Wednesday, August 5th, 2020
The past two days have seen flurries of email traffic on various listservs, mainly BBCnet and BCCPTSA, caused by MCPS’ release of the latest draft reopening plan for public schools to be discussed and approved by the Board of Education tomorrow. A final plan is badly needed as the live chat with our principal illustrated. The main take away of the briefing session on all questions asked was “we don’t know”. As a result schools cannot adequately prepare for a reopening less than three weeks away.
Sadly the new reopening plan reads pretty much like the old reopening plan, just with a few more details. As far as the weekly schedule is concerned the additional clarifications are helpful. However, there appear to be schools which have eight rather than seven classes taught every day and this “eighth” class has now become an additional check-in class for all those schools who do not have seven periods. Given only three of the normally seven classes are taught on any given day, I would have preferred for that eighth period to be split among the other three, to make each class one hour and fifteen minutes instead of an hour. That way, total “in class time” cumulative over a week would come close to the total cumulative time of instruction / in class of in presence teaching. After delving into the topics, I am fine with having two blocks a week per subject as long as there are opportunities for students to contact teachers with questions when they get stuck in their self-paced work, for which the schedule seems to provide.
However, block schedule versus seven classes daily was only one of the topics discussed by parents in the different fora. The other issue was related to start times, with some advocating for a later start of the school day to better align with teenaged sleep rhythms and others wildly opposed to this. The latter faction wanting afternoons of for the pursuit of extracurricular activities. I do not feel strongly about this either way, except that a later schedule impacts our plan to “evacuate” to Germany for most of December and January making for late school nights for EM given the time difference.
What has caused me to be upset is the unchanged plan for students to return, should they return for the second semester, in a phased manner. That in itself is fine. However, having 12th graders be last to come back is bordering on insanity. With the current phases, Seniors would not return until week ten of the second semester. Week ten, with no further Corona induced closures or delays, would have them back with teachers in late April. All exams are in May and by end of May they are done with High School. As of April, all they do is exam prep with little to no new content being added. So, there is absolutely no point for them to return to in class teaching at that point in time. As a result, my contribution to the Listservs today was to lobby for a change in phases with Seniors going back first. I provided feedback accordingly through the MCPS website and wrote to the BoE as well. I am hoping that if I and many other parents write it we might be able to swing their minds, though I am not sure the BoE has any inclination to make changes to what they have proposed.
Worldwide infections are at 18.6 million and the USA is at 4.9 million with death having broken another record – 160k today. The recovery rate in the USA at 45% is below the global average of 60%. Amid rising cases Republicans continue to push for reopening schools. Mississippi now following Georgia’s lead, despite steep increases in new infections. People will continue to spread the virus, numbers of infected and dead will continue to rise. On week one of its school reopening the third school in Georgia is reporting cases. And all the president has to say about people dying is: “it is what it is”. It is just unbelievable. Never have I witness such a lack of compassion and such utter absence of leadership. Given none of the prominent Republicans object to any of this, they are clearly willing to accept tenth of thousands of dead.
I am sad to see MD is on the list of States with increasing cases: +56% in three weeks is concerning. We seemed to be doing so well.
The Swedish way is definitely an outlier, but then again 80% of Swedes trust their government so follow its advice to the "t". This is inconceivable in the USA.
If this guide on COVID-19 symptoms is anything to go by, basically every symptom you develop can also be COVID-19, so not terribly helpful.
No fun news today.