School Buildings are Reopening but Where’s the Data? – Parents United for Public Education

School Buildings are Reopening but Where’s the Data? – Parents United for Public Education

School Buildings are Reopening but Where’s the Data?

The first 53 school buildings are reopening tomorrow for children for the first time in almost a year, despite ongoing concerns about the amount of information and up to date data that is not publicly available for parents to review. Reports on social media of filthy and mold-covered vents and classrooms show that many of the conditions of reopening have not been met.

We’re glad that the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers has provided public information about their “vetting” process, such as this excerpt that shows the criteria used to “clear” classrooms and schools for occupancy by students:

Screenshot of PFT document outlining procedures for “clearing” rooms for re-occupancy with added annotation. Source link: https://www.pft.org/sites/default/files/reoccupancyprocedure.pdf

However, we have not seen clear, up to date evidence that the PFT’s requirements CONTINUE READING: School Buildings are Reopening but Where’s the Data? – Parents United for Public Education

NANCY BAILEY: Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

It has become a cruel joke. Shut everything down! Stay home! Cancel the holidays! Close everything! But open schools!

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious diseases expert, told Americans to stay home throughout the holiday season, avoid groups, wash hands, wear masks, and stay socially distanced. There’s a horrific death count in case you harbor doubts.

But there’s a gap between what Dr. Fauci and the medical community recommend to the public and what he and they think is A-O.K. for America’s schoolchildren and teachers. Remember back in July when Dr. Fauci told teachers they would be a part of a learning curve experiment.

Dr. Leana Wen, M.D., seems to understand that schools are no match for Covid-19 and should be closed throughout the winter. Why are other doctors, CONTINUE READING: Why Are Schools Opening When Covid-19 is Surging?

The Debate About School Safety Is No Longer Relevant - The Atlantic

The Debate About School Safety Is No Longer Relevant - The Atlantic

The Debate About School Safety Is No Longer Relevant

Even in places where schools want to reopen, too many teachers are sick or quarantining for classrooms to operate, and substitutes cannot fill the void.

For months, the debate about whether to open schools has centered on one question: Are schools safe? The only trouble is, this hardly matters anymore. Except in the few remaining regions with modest rates of viral spread, the transmission risk from and within schools is now beside the point. So many teachers and staff members are sick, quarantining, or have stepped down that many schools trying to remain open or to reopen just do not have the personnel available to do so well.

The examples are countless. Littleton Public Schools in Colorado, in announcingtheir shift to remote learning, stated that one of their primary reasons for doing so was that “keeping enough staff in schools for supervision is becoming a real concern. It is especially difficult, and impossible on some days, to have enough licensed teachers in classrooms delivering quality instruction.” Jeannine Nota-Masse, the superintendent of Rhode Island’s second-largest school district, was quoted in a local news story as saying, “Now you have students in the building and not enough adults to cover for the adults that are home for various reasons.” One elementary school near Milwaukee lacked 10 teachers on a recent day; Metro Nashville Public Schools has, according to The Tennessean, “had more than 200 teachers or staff members in quarantine or self-isolation each week since the end of October.” In a Reuters survey of 217 districts across 30 states, about half reported significant staffing issues—and this was before Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the arrival of deep winter.

[Nina Schwalbe: Why are we closing schools?]

The reason for the shortages isn’t intransigent teachers’ unions or unreasonable fear; it’s simply that the virus is too widely spread. Upwards of 200,000 new COVID-19 cases are reported most days, and Anthony Fauci recently warned that January numbers will likely look even bleaker. The new viral variant, if it takes  CONTINUE READING: The Debate About School Safety Is No Longer Relevant - The Atlantic

Dr.Leana S. Wen | Most schools should close and stay closed through winter - The Washington Post

Opinion | Most schools should close and stay closed through winter - The Washington Post

Most schools should close and stay closed through winter

In recent weeks, prominent economists, public health experts and commentators have argued that schools shouldn’t be closing because they aren’t major contributors to the surge in covid-19 cases.

I disagree. With much of the United States engulfed in exponential virus spread and many hospitals already overwhelmed, most schools should close and stay closed through the winter.

Those who say schools should remain open point out that bars and restaurants have led to far more documented infections than schools. They point out, rightly, that we as a society set the wrong priorities in the summer. If we had kept high-risk settings closed and followed mitigation measures such as universal mask-wearing, the infection rate could be low enough for schools to safely open.

That didn’t happen. As a result, about 1.5 percent of Americans are currently infected with coronavirus. In some areas, in a room of 20 people, there is a nearly 1-in-4 chance that someone has covid-19. The high rates of community spread impact children as well; the American Academy of Pediatrics reported on Tuesday that nearly 1.2 million children have been diagnosed with covid-19, constituting nearly 12 percent of total infections. During the last week for which data are available, the week ending Nov. 19, there were more than 144,000 new cases of covid-19 in children, by far the highest weekly increase since the pandemic began.

Imagine you’re a teacher who works in a poorly ventilated classroom for multiple hours a day. It’s challenging to keep physical distancing, and there’s a high likelihood that one of your students has the coronavirus and could transmit it to you. Being told that school transmission isn’t the main driver of community spread is hardly reassuring when you’re the one shouldering the individual risk. One in 4 teachers are older or have chronic health conditions that predispose them to serious illness if they contract covid-19. Others might have household members for whom exposure is more likely to result in hospitalization or death.

It’s important to note that many proponents of keeping schools open cite studies that show low risk of transmission when effective mitigation methods are put in place. Some well-resourced schools have implemented measures including decreased classroom capacity, improved ventilation and strictly enforced mask-wearing. Some have even moved entire classes outdoors. With all these measures, students, teachers and staff have a much-reduced risk of acquiring covid-19. But most schools lack the resources to implement such changes.

Why haven’t there been more cases in schools if many schools haven’t implemented all those safety measures? A few things are possible. Maybe there have been more infections than we know about. Children with covid-19 tend to be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. Testing is limited, and it’s hard for parents to find testing sites for younger children. Parents wishing to keep their kids in school might not want to know the result; some mothers are reportedly forming pacts to not test their kids.

CONTINUE READING: Opinion | Most schools should close and stay closed through winter - The Washington Post

Close Connecticut’s Schools Now | Real Learning CT

Close Connecticut’s Schools Now | Real Learning CT

Close Connecticut’s Schools Now

Stephen Singer, a teacher, calls on Connecticut to close its schools to save the lives of teachers and to keep students and their families safe.

Hundreds of teachers have died from Covid-19.
More than 1 million children have been diagnosed with the disease.
Yet a bipartisan group of seven state Governors said in a joint statement Thursday that in-person schools are safe even when community transmission rates are high.
Safe – despite hundreds of preventable deaths of school employees.
Safe – despite mass outbreaks among students.
Safe – despite quarantines, staffing shortages, longterm illnesses and mounting uncertainty about the longterm effects of the disease on children and adults.
State Governors must have a different definition of safety than the rest of us.
The message was signed by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, Delaware CONTINUE READING:  Close Connecticut’s Schools Now | Real Learning CT

Teachers Stage Social Distance Sick Out - LA Progressive

Teachers Stage Social Distance Sick Out - LA Progressive

Teachers Stage Social Distance Sick Out

Today 915 of the 1,000 union educators in Brookline, Massachusetts, took part in a sickout demanding a six-foot distance between people in classrooms.

The district previously agreed to this safety requirement in a memorandum of understanding. But now it wants to allow the superintendent to change it.

“When they tried to give the superintendent unilateral control to change the distance, they tore up the MOU,” said Brookline Educators Union President Jessica Wender-Shubow.

She and the union vice president have already been served with papers for supporting the sickout. Strikes by public sector workers are illegal in Massachusetts.

Educators were already unhappy with the district for “faking it” on safety and rushing a return to buildings, Wender-Shubow said. “We started by telling the truth, exposing the lack of compliance everywhere.”

As some schools reopened on hybrid models, educators wrote down every example of non-compliance with safety measures, and sent more than 100 letters to the school committee (equivalent to a school board). Some educators read their letters aloud at a school committee meeting.

Ninth-Grade Teachers Led

One building in particular organized and led the way. In mid-October, educators who work with ninth-grade students, who are in their own building, were suddenly given an earlier date to return to in-person learning under the hybrid model.

Educators were already unhappy with the district for “faking it” on safety and rushing a return to buildings, Wender-Shubow said.

Members in that building started a petition campaign, demanding a one-week delay in the hybrid start date. They got more than 90 percent of members to sign before presenting the petition to the school committee. They won the delay.

But then the district announced that the hybrid model for ninth-graders, which has half of the students face to face Monday-Tuesday and the other half face to CONTINUE READING: Teachers Stage Social Distance Sick Out - LA Progressive

Educator Speaks Out Against Unsafe Conditions, Lack Of Resources - PopularResistance.Org

Educator Speaks Out Against Unsafe Conditions, Lack Of Resources - PopularResistance.Org

EDUCATOR SPEAKS OUT AGAINST UNSAFE CONDITIONS, LACK OF RESOURCES

Big Education Ape: I Just Want to Teach, but My District Won’t Let Me Do it Safely | gadflyonthewallblog - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/11/i-just-want-to-teach-but-my-district.html

A middle school educator in Knoxville, Tennessee recently came forward to speak with the World Socialist Web Site about the unsafe conditions at her school. Knox County currently has nearly 13,000 cases of COVID-19 and 92 deaths, making it the third most affected county in the state, behind Shelby (Memphis) and Davidson (Nashville) counties.

With the abandonment of even the most rudimentary safety measures at schools and other workplaces, cases in Tennessee have continued to surge in recent months. October has been the state’s deadliest month of the pandemic, with over 700 succumbing to the virus. The numbers of daily new cases and deaths have set state records in the past week, with a record 3,606 new cases and 65 deaths on October 23.

The Knox County school district employs some 8,000 workers and serves approximately 60,000 students, the majority of whom are from low-income and working class families. According to the United States Census Bureau, 13.2 percent of the county’s residents live in poverty.

The teacher, who wished to remain anonymous to prevent retaliation, described the chaos leading up to the district’s reopening in late August: “Before schools reopened, parents had one week to decide if their kids would be remote or in-person. Superintendent Bob Thomas did not release a plan until after the parents had decided, forcing them to decide before they had the facts.

“The plan requires everyone to wear a mask and teachers have to clean between classes. Everyone is getting their temperature checked before entering the building and teachers also have to fill out a self-assessment.

“We are given a spray to clean with and at first I was told that I need to let it sit CONTINUE READING: Educator Speaks Out Against Unsafe Conditions, Lack Of Resources - PopularResistance.Org

I Just Want to Teach, but My District Won’t Let Me Do it Safely | gadflyonthewallblog

I Just Want to Teach, but My District Won’t Let Me Do it Safely | gadflyonthewallblog

I Just Want to Teach, but My District Won’t Let Me Do it Safely

I love teaching.

But I can’t do it if I’m dead.

Therein lies the back to school nightmare I’ve been living through for most of the summer and fall.

The Coronavirus pandemic has affected people unequally.

Folks like me with pre-existing conditions are at greater risk from the virus than others.

I have heart disease and Crohn’s Disease.

My doctors tell me that I am more CONTINUE READING: I Just Want to Teach, but My District Won’t Let Me Do it Safely | gadflyonthewallblog

Are Sacramento County public schools ready to reopen?

Are Sacramento County public schools ready to reopen?

Are Sacramento public schools ready to reopen? Some unions say no

County approved in-person instruction with modifications

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

Sacramento County amended its public health guidance Tuesday allowing for in-person instruction at all grade level schools with COVID-19 modifications.

Following the state's multi-tier reopening system, the county moved from Purple -- the most restrictive set of reopening guidelines -- to Red Tier on Sept. 29 and has maintained its standing on that tier.

If a county retains Red Tier for two consecutive weeks, it can resume in-person instruction with the condition of following guidelines for social distancing and face coverings. Sacramento County has been in the less restrictive Red Tier for two weeks.

However, the announcement comes as three of the largest teachers’ unions in the district released a joint letter asking to not reopen schools for the remainder of the year.

Teachers unions representing Sacramento City Unified, Natomas Unified and Twin Rivers Unified believe the earliest schools can safely reopen is January.

“January gives us sort of some breathing room, right? But it’s not a hard deadline,” David Fisher with the Sacramento City Teachers Association said. “We have seen in other communities that have opened up and oftentimes had to close and open. We don’t want the yo-yo effect.”

The three districts combined have roughly 80,000 students in the county.

“We want to make sure that we can open schools safely and that we have equity and that we do not have disparities in the Natomas District,” Brenda Borge with Natomas Teachers Association said. “The concern is if we open, and other schools in the county do not open, we could lose students across districts. So, if we are CONTINUE READING: Are Sacramento County public schools ready to reopen?

Teachers Union Urges Parents To Boycott School Reopening - PopularResistance.Org

Teachers Union Urges Parents To Boycott School Reopening - PopularResistance.Org

TEACHERS UNION URGES PARENTS TO BOYCOTT SCHOOL REOPENING

School Officials And Teachers Have Very Different Views On Whether It’s Safe For Students Hurt By Missing In-Person Classes To Safely Return To The Classroom.

When Baltimore City Schools announced last week that 25 schools will reopen next month to increase in-person instruction for high need students, officials promised it could be done safely and with transparency.

The district has received little guidance from state or federal authorities on how to reopen safely, and teachers, who will be required to return to the classroom, say they were blindsided by the announcement. They are now calling attention to problems with the recent reopening of Student Learning Centers (SLC) as an example of their concerns.

On Sept. 28, a limited number of students began attending 15 SLCs, sites open to students who are experiencing homelessness, or those who otherwise will benefit from being in a physical classroom environment to connect with their teachers, who are currently working remotely.

Everyone who enters an SLC has their temperature checked, and students are separated into “learning pods,” which limits their interaction with other groups CONTINUE READING: Teachers Union Urges Parents To Boycott School Reopening - PopularResistance.Org

Texas schools tell teachers with medical risks to return to classrooms | The Texas Tribune

Texas schools tell teachers with medical risks to return to classrooms | The Texas Tribune

Texas schools tell teachers with medical risks they must return to classrooms during the pandemic

Several school districts are trying to accommodate teachers with health conditions who want to work from home, but many are being called back in as more students return to classrooms.

Need to stay updated on coronavirus news in Texas? Our evening roundup will help you stay on top of the day's latest updates. Sign up here.

After several miscarriages over the last few years, Joy Tucker is finally pregnant with her third child at the age of 37.

A school counselor at the Houston-based Windmill Lakes campus at the International Leadership of Texas charter school, Tucker talked to her doctor about the risks she and her child would face if she were to contract COVID-19 from students or other employees. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that pregnant people may be at an increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness, or even preterm birth. At her doctor’s recommendation, Tucker turned in a note asking her school if she could work remotely.

School leaders denied that request, saying she would have to return to work in person in September. If not, Tucker would have to use the rest of her paid leave to remain home, leaving her no time to recover after the baby’s birth. Her options quickly dwindling and her baby due in January, Tucker lawyered up and filed a grievance with the school district.

“I want nothing more than to go back to work and be with my kids,” said Tucker, who chose to use paid leave instead of returning in September. “If I have to choose between mine and my baby’s life, or going to work in a situation where we could get sick or we could die, there’s no choice to make — I have to stay home.”

Caitlin Madison, a spokesperson for the charter school, declined to comment on Tucker’s case but said, “since this school year started, the ILTexas policy has been that if we have students on campus, then we need to have our employees on campus as well.” About 28% of students in the district have chosen to return to campus.

“The only work-from-home exception for campus staff has been if they are sick with COVID or were potentially exposed to COVID and require a 14-day quarantine,” she added.

International Leadership of Texas is one of a number of Texas schools denying some CONTINUE READING: Texas schools tell teachers with medical risks to return to classrooms | The Texas Tribune

‘Out of Control’: When Schools Opened in a Utah Coronavirus Hot Spot - The New York Times

‘Out of Control’: When Schools Opened in a Utah Coronavirus Hot Spot - The New York Times

‘Out of Control’: When Schools Opened in a Virus Hot Spot

In a suburban Salt Lake City district, coronavirus cases spiked as students returned to their classrooms.

On a Friday in mid-September, Sunny Washington got a text from another mother at her daughter’s high school in an affluent suburb of Salt Lake City. Three weeks into the school year, the number of coronavirus cases at the school was rising, and the district was considering shifting to online instruction. The text urged parents to beg the school board to keep classrooms open.

Ms. Washington ignored the text — she thought the school should be taking advice from public health experts, not parents. But other parents flooded the board with messages, and the school stayed open. Within a week, the number of cases had nearly quadrupled. A teacher was hospitalized and put on a ventilator. When the board finally closed the school temporarily, 77 students and staff members, including Ms. Washington’s daughter, had tested positive.

“We’re talking 30 days in, and it went completely out of control,” Ms. Washington said.

Her daughter’s school, Corner Canyon High School, experienced one of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks at a school in Utah, and possibly the country, with 90 cases within two weeks — most likely an undercount, since not all students and staff who were exposed or symptomatic got tested.

And Corner Canyon was not the only school in the district to have an outbreak. By Sept. 28, Canyons School District, with roughly 33,000 students, had temporarily closed three high schools and a middle school, telling about 8,000 students to learn from home. CONTINUE READING: ‘Out of Control’: When Schools Opened in a Utah Coronavirus Hot Spot - The New York Times

glen brown: K-12 re-openings: "there’s a lot we don’t know"/ At colleges and universities: "re-opening appears to be going much worse"

glen brown: K-12 re-openings: "there’s a lot we don’t know"/ At colleges and universities: "re-opening appears to be going much worse"

K-12 re-openings: "there’s a lot we don’t know"/ At colleges and universities: "re-opening appears to be going much worse"

“…According to the Covid Monitor, there have been more than 52,000 cases in K-12 schools as of October 15. That’s significant, but a small portion of the 3 million coronavirus cases in the US since August. At the very least, K-12 schools don’t seem to be a primary driver of Covid-19 in the US right now...

“It’s still unclear how many K-12 schools, exactly, have fully reopened. Given the country’s sprawling network of school districts, each under varying levels of state and local control, we simply don’t have a good way to track what every school is doing at a national level.

“According to Education Week, four states have ordered schools to reopen. Seven, along with Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, have mandated partial or full closures. The remaining 39 states have by and large left it up to individual school districts or local governments to decide.

“Schools can try to fully restart in-person learning, go remote only, or follow a hybrid model. Among those allowing in-person teaching, some require masks for teachers and students. Some are putting students into cohorts or pods — meaning they have to stick to the same group of peers while in school. Some have spread out desks or limited capacity in classes, and have shifted schedules to reduce how many people are in the building at any moment. A few have taken more aggressive measures, like improving CONTINUE READING: glen brown: K-12 re-openings: "there’s a lot we don’t know"/ At colleges and universities: "re-opening appears to be going much worse"

15 Strange and Scary Goings-On Surrounding Covid-19, Schools, and Teaching

15 Strange and Scary Goings-On Surrounding Covid-19, Schools, and Teaching

15 Strange and Scary Goings-On Surrounding Covid-19, Schools, and Teaching

How to handle a pandemic is a new territory for school officials and educators. Here are some observations of odd and downright scary practices surrounding the disease and school attendance.

1. Adults online. Students are in-person. School board members meet online to discuss business. They’re worried about catching the virus, but they determine it’s best to send students and teachers back to in-person school. If board members are concerned about Covid-19, children and teachers are too.
2. Watch those teachers. There’s no school attendance for students, but teachers must still report to school to provide online instruction. They’re not trusted to teach safely from home. Trust teachers and treat them like professionals.
3. Covid-19 musical chairs. Children in school exposed to the coronavirus are moved around every 15 minutes called “musical chairs” to change the air. This keeps the school from having to quarantine students who are exposed or asymptomatic. It’s disruptive, dangerous, and a sign that students and teachers shouldn’t be in class.
4. Standardized tests go on. In-person schooling is deemed unsafe, but administrators insist that students and teachers come together for standardized testing. Parents despised these tests before the pandemic. The disease hasn’t made them more endearing. Is a test worth catching Covid-19? Aren’t they collecting enough data about children online? Isn’t that scary enough?
5. Calling teachers essential workers. Teachers are important, and it’s too bad it CONTINUE READING: 15 Strange and Scary Goings-On Surrounding Covid-19, Schools, and Teaching

Wisconsin, South Carolina: Two Teachers Die of COVID-19 | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wisconsin, South Carolina: Two Teachers Die of COVID-19 | Diane Ravitch's blog

Wisconsin, South Carolina: Two Teachers Die of COVID-19

Yesterday, I posted an article by an economist who wrote that schools are not super spreaders, and that the rate of transmission of COVID has been very low among students and teachers. Some readers got angry at me for posting this article. Let me be clear that I am not a scientist or a doctor. I do not know whether it is safe to reopen schools. I am as uncertain about the right course of action as many other people.

I am not qualified to offer any guidance. The decision about reopening depends on the community and expert judgment. Everyone should follow the science, wear a mask, practice social distancing both indoors and outside, and wash their hands frequently. It may be safe to reopen schools in some places but not safe in other places. What is important to know is that the COVID is surging again in many states, that the infection rate is rising nationally, and that this is a contagious and deadly disease. Be informed.

The stories below tell what happened to two teachers. They loved teaching; their students loved them. It is not CONTINUE READING: Wisconsin, South Carolina: Two Teachers Die of COVID-19 | Diane Ravitch's blog

DeVos pledges use of 'bully pulpit' to urge school reopening - POLITICO

DeVos pledges use of 'bully pulpit' to urge school reopening - POLITICO

DeVos pledges use of 'bully pulpit' to urge school reopening

The comments come the same day Boston schools paused reopening plans because of a rise in coronavirus cases.

SACRAMENTO — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pledged Wednesday to use the "bully pulpit" to pressure states to reopen schools for in-person learning amid the pandemic.

DeVos said on a Zoom event hosted by the Pacific Research Institute that she and President Donald Trump have been "very consistent" about the need to reopen schools for in-person learning "in every possible situation."

The context: The comments come the same day that Boston schools paused reopening plans because of a rise in coronavirus cases and as New York City scrambles to reverse its reopening plans for hundreds of schools. In California, some schools have reopened with mandated mask and social distancing policies but many, including Los Angeles Unified, the country's second-largest district, have no plans of a full scale reopening anytime soon.

"We know that in some places where there is a spike in cases of the virus, that there may have to be short times of working at a distance, but for those families who need and want this for their children, learning in person, there's no other substitute for it," DeVos said Wednesday. "We have continued to urge states and districts to make sure they're offering this as an option to families. Of course, these are state and local decisions, but we will continue to use the bully pulpit to urge this to happen."

California reported on Tuesday that there has been no spike in coronavirus cases in the limited openings across the state, which mostly include elementary schools.

The big picture: DeVos used the pandemic as reason to promote school choice, including charter schools, "micro schools" and learning pods, saying now more than ever parents should have a say in their child's education due to campus closures and distance learning struggles.

But teachers unions and civil rights advocates across the country have warned of the impact that an increase in charter school or private school enrollment could have on the traditional K-12 system, worried it will exacerbate already wide achievement gaps for low income students and student of color.

In California, online charter schools that were not a popular choice before the pandemic now have wait lists in the thousands, with parents scrambling for CONTINUE READING: DeVos pledges use of 'bully pulpit' to urge school reopening - POLITICO