The following post was not written by me but contains some significant “food for thought”. This is actually a post that originated from a teacher friend of mine in Virginia. She writes: Permission to share has been granted from the author, as long as credit is given...
From Joe Morice, daughters in 8th & 10th grade in our Centreville Pyramid: To our fellow FCPS families, this is it gang, 5 days until the 2 days in school vs. 100% virtual decision. Let’s talk it out, in my traditional mammoth TL/DR form. Like all of you, I’ve seen my feed become a flood of anxiety and faux expertise. You’ll get no presumption of expertise here. This is how I am looking at and considering this issue and the positions people have taken in my feed and in the hundred or so FCPS discussion groups that have popped up. The lead comments in quotes are taken directly from my feed and those boards. Sometimes I try to rationalize them. Sometimes I’m just punching back at the void https://docs.google.com/document/d/12-YNJjo9Ilp3lfAqZe926iOpdysvOtnB3ZqGgw8SJck/edit?fbclid=IwAR21aDCj7xjzSc4WR61si9HKFcVOE5rEYbOjtO4eIUlceGqmIxIWnYf1iQY
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In March, our entire family became sick with COVID-like symptoms. Our oldest son started with fever, sore throat, nausea, headache and mild cough. Within 48 hours, all 5 of us were sick. Our 8 year old was last to start with symptoms and his case was the most mild of all of ours. If it hadn’t been for the entire family being sick and the threat of COVID, I wouldn’t have even called the pediatrician. We waited until day 7 to have him tested. He was the only one of us still sick. He tested negative for both flu and COVID. We figured it was just a case of bad luck and a nasty virus and waited for it to pass. On day 14, I urged our 8 year old to come for a walk with me. He’d been in bed for two weeks and I thought he’d feel better if he got up and started moving a little. We got 3 blocks into our walk and my soccer playing, American ninja loving, constantly moving boy asked to go home because he was tired. He wasn’t even sure if he could make it the 3 blocks back to the house. He had to sit on the curb. When we did get home, I called the pediatrician again. Today is July 10th and it marks day 108 for our boy. He runs a fever every day. We have blackout curtains and extra blankets hung on his windows because sometimes his head hurts so bad that any splinter of light feels like a knife. He has lost 10 pounds and now takes medication to keep his appetite up and drinks Orgain for calories. He has muscle pain and aches. He feels like he will pass out if we try a bike ride or walk on a trail near our house. He climbs in the pool with his brothers for a few minutes but then gets chills and crawls back under the blankets in his room until he’s warm again. He gets nauseous being in the car for any duration. He’s exhausted. All of the time. But he has trouble sleeping because he feels so awful. He’s 8 and doesn’t have enough energy to play outside, ride his bike, read a book or stand up for too long. He’s been through an onslaught of tests, lab work and procedures to rule out pretty much anything that could possibly cause these symptoms for this long. Every single test has come back normal. His chest xray gave the only clue- evidence of persistent asthma which we’ve now been told is most likely signs of COVID since he doesn’t have, or has never had asthma. He barely had a cough. I write this because I’m sick of hearing people complain about wearing a mask or rattle off a talking point about children not being effected by COVID. It’s true that children are not dying at a high rate. What’s not true is that children have not died. And what is also categorically false is that children are not effected. I’m seeing it with my own eyes. We don’t know if our son’s illness will last another week or if this is now a chronic condition. No one can tell us. No one has the answers. The truth is, we don’t know what this disease does yet. We have only just begun to understand how COVID-19 acts in the early phases. We are clueless as to what this virus does to our bodies, and our children’s bodies in the long run. So, please. Stay home if you’re able. Don’t go to Disney when it opens. Don’t throw birthday parties and invite all the friends. Don’t follow the advice of politicians. Wear a freaking mask. These are not hard things. You can do it. I believe in you. There’s an 8 year old in Florida that has been in bed for 108 days and he believes in you too. 🍏For those of you saying "If essential workers can work, teachers can work, and our kids need to be in school!" I get where you're coming from. I want you to imagine the first day of school.
🍏Kids will get on the bus. They will be packed together, because my district (like many) has ruled that it is too expensive and time-consuming to do staggered bussing. They will be excited to see their friends, and they will talk, share items, and do all the things they missed doing on the bus, and this will be great for their emotional health. Eventually some of them will take off their masks, because one or two kids didn't come with one to begin with, and who's scared of this thing anyway? And so, before 10am, you have had your first super-spreader event in the district. No, the kids may not all get sick, but a few of them will. A few of those will die, as we've seen in news reports. They probably won't be your child, so this does not matter to you. It is a sacrifice you were prepared to make. 🍏Kids will enter school. If this is done in a staggered manner, we will lose significant instructional time. Kids will sit at their desks, and if they are in a Title I school like mine where most parents can not afford to stay home and support kids during Digital Learning, we will have at least 80% of the population in the classroom. A classroom with truly socially distanced desks can seat about 8 people. Realistically, we will have 25-30 children packed together. Some of them will play with their masks or, if their parents are anti-mask, they will refuse to have those masks on. 🍏A teacher will now have to teach in a classroom where they are no longer allowed to have group activities, so vital for young learners, unless they are in a contactless digital format. Hopefully the school will have enough computers for those students without their own devices. Hopefully the teacher will be able to maneuver quickly enough to stop students from Snapchatting their friends, or logging on to any number of non-educational websites, so that they can do their lesson. A teacher will also have to choose between instructing effectively and protecting themselves and the people they may care for at home. Proximity is key to classroom management. Social distancing is not compatible with it. Students who do not wear masks may see reduced teacher attention, because again, teachers are being asked to choose between their health and their effectiveness. 🍏Lunchtime arrives. Students have to take their masks off to eat. In my district, we will be eating in classrooms, and my school's windows do not open. Staggered lunches do not help once the masks are off and students are eating and talking and, because they miss their friends, clustering together. A teacher will have to choose between eating, separating students, and their health. 🍏Time to change classes. If students are the ones transitioning, instead of a teacher rotating between classrooms, we lose valuable instructional time to sanitizing. Do we have enough wipes and sprays to sanitize four or more times a day? Hopefully you donated some, because now a teacher may have to choose between their finances and *everyone's* health. 🍏Novel study time. Do we have enough books for 100+ middle schoolers? Don't make me laugh. Every student will need to sanitize before and after touching a book. You won't pay for ebooks and you won't pay for physical books, but we hope you will donate hand sanitizer. 🍏Chorus. Orchestra. Band. These teachers are talking about reducing class sizes to 80+. *Reducing* them. For their safety. 🍏Time to go home. Students get on the bus again. A second super-spreader event occurs across the district. 🍏Now, let's talk about how things go after Day 1: A child tests positive for COVID-19. The parents fear retaliation from peers and do not report it to the school; they just keep their child at home and hope it blows over. A child is sick with fever. A parent gives them Tylenol and sends them to school. A child who interacted with the child whose parents did not report tests positive and parents report this. Students and teachers that interacted with the child have to quarantine for 14 days. That's 14 days of the Digital Learning we were trying to avoid in the first place. In middle school, if a teacher tests positive, that will mean 100+ kids are staying home with parents, and all of their teachers, too. This will happen again and again. All of the promised consistency, routine, structure, everything you wanted for your children, is gone, and you are not prepared to help them with DL. A child in a community with high COVID-19 exposure becomes sick with MIS-C. More children contract MIS-C. This was a sacrifice you did not realize you were making, but it does not affect your child, so it does not concern you. 🍏Now for the community spread. The virus will find many opportunities to flourish in a school, no matter how carefully the teachers and staff strive to curb it. The resources simply are not being given to them. Children will spread the virus to parents, siblings, grandparents (especially in multigenerational homes), and inevitably, people who shop and work outside of their homes. The spike we see now, that began in June, will pale in comparison to what follows. 🍏And some teachers, nurses, custodians, and principals will die. But that's a footnote to you; what about the learning outcomes? The academic gains? Well? What will those be? --Ellison Mitchell LAUSD educators clearly want to get back into schools with their students, but the underlying question at every step must be: Given broader societal conditions, how do we open physical schools in a way that ensures that the benefits outweigh the risks, especially for our most vulnerable students and school communities? The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States underscores the deep equity and justice challenges arising from our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society. Unlike other countries that recognize protecting lives is the key to protecting livelihoods, the United States has chosen to prioritize profits over people. The Trump administration’s attempt to force people to return to work on a large scale depends on restarting physical schools so parents have childcare.a In Los Angeles, this means increasing risk especially in Black and Brown working communities, where people are more likely to have “essential” jobs, insufficient health care, higher levels of preexisting health conditions, and to live in crowded housing.1 Meanwhile, the rewards of economic recovery accrue largely to white and well-off communities that have largely been shielded from the worst of the pandemic’s effects. Vulnerable students — already facing hurdles such as structural racism, poverty, homelessness, immigration documentation issues, learning and health disabilities, and limited technology access — were disproportionately negatively impacted by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s shift to crisis distance learning. 2 Educators know better than most the critical role that schools play in children’s lives, supporting not just their educational lives but their social and physical development. But until a vaccine or cure is available, starting school without policies in place to mitigate viral spread and provide additional student supports will almost certainly compound the pandemic’s outsize trauma on those students and their families. This document outlines the equity lens that we must use to view both today’s emergency and tomorrow’s recovery. First, we ask, Who is suffering the most, and why? Next, we outline current best practices that must be in place to ensure that our most vulnerable communities are helped, not hurt, by the restart of schools. Throughout, results from UTLA member surveys and the first round of parent surveys collected by UTLA will provide insight into the deeply felt concerns that are impacting educators, students, and their families. Finally, we discuss how funding must be drastically improved if schools are to start safely and equitably. In March, when it was clear that the deadly virus was spreading in the community, UTLA educators led the way in calling for LAUSD to save lives by shutting down schools. Today, we are calling on politicians to demonstrate their commitment to saving lives by fully funding the safe and equitable start of school. https://mcusercontent.com/e51f39a03d845e2cafae71eff/files/ab3919ac-9d71-43fe-9dbc-2dbc893baf57/ReopeningSchoolsLayoutFINALDISTROV2.pdf “Educators long to be back in our schools and classrooms. We know that distance learning creates real challenges, but science — not politics or the stock market — must determine when schools restart,” Myart-Cruz said. “We should be using this time to make distance learning better for all, including educators, parents and students.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-09/los-angeles-teachers-union-calls-for-delay-reopening?fbclid=IwAR0aASS6CWNzucZYfqZhQBVZ4FCZdAv2YEi0-HqBnNK3vM3hWNfv96QNCNw
"The wearing of face coverings should be encouraged by our leaders, not demonized. In the wake of the Governor’s recent directive, we should also have confidence that the new statewide requirement will be enforced locally– consistently and uniformly." https://voiceofoc.org/2020/06/newman-oc-leaders-must-support-medical-experts-not-denigrate-them-or-sit-on-the-sidelines/?fbclid=IwAR0krBMlrJm7zYuLCM6L8pFbdV105s-WcVHXcF1hYaLdxCs1YPARJ4fLQ9Y |