Good article on re-opening schools.....

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...=pocket-newtab

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Schools do not have a simple on-off switch. To reopen schools will not just take a lot of money. Classroom layouts, buildings, policies, schedules, extracurricular activities, teacher and staff assignments, and even curricula must all be altered to minimize the risk of coronavirus transmission. Stakeholders—including teachers’ unions, scared parents, and the colleges and universities that will someday enroll a portion of the 50 million students in the nation’s public K–12 schools—all have interests, some not easily avoided or ignored by a governor. Assigning a young, healthy high-school math teacher to substitute for a second-grade reading teacher with chronic health conditions—or inviting idle recent college graduates to sign on as teaching assistants—might sound easy on paper; in reality, the regulations meant to ensure that adults in classrooms are appropriately trained and vetted to work with children are also impediments to making rapid personnel moves in a crisis. Without clear direction and substantial financial support from the state or federal agencies, the easiest course for school administrators is to say nothing. According to a survey in mid-June, 94 percent of K–12 superintendents weren’t ready to announce when or how their schools would reopen.

Two things need to happen before students can go back to school: First, Americans and their elected representatives must consciously decide that children’s needs are worth accepting some additional risk. Second, states and communities must commit the money and effort necessary to reinvent education under radically changed circumstances. Even in states where case counts have plunged, doing what’s right for children will require a massive civic mobilization.

The problem isn’t that policy makers—many of them parents too—don’t know what families are going through. It’s that, fundamentally, the way public officials thought about the consequences of this crisis was flawed. Early in the pandemic, authorities viewed the closure of schools as essential to preventing the spread of a deadly new disease. The federal government and the states have no firm plans for restarting school in August and September because they had no such plans in February and March; public officials simply didn’t classify education as a crucial form of infrastructure in need of protection.

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Don't think it's going to be as easy as Trump is saying.

Yes you don't like Trump, I do, so lets try to let him work it out, if he can't then vote for sleepy Joe.

Like Fred’s article, I keep seeing and hearing issues with opening the schools I never considered. I am convinced that there are multiple issues and problems with risks on all sides. What we are facing now with schools closed is essentially losing a year or more in the formal education process of virtually all our children’s lives. I wonder how that will be caught up. I can’t imagine the substituted home schooling and cyber learning is very effective, and when you add in the disruption to working lives children at home presents now, the toll gets higher.

I see no easy solutions.

Opening schools is not possible until we get a viable vaccine. This virus is not going away on its own and cramming kids in school buses and already over crowded classrooms is inviting a disaster like we have never seen.

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Originally Posted by Mike

Opening schools is not possible until we get a viable vaccine. This virus is not going away on its own and cramming kids in school buses and already over crowded classrooms is inviting a disaster like we have never seen.

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So is children getting “educated” from screens, Mike.

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Originally Posted by wacojoe

So is children getting “educated” from screens, Mike.

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I agree totally, but delayed education has to be better than infecting just about every family with kids and then all the collateral infections from them. Kids are never going to be responsible and social distancing will not work with them.

While I lean into Mike's idea, you do know there are the never vac people out there. So If we wait until the vaccine is available some will never take it.

I think one of the local schools is thinking of 1 day in school and 4 with a teacher/computer type of learning. Still means kid(s) are home with someone.

As for social distancing we seen the outbreaks from around Colleges, where if Joe's to be believed there are only lib kids doing the partying. While I don't think it's just that group, we know that does NOT work as it should.

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Originally Posted by FredK

...if Joe's to be believed there are only lib kids doing the partying...

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Don’t know from wth that came.:shock:

May reasonableness invade the US soon.

From this morning's briefing:

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Across the political spectrum, there have been calls for the reopening of U.S. schools this fall. And understandably so: Remote learning went very badly in the spring. An autumn without in-person school would leave students further behind and leave many parents without child care again.

The good news is that the experience in other countries suggests that it may be possible to reopen schools. Germany, Denmark and others have done so without causing big new virus outbreaks, as President Trump noted yesterday.

But those other countries have taken two steps that the U.S. has not.

One, they have first reduced the overall rate of new infections to low levels: Germany reported 35 new cases per million residents over the past week; the U.S. had almost 1,100. (The Times updates this map every day, tracking the virus around the world.)

Two, some of those other countries have allocated new money for schools, as I heard after surveying some of my Times colleagues around the world.

Hong Kong is covering the cleaning costs for its schools, Bella Huang told me. South Korea is helping schools open day care centers from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or longer, Su-Hyun Lee, who’s based in Seoul, said. Germany is subsidizing laptop purchases for low-income students, to help them combine remote and in-person learning, according to Christopher Schuetze in Berlin. And Italy has sent money to schools to pay for more teachers, student desks, masks and other equipment, Elisabetta Povoledo, a reporter in Rome, told me.

The U.S., by contrast, is suffering through by far the worst coronavirus outbreak of any affluent country, and the federal government has done little to help schools reopen.
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