After you sign your school contract, then what in the time of Covid-19?

[417WHB]

I don’t think you can stamp it out by

@Trebuchet

@FinnMom I am very sympathetic here. It would also of course be tough to even do the virtual classes if a student is in a substantially different time zone.

If major league baseball can consider play in May --in part thanks to little risk for young athletes, surely teens in September-- who, yes, can be carriers but are not really at risk shouldn’t be affected. Quarantine the schools - they are boarding schools after all - and get on with it. A problem for day students but manageable.

Otherwise the logistic holds “no in person school til there is a vaccine” and it’s not just the first half of next year at risk.

I think boarding schools face somewhat unique problems from the rest. They have kids coming from all over the world. They can’t really be quarantined because you have faculty (who often have spouses working elsewhere and young children in public schools) and staff (both custodial and cafeteria staff is quite low-paying and living elsewhere being exposed to anything at anytime), plus the day students, and then you have exposure every time students leave campus. To quarantine them, you’d have to kill sports (no games anywhere), any debate or robotics or whatever competitions, and would actually have to ban kids from leaving campus, which would be huge change because at least at our school most kids go at least into town every weekend, and a lot go elsewhere (club team practices/games, family, musical training etc.). I don’t think you can do a workable quarantine at all (the staff is the least manageable piece, as you can see with the many infections at otherwise quarantined nursing homes and other eldercare facilities). And with the communal living and shared bathroom facilities, once virus is there it will spread like wildfire.

IMO, You have to accept that there is a possibility someone brings the virus to campus, even if you take all reasonable precautions. So the question is, what is your plan if/when that happens? Unlike at public school, you can’t just send the kid home for parents to take care of, and unlike with college, you are dealing with minors who are not old enough to be left alone to self isolate. So you have to have the facilities and staff and be willing to handle taking care of sick kids, and also facilities to isolate and monitor any students who were exposed. Now if you are lucky most of the kids would be local boarders and you could make the call to parents to take the kid home (much like they do with the flu) but some of the kids live across the country or abroad and you cannot take a sick child on the plane, so this is not an option even if they parents were willing to come get the child. The school has to have a viable plan to deal with positive cases, locally whether on or off campus. And communicate it to parents and the entire community before the year starts.