Mississippi Is What a School Reopening Shitshow Looks Like “How bad does it have to get? Is it a certain number of cases? Is it one death? Well, we’ve already had one teacher who died.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/mississippi-schools-are-a-coronavirus-disaster On Monday morning, hundreds of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders filed through the doors at Grenada Middle School in north Mississippi. Looking out of her classroom, math teacher Suzanne Alexander saw kids huddled together, giddy at being with friends for the first time in months. As she walked the halls, students she hadn’t seen since they moved to remote learning in March surprised her with big, enthusiastic hugs. When the bell rang at the end of the day, those same students hung out around classroom doors, waiting on friends—perhaps too intimidated, in normal middle school fashion, to be seen walking out alone. It was, she said, a very typical first day of school. And that was the problem. “Right now is not normal by any stretch of the imagination,” Alexander told The Daily Beast. “And they don’t even think about it. But I’m thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, there are 50 kids huddled up around me.’” “We keep preaching, ‘Don’t gather in groups.’ Well, when you’ve got kids, they’re going to gather in groups. That’s just the nature of kids.” Last week, as Mississippi led the country in per capita deaths from the coronavirus, schools around the state began holding in-person classes in defiance of the state's own medical experts, who had pushed for a delayed start to the year. As has frequently been the case since he took office in January, the opinion of the one person able to mandate delaying the start date for schools statewide, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, has largely tracked with that of President Trump, who issued an all-caps edict on Twitter last month that “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” A slew of red states have begun moving forward with in-person classes. As of Thursday, Alabama, Indiana, Georgia and Oklahoma had started to reopen schools and, in some cases, quarantined students after reopening classes, with an Atlanta-area school’s packed hallways—and subsequent mass contagion—going, well, viral. But in Mississippi, the results have been remarkably dire. By the end of its first week, the Corinth School district had been forced to quarantine over 120 students and staff. Later that week, a longtime football coach at Lafayette High School died after quarantining with coronavirus symptoms. And on Monday, just as another group of school districts opened their doors, the state confirmed COVID cases in 22 schools. One day later, Gulfport High School sent 100 students to quarantine at home after a teacher there reported symptoms. On Wednesday, the Rankin County School District, which will begin holding in-person classes next week, announced its superintendent had tested positive for COVID-19. And these aren't even schools in the region of the state with the highest rates of coronavirus infections. The governor ordered those middle and high schools to delay reopening until Aug. 17. “What these numbers let me know is that we did it too soon. And it’s going to get worse,” said Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators, the biggest teacher’s union in the state. “All it takes is one student to come in with the virus and ‘boom,’ the spread is there.” As states around the country weigh the merits of in-person learning, Mississippi is becoming a lesson in how quickly reopening schools could turn a first wave into a tsunami. For teachers, this is a terrifying prospect: Many of them are locked into contracts they signed back in February, before the virus was even a major threat in this state. And reneging on them isn't an option. In Mississippi, breaking a signed contract can cost teachers their license. “I feel like a guinea pig,” said Summer Nation, a ceramics instructor at Germantown High School in Gluckstadt. “The rest of the country is looking at us, saying, ‘Let’s see what happens with Mississippi.’ And I can see it already. It’s a tidal wave, and the floodgates are about to open.” Representatives for the Madison and Grenada School Districts did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Gov. Reeves has defended the decision to allow in-person classes even as schools continue to confirm new cases, noting that the risk of viral spread among children is low. And last week, as the Corinth School District, which was the first in the state to open its doors, swiftly moved to quarantine over 100 students, Reeves admitted in an interview on Fox News that “we recognize that we're taking risks. But in today's world, in 2020, there is no scenario whereby we can eliminate 100 percent of the risk.” To support this position, Trump and Reeves have argued that the risk of viral spread remains low among children. But earlier this this week, the American Academy of Pediatric and the Children’s Hospital Association released a study showing that cases of coronavirus in children had risen 90 percent in the last month. Mississippi had the fifth-highest number of childhood coronavirus cases per capita. “If you make a big decision like reopening schools, you have to get your ducks in a row,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious disease at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. “If the state doesn’t do a good job controlling community spread, I think one school after another will have outbreaks and kids, of course, will take the virus home to their families. And then the schools will become an accelerant of this virus.” The University of Mississippi Medical Center, the biggest hospital in Mississippi, announced last week that its ICU was beyond capacity. Schaffner said expecting to safely open schools in a place like Mississippi, which leads the country in nearly every indicator of viral spread, was akin to “magical thinking.” Last month, the Mississippi Association of Educators surveyed 2400 teachers statewide, finding that the vast majority, 86 percent, feared returning to in-person instruction. But their efforts to lobby the Department of Education—which oversees the state’s 138 school districts—and Gov. Reeves did little to move the needle. Reeves even defied the advice of his own state health officer, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who had publicly urged delaying physical school reopening until at least September, noting in a July 31 Facebook Live discussion that “there’s nothing special about August.” In an email to The Daily Beast, the Mississippi Department of Education responded to criticism by saying that only the governor has the legal authority to delay school reopening statewide. And while they said “there is no authority given to the State Board of Education” to direct school reopening plans, the same email noted statewide changes that the board had made, from granting districts the flexibility to implement a combination of traditional, remote, and hybrid learning, to reducing the number of class hours required each day by nearly a third. Last week, with some districts already holding classes and new coronavirus infections up over 250 percent since the start of summer, Reeves ordered middle and high schools to delay all classes until Aug. 17—but only in eight of Mississippi’s 82 counties, where the spread of the virus was highest. He also issued Mississippi’s first statewide mask mandate. It expires next Tuesday, the day after schools in those eight counties are allowed to reopen. In response to criticism, Renae Eze, communications director for Gov. Reeves, said in an email that there were also health benefits to keeping schools open. “The risk of keeping schools closed becomes a decision between public health vs. public health, as Dr. [Robert] Redfield of the CDC said recently, with millions of children across our country not having access to mental health services, food and nutrition, abuse reporting, the effectiveness of in-person learning, and socialization—all of which they receive at school.” But she also noted Reeves and state health experts would continue to monitor the situation and planned to step in should “a school or district need additional guidance and resources. All options in our response efforts for this pandemic remain on the table.” Teachers said the lack of response from state leaders felt familiar. For years, Mississippi teacher salaries have been among the lowest in the nation. Last year, lawmakers boosted salaries by $1,500—to just below $34,000 for new hires, still one of the five lowest salaries in the country. “It not only speaks to undervaluing teachers but it also speaks to undervaluing public schools and public school students,” Alexander said. “This feels like an experiment,” she added. “And I know a lot of other teachers who’ve been saying that when it gets bad enough, they’ll send everyone home again to do remote learning.” Reeves’s office did not respond when asked if there would be a threshold at which the governor would order schools to resume remote-only instruction, as he had done in March. In his Facebook Live discussion, Dobbs said the decision to close right now would likely be based on individual schools or districts, with some schools moving to remote-only learning when positive tests reached five percent. Dr. Alan Jones, who leads the clinical response for COVID-19 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, called testing “one prong that could be used for safe reopening.” But rather than ramping up testing, as students returned to schools last week, the number of tests statewide actually dropped 13 percent. Nation, who teaches ceramics in Gluckstadt, said she’s preparing to move to online-only instruction, ordering tools that she can send home with each student. She just doesn’t know when that will be. “But how bad does it have to get? Is it a certain number of cases? Is it one death? Well, we’ve already had one teacher who died.”
Wake County schools in North Carolina made a drastic change in school re-openings today. Originally students would have been back in the classroom in two weeks (the 50% or so that opted for partial in-school learning). Today Wake County changed that start date to October 22nd. Wake County students won't return to classrooms before Oct. 22 https://www.wral.com/wake-county-students-won-t-return-to-classrooms-before-oct-22/19235119/ Wake County Schools will no longer transition to in-person classes starting on Sept. 8. Originally, the school district was planning on starting the year remotely and then transition back to the classroom slowly on Sept. 8. A spokesperson with the school district said students would be returning to school "no sooner than after the first quarter." The second quarter begins on Oct. 22. "We will continue monitoring the data, which is our plan" Wake County board chairman Keith Sutton said when asked about when students would be returning to the classroom. Sutton said the board is working with a medical advisory board made of health professionals with Duke University. Coronavirus data will be monitored over the next couple weeks as it relates to schools opening, he said. Cathy Moore, superintendent of Wake County Public Schools, said the school is participating in this medical advisory board to build confidence in parents, teachers and students returning back to school. As of July, about half of the district's students were signed up for the Wake County Virtual Academy, committing them to remote learning for at least the full fall semester. Online classes start Monday, but the first two weeks of school will be considered orientation -- for students attending school and following Wake County Public School's modified Plan B method of instruction and students enrolled in the Virtual Academy. "We are paying attention to those numbers and how that goes," Moore said about Virtual Academy enrollment. Technology, connectivity Wake County Public Schools has had requests for 38,000 laptops and around 10,000 hotspots. The bulk of distributing these devices begins on Monday, Moore said. District officials said parents who requested devices will receive an email three days before their device is ready. Anyone who still needs a device for their child can contact their school, officials say. The Wake County school board said that staff will be reaching out to parents individually. "Parents should have been contacted by now about what this means for their child’s school. If not, you should contact your school," a spokesperson with Wake County Public School System said. Some schools may not do live instruction during orientation, officials said. "We know that not every student will have connectivity the first day of school," a spokesperson with Wake County Public School System said. "We have hundreds of employees and volunteers who will be devoting the next two weeks to reach out to families who need it and support them in getting it." Students will not be punished in the first couple weeks of school for "getting started later than others," the school system said. Teachers will be working with students to gather attendance numbers. Students have to have a "two-way interaction with a teacher" which may look like a virtual classroom meeting, email or phone call. That also may be turning in a daily assignment. Attendance will look different for each student depending on their technology access, the board said.
Same story -- state after state after state.... Nebraska school district cancels classes after positive COVID tests, similar closures in other states As many as 27 staff members are in quarantine following three positive tests https://www.foxnews.com/us/nebraska-school-district-cancels-classes-positive-covid
I'm just curious if you're ever going to answer this question. I mean, if I said that a politician was doing something wrong, I'd do so with the understanding of what the solution looks like.
A complete answer would require 7 or 8 pages minimum of detailed text. I don't have the time to dedicate to this. The short answer is to look at what Trump did and do the opposite.
As politicians push to open schools despite meeting no safety criteria --- the teachers are just calling in sick. Arizona School District Cancels Classes After Mass Sickout Over Virus Concerns Teachers put in absences en masse after the district announced it would resume in-person learning, despite falling short of benchmarks to do so safely. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/arizona-school-cancels-reopening-sickout_n_5f39d0e2c5b69fa9e2fd31c2
Then they should not be paid. What if police and fire personnel decided to just take a break-----oh wait we've seen that result.
This is a cop out. It wouldn't take 7 or 8 pages. It would take 10 bullet points. Be general. The real answer is that you don't have a solution. Like most in this conflict, you are good at criticizing, but don't have the answers to the problem.
A realistic set of guidelines is not a mere 10 bullet points. I certainly have a clear list of requirements aligned with public health expertise on how to properly handle a pandemic. You claim that the current politicians such as DeSantis are doing a great job. Let's have your list of 10 points on why you believe they are doing a great job with COVID and are "winning".
solution is easy: DONT DO THIS SHIT: Looking out of her classroom, math teacher Suzanne Alexander saw kids huddled together, giddy at being with friends for the first time in months. As she walked the halls, students she hadn’t seen since they moved to remote learning in March surprised her with big, enthusiastic hugs. When the bell rang at the end of the day, those same students hung out around classroom doors, waiting on friends—perhaps too intimidated, in normal middle school fashion, to be seen walking out alone. (Mississippi) Problem in the GOP belt from NC to Texas is they think this whole thing is bullshit...a hoax..it will magically go away... So the leaders have become pussies. When up north in my area we were considering the hybrid solution, the leadership of the school said if your kid will not wear a mask, he can stay home. If they take off their mask in school without good cause in a group, they go home. If they don't follow the clenaing guidelines/protocols/ social distancing they go home. This is a public school. Play by the rules or stay the fuck home. Case closed. In Georgia and Miss obviously the leaders have no balls or believe like Trump that if you do nothing....it will all go away. There are many options being worked on in the Northeast to hadnle this as best as possible. In the South it is just herd em like cattle into the school and the teachers are saying hell no.... It is really easy to see why fucktarded systems down there are closing up again after a week and creating super spreaders. No 10 point list is needed when simple common sense will suffice but without any real leadership, this shit happens.