Is your county's school reopening a mess like mine?

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Pretty much all the protocols from school last year are still in place, but the district had a crappy superintendent who switched us to a new software program for scheduling/grading and it stunk. I think he either got some money from them or had a friend who ran the business, IMO. We have a new super now, and she switched us back to the old system but it is taking longer to switch over all the data (grades from last year, IEPS, etc) so there's nothing in there for the teachers to work with yet. If it's not one thing, it's another!

Well goodness that's a total cluster for sure

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I believe staffing comes in to play with this. Teachers weren’t hired to teach both in person and remote at the same time. They have enough in their plates as it is.

That's true. I actually don't have the details for the school district my house is in that decided to create their own online school for this year for students to enroll in but it sounds like some of the teachers moved to the online school as opposed to be responsible for both but again I don't have all the details on that one. I know the other district that did add online hooked up with an established online academy and the teachers are from that online academy not local teachers.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think we're likely to see another year of instructional hours mandates being relaxed/waived at the state level.

It's a good medium but for goodness sake school has already started in my state. That sort of decision, if it were to be made, should have already been made at the governor level before school started. Last year the governor said school couldn't start til September 1st (though some districts around the state did it anyways) due to covid cases, no such thing this year. Maybe they'll get through part of the school year and just throw up their hands and do it but it takes an executive order to do in my state, and at least here the governor's powers are limited.

 

[jodifla]

Holy smokes! Schools without AC in almost 100 degrees heat!! Why aren't parents protesting THAT?

 

[brockash]

No air conditioning? Why wouldn't you have air conditioning?

There are lots of schools with no ac...lots of older schools just don't. My daughter's current elementary school is 2 story and no ac.

 

[HeatherC]

Holy smokes! Schools without AC in almost 100 degrees heat!! Why aren't parents protesting THAT?

I would literally have to quit. I couldn’t do it. I don’t see how teachers can teach or students even concentrate and learn in that oppressive heat. My heart goes out to all of them.

 

[Disneyfan754321]

My girls are in their junior year. Their school started last Wednesday with close to 5000 students. They are required to wear mask. If vaccinated don’t need to quarantine if they don’t have symptoms.
If they need to quarantine, there is a special attendance code and they will have a special teams link for work.

If the cross country runs in pods they could be with other cross country athletes for 4-6 miles.

My girls school district was set to go mask optional till delta. Instead mask are mandated. When our governor said can’t do a mask mandate, our district said nope we are having one for the safety of teachers, students and staff, opt our for medical or IEP/504. They also were starting legal action since the government is taking away funding
at least all of the souther Florida districts are standing up to the governor ignoring everyone’s health while making money off treatments
School boards in Florida are willing to challenge the governor

They are now, but it did not start that way. We are homeschooling this year, I was hoping to let my son start some HS classes this year but I'm going to put that off for this semester.

 

[Colleen27]

No air conditioning? Why wouldn't you have air conditioning?

Our schools don't have air conditioning because I live in Michigan. Public schools can't start until after Labor Day (state law), private schools usually only start a week or so earlier, and we get out in mid-June. It is rare that we have air conditioning weather during our school year.

Also, the schools around me all have boiler heat so there's no efficient way to add a/c for the building. Adding window units takes away windows that can be opened, and we have a lot more windows-open weather days than wishing-for-a/c days. Plus they're costly to run and have to be installed, uninstalled and stored every year.

 

[RogueX]

I'm in MA, in a densely populated, small suburb. I have a Jr and an incoming Freshman in HS and we start next week. I don't think it will be a mess and there seems to be a plan, and it would be tough to be worse than last year, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

As other MA posters have mentioned, MA Department of Elementary and Secondary Ed has issued a mask mandate in k-12 until 10/1, and then districts can re-assess based on vaccination rates (and maybe community spread, I would imagine). According to the Boston Globe (via MA DOH), 92% of kids 16-19 and 85% of kids 12-15 in my town are vaccinated (including my kids). That seems high to me and it's not on the town website, which has a slightly lower overall rate for the town, but that number is not broken down by age so I'm not sure. Either way, it's fairly high. Hopefully the high vaccination rates with the older kids will help protect kids and staff that are unable to get vaccinated.

Last year, the school website had a covid dashboard. We had a lot of outbreaks and school disruption, so I'm hoping they have that again as it was helpful in keeping tabs on things. A lot of outbreaks were worsened by people not complying with mitigation strategies - mostly not quarantining, although some people refused to cooperate with contact tracing as well. I imagine the school with continue with contact tracing efforts, but they haven't communicated anything regarding that. At the end of last year, students could choose to submit their vaccination information so that they could avoid quarantine if there was a close contact identified (unless symptomatic). I'm hoping that continues, although that may depend on how things go with this variant and community spread. I am bewildered when I read about districts that don't have any basic mitigation policies in place and I really feel for teachers and families.

A few weeks back, the district had said masks would be optional for high school students. I am disheartened that conditions have changed to warrant the change in policy, but I understand it and I think it makes sense to start more restrictive and then re-assess. I don't seem to have the crushing anxiety that I had last year, more of a simmering resentment, but trying to work through that as I find it counterproductive. Hoping things go as smoothly as possible for everybody

Another one here from MA. My high schooler starts after labor day and apparently at a school committee meeting there were some passionate debates for and against masks. My daughter has no problem wearing a mask regardless of a mandate.

I did point out to my doctor though at a recent appointment when we discussed people upset about masks. He chuckled when I mentioned how fast people would be to put on anything if Ebola were to join the Covid party.

 

[Kestryl]

I think we're likely to see another year of instructional hours mandates being relaxed/waived at the state level. I don't see how districts will be able to add enough make-up days to deal with the high likelihood of closures, nor do I see any way ordinary attendance policies (which are supposedly also back in effect) can be enforced in the absence of virtual learning as an equally valid option for kids/classes/buildings that are under quarantine.

We do still have virtual learning here but it is being treated as a separate school. Families had to choose it and commit to it for the entire academic year, and it isn't going to be made available to students on a temporary basis. So kids who are quarantined are just absent (and if they comply with CDC guidance, they're going to exceed the district absence limit in a single incident) with no uniform policy on how they could access their work to keep up while they're out.

I really hope so. I don’t have a ton of faith in the state leadership right now.

No air conditioning? Why wouldn't you have air conditioning?

On the flip side, when I moved from Michigan to Tennessee, I got really confused how students were wearing hoodies and pants to school in September. Totally forgot the schools down here have AC!

 

[jodifla]

Our schools don't have air conditioning because I live in Michigan. Public schools can't start until after Labor Day (state law), private schools usually only start a week or so earlier, and we get out in mid-June. It is rare that we have air conditioning weather during our school year.

Also, the schools around me all have boiler heat so there's no efficient way to add a/c for the building. Adding window units takes away windows that can be opened, and we have a lot more windows-open weather days than wishing-for-a/c days. Plus they're costly to run and have to be installed, uninstalled and stored every year.

I am also in Michigan, and all of my son's schools but his preschool had AC.

 

[jodifla]

Our county health department just mandated masks. So that took much of the pressure off all the school boards here. They have cover now. And it's tied to positivity levels. Once we are in a moderate zone again the mandate comes off.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Our county health department just mandated masks. So that took much of the pressure off all the school boards here. They have cover now. And it's tied to positivity levels. Once we are in a moderate zone again the mandate comes off.

IMO I don't think mask mandates are good to follow on the positivity metric most especially for schools. You can change what goes into the metric to get a different number so you do have to pay attention to what the numbers comprise of and positivity changes all the time, a low positivity can easily go up (and is especially true with the Delta variant) after being lower.

With our county's mandate (which applied only to up to 6th grade but also higher grades if there are 6th graders also in the buildings but school districts ended up mostly doing all students) it's in effect until May 31st, 2022. They could decide to reduce that order I'm sure but right now it sets up a good consistent measure and one that won't frustrate parents and staff members with a constant up and down that covid has shown us to be the case.