In my state, you need administrative certification to hold an administrative position. (CT). In addition, we are seeing administrative positions being reduced/consolidated, not created.
I never said the majority of our teaching faculty was over 65. But there certainly are some. And some have underlying conditions that would make them less likely to want to be in group situations.
Now…having said all that…our school districts in this area are working on multiple plans with lots of moving parts. The final plan will also likely have provisions for change as it is implemented. Our state hasn’t even released the phase three final plan yet…and schools are in their own phase anyway.
This is a work in progress…and much will depend on the trends, and what each school district has the capability to actually implement.
As one last “what are you seeing” addition, med school lad told us they have a patient with Covid and sepsis who wants to leave the hospital against medical advice. Why? Drug addict who wants more drugs.
I gotta admit I feel for their loved ones. They were somebody’s son or daughter - probably others involved as well. Then add potential spread if they are allowed to leave.
We (the planet) have all the “usual” problems with this one added. (Sigh)
I agree, @thumper1 . We need to give the school leaders much more credit. They have dealt with a lot of challenges and they find ways to creatively solve them. Houston had a substantial percentage of its schools unusable for a year after massive overnight flooding. School leaders can do amazing jobs at creative solutions and can rely on the experiences of other districts as well. It may seem overwhelming to parents, but I expect plan are well underway in schools already. Rules may be waived, schools may go to split schedules, there will be many different models used.
Our school’s bus drivers all get health insurance, even PT. They’re even getting paid through this crisis.
While they’re always hiring for every new school term, they do find the drivers they need. So it’s not unreasonable to think that a job with public union perks is going to go unfilled in a struggling and poor economy.
Considering the usual disdain for public schools (K-12 and college) and preference for private schools on these forums, the above seems to be the opposite of forum conventional wisdom (at least for many parents’ own kids). COVID-19 is just one more problem added to the usual ones that they face and which many here see them as inadequately handling.
No doubt something will happen. No doubt people will complain when it does. What “it” is doesn’t matter with the latter.
At our school all sorts of possibilities are being thought of and plotted from regular reopening to total online (and many new ideas in between). Which idea will “win” at the end depends upon the next couple of months and what happens.
Some key points:
-R0 - 2.5
-40% of transmission occurs before symptom onset
-35% Asymptomatic cases
-0.4% Symptomatic case fatality ratio… (so rate would be lower if counting 35% asymptomatic cases in denominator)
Private schools will adapt as well, @ucbalumnus. Parents can choose whether that adaptation meets their needs or pursue other options. If parents were unhappy with public options before virus, I agree they may be more unhappy post virus when funding is slashed. But there will be options, public, private, online, etc. Schoolchildren across the whole world will be offered education, though they may not like it.
I Americans with Disabilities Act protections for teachers “forced to retire,” and other workers, as well as students. How much safety is legally required for those with health conditions and what is the liability for schools, colleges and workplaces?
Higher education lost something like $383M from the state budget this week. Then the governor gave them $350M in CARES money so they are only down 5%. Of course, some costs (food) are going to be way up so there may be a bigger shortfall (or a lot of rice and beans)
Ack. My dad, a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a researcher for over 50 years, sent me a link to a quack study from Ecuador about chlorine dixoide being a successful treatment for COVID-19. OMG! It took about 30 seconds to find websites debunking the nonsense. I sent one link to dad and he wrote, “I am very suspect of some of the news we’ve been getting nationally from the media, CDC and FDA. Number of doctors have been censored for trying to report their successes with some treatments. This is a study involving a 100% success rate with 100 patients. While all/most of the studies may not be valid they should be given the chance to be heard. The article references another study being done using oral doses of chlorine dioxide which includes clinical trials With patients so perhaps there will be more information on it soon.”
I sent him several more resources stating that this is all nonsense. I told him we might not want to trust the media or government, but we can trust scientists who publish studies in peer-reviewed journals. I don’t want to hear about studies unless I know they’re valid. Ack. If someone like my dad falls for crap like this, our country is in trouble.
If these stats are ballpark, then we are looking at an IFR of 0.26%, about what I would have guessed at the outset based on the Italy data that were known early on.
R0 of 2.5 is consistent with flu pandemic of 1918-19 and SARS, much lower than AIDS and of course the highly infectious diseases like measles, smallpox, polio, diphtheria, etc.
At R0 of 2.5, herd immunity would be achieved at ~50% penetration, because some fraction will not be susceptible anyway (estimated at 10% of population, likely an underestimate, so herd immunity might well attach at lower penetration, perhaps <40%)
Given that elderly (say, over 70 years old) face at least an order of magnitude greater risk than younger people (say, under 40), the risk to the overwhelming majority of people has always been vanishingly small. Even the risks to the very elderly were never catastrophic, although likely in the single digit percentage range, even in uncontrolled nursing home situations (with the oldest and sickest people).
Its pretty simple - exponential math tells the story. Economy would have tanked without shutdowns because of fear. This is not political, its math, science, and human behavior. Look at your own state - no lockdowns before April 1st- yet the movements tracked (see google tracker info linked in another post) show a vast decrease in activity. If Florida had been seeded with the amount of Covid that NY was, it would be a different story. Without testing (by far the worst government failure - of Italy and the US, of all time) , no one knew the true rate of infection and the exponential spread. If we had testing in February, many many lives and alot of economic pain would have been saved.
The problem with this virus is the asymptomatic spread (unlike other pandemics).
Worse than we thought and explains how, in combination with NO TESTING, we got to where we did in big cities. Airborne virus that spreads (in 40% of the cases) without symptoms. The stupidity of focusing on surface transmission instead of airborne is boundless. Clearly, this was spreading in Italy within hospitals, and even with low amounts of PPE, hospital workers are careful with gloves and touching and washing hands. And yet insane spread. It should have been immediately inferred that this was spreading in the air and mask wearing should have been recommended right away. Another failure.
-40% of transmission occurs before symptom onset
-35% Asymptomatic cases
This has never been about death rate, but about vast contagion, hospital overload, and the subsequent sickness and death all at once if we hadn’t tried to stop the spread (see: exponential math). We just went about it the wrong way - no testing and no airborne spread mitigation.