specifically primary and secondary school, although university is an issue as well

i put this in a comment but:

i think the school issue is difficult. if you go back to school, you will have massive increases in cases and deaths. if you go online only, you put enormous pressure on parents - schools are responsible for feeding many children and often act as daycare. if you do a “hybrid” approach you’ll get the worst of both worlds, except it’ll likely be primarily lower-income children going to school and getting sick, plus more pressure on teachers.

  • s_p_l_o_d_e [they/them,he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I teach physics in a public urban high school, and I know that there is absolutely no way public schools will be able to be "socially distanced".

    • the hallways are at best 6ft wide (5ft if you count the space lockers take up)
    • there are around 1800 students enrolled and around 100 teachers
    • my classroom is large but all of the seats are comprised of long tables designed to fit 3 students side-by-side
    • there is no central heating or air conditioning, so no possibilities for anything but the most janky of HVAC systems, let alone air filtration (fat lot of good that will do anyway when a student can just accidentally spray you with respiratory droplets when asking a question)
    • cafeteria, nope
    • physics labs, nope
    • group activities, nope
    • vast inequality in having " hybrid models " (students divided into cohorts, come to school in rotations, fridays are online, everyone wears masks) not only due to teachers/students being unable to appropriately juggle such chopped up learning, but you can basically guarantee that students with hearing disabilities will be further disadvantaged by being unable to read lips or hear teachers/students talk through muffled masks (goes double for students who are English Language Leaners)
    • not even enough textbooks to give one to each student, velocity and acceleration won't be the only vectors students encounter this year
    • and probably more that I'm forgetting

    Because of these above reasons, pretty much every union in my state/city/district is calling for at most fully online for the beginning of the year until "conditions are safer", and calls for more funding for citywide internet and technology (mainly chromebooks, ugh) guarantees for all students.

    State/City/District governments where I live have started meeting and making decisions without input from teacher's unions so we're taking part in the National Day of Resistance tomorrow (hoping it leads to a teacher's strike, but currently it looks like a letter signing/petition ugh)

    Personally I think they should postpone the school year until maybe January (students already have content retention loss from the shutdowns from March until now, better to keep them safe than hope they remember algebra, we always end up reteaching basics for the first few months anyway) and then extend it through the summer (those HVACs would come in handy during increasingly warm summers too).