@homerdog I agree. I think schools will do everything they can to get the students back on-campus even if it’s a hybrid learning approach. But I wonder how much peer pressure there will be to open when some of these schools are already announcing they’ll be on-campus for the fall. The peer pressure and blowback could go the opposite way too. Imagine how the Cal State system will be viewed for going online already if 90% of the schools go back to school in the fall and it’s successful.
It will also be interesting to see the summer melt if these schools go hybrid but no sports or social gathering. Curious to see what % take a gap year.
@“Cardinal Fang” do you think K-12 schools will close every time someone is diagnosed? Do you think schools will open and no one will get Covid? I guess I don’t get it then. I assumed people will catch it once we open up more but there will be contact tracing and a move to have those only in close contact to then monitor their temperatures. We aren’t quarantining everyone who has been anywhere near a newly diagnosed person. Anyone know for sure what the plan might be when a K-12 student is diagnosed? It really cannot be that the whole school closes.
I agree fall sports seem unlikely or will be greatly modified. Title 9 implications aside, It’s hard to see a justification for football and not women’s soccer, and then XC, etc. Perhaps some can engage in modified training but traveling to compete seems problematic at this point.
I really don’t know the details of layouts and spacing in Danish schools, but I do know, that in general, almost everything is more crowded and compact in Europe vs US.
I wasn’t comparing, anyway, I was sharing how there have been no visible increases in cases in Denmark and Germany since they opened schools there a month ago. Soon we will have Italy, Spain, France and Portugal to observe.
And that president who wrote The Atlantic essay? Does he really think college presidents are just winging it and “inviting kids back to campus”? He might want to meet some of the NESCAC presidents who seem to be working a lot of overtime meeting with public health officials and scientists to get the best and most recent info available to make the best decisions about fall. That author gave absolutely no medical evidence that having kids back on campus with all of the restrictions being considered would end in the virus taking over campus. ND, UCSD, Bowdoin, Purdue, Amherst, many others saying they are devising a plan with all of the knowledge they are gathering. They are all wrong? He also says something about it being dangerous without enough testing. Well, colleges know that and are working with local hospitals and their states to make sure there’s enough testing. They have all said that’s a key component of their plan.
Please stop trying to scare everyone. I don’t know what this president’s deal is but seems like he’s got an ax to grind.
It took a few nights , but I am caught up, it seems to me most people with skin in the game would prefer to be back on campus, schools need /want the Dorn fees, most kids want to the experience of living on campus , if they or really their family can afford it and most teachers want back in front of the classroom rather than a online screen. I think we can mostly agree on that, but what we prefer will more than likely not happen, there is no one solution bc schools have different views , needs, wants as do their customers. I still say the 2 biggest issues are dorms and having kids from all around the US show up on campus. Living on campus is a privilege not a right and to expect other adults to put themselves in major harm way may not be in the cards, you can not lock down a campus, some are small cities and they need food, supplies, folks coming in from off campus, teachers going home each night. Wearing a mask all day is no fun, my wife does it at her office and it sucks. We may not even have enough mask, PPE, testing… to do it for everyone, Keep in mind we are in a nation where many do not have food to eat and if it is one thing we have in the US it is food to spare. I get it must be hard to watch your states economy crater when there are very few cases in your state and I get it sucks watching your states economy crater when there are over 10,000 deaths in Nj where I live. Would I want to know what my kids school is gonna do for his freshmen year, hell yes, but I do not think they know and are not telling me, they are waiting until they have to decide which way they are gonna gamble, test out ideas, talk to the stakeholders ( I hope) , hopefully with more info than they have today. How NYU handles their opening vs the University of Utah is up to NUY and Utah, they do not have to be linked. They do not charge the same amount, they may not teach the same way semester vs. 1/4, co-ops…
If schools stay online the fight will shift to some saying I want a discount or I will take a gap year or I will go to CC or the local state flagship rather than the OOS LAC. Schools have to weigh a ton of things and so will we. ND opening early and Ithaca opening late or both hoping to at least. 98% of schools are hiding their bets, the Cal States schools decided what was best for them and said online in the fall only but IIRC they are one of the few who decided 100% one way or another. Everyone is gonna share some pain in this bc we have already, k-12 schools are closed and not a given to open as normal in the fall, college kids were sent home to finish up via , online, teachers were asked to teach in a way many are not used to, and the poor lunch folks… lost their jobs when the kids left Maybe in a few years things will be back to normal mostly, kinda of like it took NYC a few years to get back to mostly normal from 9/11 but to think this upcoming year will be normal is foolish.
I have read every post here and it seems in the last few days things have turned a tad bit personal with some folks, please please try to keep it on topic, I like to think we all come here for info and to get a view into others ideas. Most of us parents have big decisions to make where our kids and our money go in the fall and having as much info as possible helps that decision making process.
from Houston Chronicle regarding Gov Abbott’s k-12 reopen plan:
'Summer school must be optional for students.
Classrooms should hold no more than 11 people, unless there is space to set apart groups of 11 by 30 feet.
Desks should be spaced at least 6 feet apart.
Staff should conduct temperature checks of students at the beginning of each day, if possible.
School leaders should require students to use hand sanitizer before entering buildings, engage in 20 seconds of supervised hand-washing at least twice a day and have access to sanitizer in classrooms.
School leaders should consider having all employees wear face masks, as well as students “for whom it is developmentally appropriate.”
If a staff member or student tests positive for COVID-19, prepare to close one classroom, multiple classrooms or an entire school for two weeks, depending on the infected individual’s level of contact with other people.’
Yes, sleep away camp is ON! Many camps have shortened sessions and plan to open with the exception of camps for kids with special needs.
Who needs testing when possible temperature checks will do? Seems like there will be some test cases before return to school in the fall.
Speaking of Utah… I was at a Costco in Utah on Friday. Every, single person in the whole warehouse was wearing a mask. Everyone. Maybe they are required… not sure. Inside everyone kept them on, even children, and kept a respectful 6+ feet away from the next person. My DH was with me and couldn’t believe that there was not one person inside that was not wearing a mask. We looked! It was remarkable.
On the way home, we passed our mall. It was open! We ventured inside to take a look. Well, half the stores were closed, and it was not very busy, but was not slow either. There were mall staff cleaning everywhere. Almost everyone had on masks. A few without, but not very many. People were again very respectful of distance. The smaller stores like Foot Locker only allowed a couple of people in at a time, so there was a line to get in - 6 feet apart.
It is opening up. Agree or disagree…it is happening.
I find it remarkable that 2 months into a pandemic that killed 90,000 Americans there are actually people who consider NOT wearing masks.
OP, I live in Denver. You’re not going to find people without masks in any indoor areas. But then, most stores have a no-mask-no-service policies. Some did this because no one went inside even after our partial re-opening: customers would see others without masks, complain and leave. And I’d say a good 90% of people in central Denver are wearing them outdoors as well. Feel proud of my city.
Denver requires masks in all indoor spaces - stores, salons, restaurants for take out, doctor’s offices, hospitals, buses, trains. Not required for outside activities.
Yeah, this is just one demo of how the fact that we can’t do idiotproofing engineering is a problem. For anyone missing the point, here, temp checks won’t catch asymptomatic infection, even though those infections can spread and, in surprise moves, kill the kid anyway with a stroke or heart attack or one of those interesting inflammatory heart conditions.
I spoke with a grad student today who’s worried about going back into the lab but is starting to feel pressured to do so and is making it easier on himself mentally by thinking at least he’ll get some work done. Recalling that in an entire room of these students last spring, the only one aware that the President of the USA was being impeached was the Chinese kid, I asked him what he figured the other grad students know about this virus, and he hazarded that for most of them things stopped with “boomer remover”. He also figured that, once let into the labs, people will more or less ignore the rules unless someone stops them.
It occurred to me that this is probably true of grad students all over my university, but also that this is a population that actually does speak science and will listen to people telling them what’s happening, what’s known, what’s not known. So tomorrow I’ll get in touch with a few public health, clinical, and epidemiology people and see if we can put a video together to catch the grad students up and get them serious and, yes, appropriately scared.
It’s probably also time to dig up the grad student union people. PhD grad students are a particularly vulnerable population: it takes a lot to move a university when they die. They aren’t paying customers, their parents tend not to descend, and it’s easy to sweep them under the rug. You just don’t talk about them and people forget they ever were.
A useful exercise when you’re pushing for anything to reopen: ask yourself, Am I pushing for this because I’m tired of it being closed? Or am I pushing for it because I’ve got myself to the point of being competent to do the homework – I can read relevant scientific papers with reasonable accuracy and such, and am reasonably good at assessing quantifiable risks and recognizing unquantifiable risks – have done the homework, and am persuaded that the threat to that woman behind the register is vanishingly small?
@tuckethannock you said
“ By your lights, how many deaths and long-term disabilities are acceptable in every thousand:
elementary-school students?
secondary-school students?
university students?
teachers/staff/faculty?
parents?
…so that schools can reopen and things can look satisfactorily normal to you, and you don’t have to wear a mask, which you don’t like doing?
Is 100 deaths/disabilities per 1000 in each category too many? Ten? One?”
(Sorry I don’t know how to quote)
I would like to know what your answer to this question is.
I don’t see where @homerdog said he/she doesn’t like wearing masks. I think there was a fair question asked of whether social distancing and masks are both required, or if one can substitute for the other.
Btw, your posts come across as very hostile. Not sure if that is your intent.
It looks like Massachusetts will be good for colleges to reopen in fall too; Governor Baker unveiled his plan for reopening the state today, and higher education resumes instruction in Phase 2, at the same time as K-12 (at least, that was my understanding). Laboratories at universities can resume work in Phase 1 (Monday).
Also, not sure if this has been mentioned here already, but Ithaca College is doing the opposite of what ND, U of SC, and Rice are doing; Ithaca is reopening but pushing back the start date to October 5, and continuing the fall semester through January.
Colleges that made their decisions about their fall terms are gambling. They’re gambling that there will be sufficient number of accurate point-of-care tests and associated materials available for blanket and repetitive testing (we know testing adequacy has been repetitively promised, but promises are just promises). They’re gambling that any outbreak on campus will be small and containable (how else could a school the size of Purdue isolate students on campus – not all of whom can go home – if there’s a large outbreak?). They’re gambling any outbreak will coincide with the regular flu season (we don’t know enough about this virus to make that determination). They’re gambling that many of their students can travel home in the event of an outbreak (airlines have greatly reduced the number of flights well into the fall). Why are they making these decisions now? Because of financial considerations? Even political persuasions? The science isn’t there yet to support these decisions.
I’m conflicted. My son is attending college and he certainly wants in-person classes to resume in the fall. I hope that’d be the case, but it’s only a hope at this point.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t there just a Mother’s Day service where one person with covid infected 180 people? My school is smaller than that.
As far as k-12 is concerned, if 1 student is infected it is just a matter of time before at least several in the class are infected, a few on the bus are infected, families are infected, etc. Do I think this will happen everywhere? No, I don’t. I think some schools will have more success managing this than others. Social distancing should help, wearing masks, disinfecting regularly (my school is cleaned multiple times during the day), hand washing, no sharing of supplies etc. My school is putting hand sanitizer dispensers outside of every classroom and throughout the hallway. There is a protocol in place now for monitoring staff and students each morning, in the event we open on time. Like I said…this task will be easier in some locations than others, for many different reasons.
I see a hybrid approach. If the virus pops up within a school, the school will be closed for 2 weeks while everybody isolates and gets tested. Once isolation and testing is complete, the school can reopen.
@1NJParent It wouldn’t make sense to send students home again in the event of an outbreak; that would put older family members in danger. They are going to have to have the materials to handle an outbreak on-campus and keep students there.
This semester, when colleges shut down, they had very little time to react to a threat that they did not have the materials nor the plan to handle it. They should have sufficient time to develop a plan for fall semester (one that does not involve closing campus again) and gather materials.