I hadn’t heard they were busing kids to a hotel 
. Was there a chaperone? But I guess my kid doesn’t tell me much? According to her, DA isn’t a pressure cooker, but she says she doesn’t have hard classes. She didn’t tell me the mask mandate was lifted today, because it made no difference to her. She did send a photo of her latest negative Covid test.
@AnonMomof2 - it depends on the courses you take at any school. Also, if you come in as a repeat as an “Upper” you have an easier path IMHO. Like any of. The boarding schools, there are kids who take a tougher advanced path from the get go……very different experience. I know from having an older kid at another school.
Yep. She took an advanced path from the get go, all advanced classes available doubling up on math freshman year, science sophomore year. Definite advantage to doing Jr year twice. Not the same Jr. year stress. Although self teaching 3 AP’s during online Covid 2020 school was no piece of cake.
I believe Junior year for the Class of 2022 was very challenging - no matter where you were. From the kids I have spoken with, as well as family members at other school, it is my impression that those kids who had the chance to repeat a grade have “a leg up”.
2 Likes
For healthy teenagers Covid risk is closer to zero than one making Deerfield the most sensible, science driven school I’ve heard about.
I understand that isn’t the constant messaging teens are getting.
5 Likes
We have seen how Covid can defy preventative measures. Deerfield had the most cases once Omicron hit, and that was when they went back to masking and extensive testing. The high vaccination rate there seems to have kept symptoms mostly mild. I appreciate their response to the ever changing nature of the pandemic.
And Golfgr8- we are very thankful to have the opportunity to repeat Jr. year, most do not. Covid has taken a toll on all kids, especially High School and college kids. Thankful also that we chose Deerfield as their response to the pandemic has allowed for a much more normal experience than many other boarding schools, or even our local public school.
3 Likes
Lville covid update:
Surveillance testing will end for vaccinated individuals after a post-spring break onboarding period. Masks will likely be optional after this time as well.
1 Like
Nonetheless, having so many cases on campus that you need to bus students to outside facilities is…very disheartening.
1 Like
Disheartening how? It’s likely that almost everyone in the US will get omicron regardless of vaccination status so I don’t really see how case numbers in a young, healthy, vaccinated population is disheartening.
If you read up on other pandemics you will find that they are “over” when people start going on about their lives not when the virus is conquered. So it’s time for this to be over. Human intervention (other than a personal choice to be vaccinated and that’s personal risk) has done almost nothing to change the course of Covid. Look at the vastly different mitigation state by state but how every state has almost exactly the same Covid graphs, just at different times (NYT has it all laid out so it’s easy to see all the states together). People have been fooled into thinking that we are responsible for the virus ebb and flow but we aren’t. And for young people its a shameful way to put blame and responsibility into their shoulders.
6 Likes
Given that the original poster mentioned that that was the number of symptomatic students, I would not feel comfortable going to a school where 1/6 of the student body was sneezing and coughing, Covid or not. Getting sick and missing even one day of school is so disruptive in the fast pace of life at a boarding school that I’d rather tank it out wearing masks for a year; it’s not like our school has any other restrictions anyways.
4 Likes
My kiddo got the flu after a flu shot and strep while wearing a mask. She has been sicker than she has ever been in her life, cold after cold. Boarding schools are petri dishes. She hasn’t gotten Covid knock on wood. And she’s happier than ever, loving her school.
6 Likes
Every residential school in the country, precovid, has weeks with way more than 1/6 of kids sneezing and coughing. Post Covid is the same–my kid goes to a mask in class, test all the kids(99% vax) 2x a week etc etc and they had cold after cold and then the flu went rampant through campus just like precovid years(and flu vax mandatory–but as we all know it’s to prevent hospitalization not to prevent symptoms). Many campuses experienced the same this fall, like every fall. The difference is now a large portion of students and parents realize the fall crud is most often not “just allergies”, it’s contagious germs, so there is this new germophobia everywhere. Schools are Petri dishes and respiratory illnesses are not avoidable on a residential campus.
3 Likes
So true. When my daughter was a freshman in highschool (so long ago) she was the sickest she’d ever been. And that was years before Covid.
The difference is that with COVID they make you isolate for 5 to 10 days then its another 10 days for return to sports protocol. For an athlete, particularly one that is a Junior, that can be quite devastating.
Why would you stay out of sports 10 more days? It’s not like most teen Covid cases were very serious. Is that a state requirement?
I’m not even an athlete, I just have such crazy extracurricular commitments that those 5 days would put me incredibly behind.
And do people not know how big 1/6 is? In a class of 12 (around average), that’s two students… I’ve almost never experienced an environment where more than one student is clearly sick during class, pre or post-Covid.
Most schools I’ve heard of are following a AAP recommended return to sport protocol that takes 7 to 10 days to complete. Only then will they allow you back to full athletic activities.
Over half the dorm hall had cold/flu symptoms on OCT and NOV in waves–not at all an unusual percent given that multiple germs circulate together and first year in boarding school or first year at college is when groups of kids with different prior immunities come together. Ask any teacher in k-12–coughing and /or congested kids in waves all through fall and winter is the norm. Of course most are mild, but it is the normal school environment to have a large % with cold symptoms.
1 Like
YES, it is due to cardiac risk from covid in a not-insignificant portion of Covid cases (especially in the first waves of covid strains) in some teens and adults…although that recently got relaxed–for mild cases there is now a much quicker path to full return to sports. And the 5days out for all COVID cases per CDC will likely end in the next few weeks, as it is ending in UK and other countries soon, now that Omicron is past peak.
1 Like