to learn to live with the virus as much as possible for an extended period of time. This includes finding the best way to get children back to learning, whether that be in-person classes or a remote learning experience where students are actually learning new material. I don’t see this virus magically disappearing or a vaccine being widely available anytime soon.
While far from ideal, middle schoolers and high schoolers can learn remotely. Even 3rd/4th graders.
All teachers should teach remotely.
For the elementary grades, they should open the campus and let families decide whether they want to send the kid to campus depending on their family situation. Once on campus, the children should zoom in to the teacher teaching remotely with an aide posted there to facilitate. We would have to find aides that already have the antibodies or young and healthy.
Dear Dr. Kales,
According to a recent article in The Atlantic, America has 4% of the world’s population, but a quarter of COVID 19 cases and deaths. These are estimates. However, it is well known that the greatest country on the earth is handling this pandemic in a maladroit fashion. Say what one will, but America isn’t giving COVID 19 its proper respect. I continue to be bemused….
@Patrick Foster,
Great, thoughtful post. I do agree with you that we must learn to live with this for an extended time, and that a vaccine will not be widely available anytime soon. And no, this isn’t going to magically disappear.
Based on what I have heard so far tonight, it’s time to get some recall petitions started.
Announcement from NY mayor and public schools:
Just over 700,000 out of 1.1 million public school students will take classes in school buildings for at least part of the week this fall semester, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday. Meanwhile, 264,000, or 26%, students will only attend remote classes.
About 85% of the teaching workforce, or 66,000 instructors, will teach in a blended model while 15 % of teachers have requested reasonable accommodations to work from home, according to Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza.
https://www.amny.com/education-2/roughly-700000-new-york-city-students-will-return-to-some-form-of-in-person-classes-this-fall/
@Michael Moriarty-
Recall petitions… any idea how long that will take? Might make sense to wait until school committee votes, and holds subsequent meetings to gather additional parental feedback before school starts, or maybe even wait and see how the sails unfurl. Just a thought.
Apologies- Patrick Moriarty… sorry I got your name wrong. No offense intended.
Hi Lisa. I don’t know – I would definitely hold off until the vote. I am going to call this morning regarding procedure and logistics. I would hope we could turn this thing around by some time in October.
Sweden never closed their k-6 schools during the pandemic. Children and teachers did great from the beginning. Teachers who deemed themselves at risk were able to take a leave, but that situation was rare.
They also kept their business operations open, and used social distancing etc while shopping. Those at risk quarantined.
The one outlier that is believed to have spread the virus there, was the decision to keep bars and nightlife up and running. It is from the latter that the virus is deemed to have multiplied.c. “Keep the Schools open”. That should be the default and every educator and administrator in the city should have been planning how to make this work since last Spring. By now there should be a full throated plan of action on keeping children and teachers in classrooms; there should also be a detailed virtual curriculum along with plans for teacher/parent communications in place.(if that proves necessary.
In case the worst scenario occurs and we are stuck in virtual learning: On the news last night they demonstrated a camera that is set up in a classroom. It follows the teacher as she moves from chalk board to maps, to any students in the room etc. Meanwhile children at home watching/listeniung get a full day of virtual ( but as close to actual) education. Students can hear her, Talk to her, as one class, raise hands ask questions, all students can participate as tho they were in class. It might have been called an angel camera, but not sure on that.
It appalls me that plans for both scenarios are not in place. Did someone above say, “lets just wait for the election”. Whoever that was, can you elaborate please?