I honestly believe that COVID is a real threat, especially to people who are already medically fragile. I am at somewhat higher risk as a diabetic, but I don’t think it is a high enough risk to warrant staying home from work.There are teachers who are not so lucky. I know of at least two who are at serious risk because they are immunocompromised due to things like leukemia.

My high school has 1600 or so students. Approximately 400 of them are attending classes virtually, just over 1000 of them are attending face to face classes, and another 200 have simply not shown up for classes of any sort. The teachers who are immunocompromised have requested to teach the virtual students, but schools are refusing to allow this. Instead, they are spreading the virtual students out. I have 5 classes of about 25 students each that are face to face, and another virtual class of 45 students that I teach on top of that. I feel that the teachers who are more at risk than I am should be given the virtual classes, but that isn’t happening. The school is refusing to do that.

Yesterday was the last day of the first week of school. My school district published a report by email to all staff and to the press, claiming that there were 6 students and 4 staff members who have tested positive for COVID 19. My school was not listed as one of the schools that has a positive case.

There were rumors that some of our students had COVID, but the school will not tell us which students are positive. I complained to my school administrators, telling them that I have a right to know. They said that I do not, citing HIPAA. I pointed out that I was once the HIPAA compliance officer for my employer when I was a paramedic, and told them that schools are not bound by HIPAA. They still said, “Notifying you if your students are positive is the Health Department’s job.”

They also made a bit of a clerical error and accidentally released attendance information that lists each student who is absent because they are presumed positive for COVID. One of the new attendance people accidentally put a file of attendance records in a network drive that could be seen by the entire school’s staff. Even worse, the official email sent out to staff says that none of our students have COVID. They lied to us and to the public.

As it turns out, three of my students are presumed to have COVID. Not one of my employers said shit. One of those students sits in the front row of my classroom. I cannot fathom why my employer would intentionally keep me in the dark about this. It is unconscionable.

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3 Comments

TCK · August 30, 2020 at 7:50 am

Is it really so surprising? Big Education is filled with dems and liberals, and they've made it pretty clear that spreading the 'Rona as far and wide as possible is a feature for them, not a bug.

The worst part is that unless Cuomo and the rest start suffering serious personal consequences from this shit, they have no reason to stop.

Don Curton · August 30, 2020 at 10:02 pm

Don't ascribe to evil that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.

Nick Flandrey · August 31, 2020 at 3:23 pm

Unless the rules are different in Fla, the district only gets the money when the butts are in the seats… So they have a strong incentive to keep students in school. (see also Parkland, and keeping dangerous kids in class) Teachers are an expense, and at least previously were in oversupply.

Our district in TX has decided that virtual "learners" must be physically present in front of their computers at the same time, and for as long as, the in-person learners. That HAS to be related to getting paid for those students, otherwise why not let the kids progress at their own pace?* We are currently in our opening mode, all kids virtual, but starting next week we'll have between 50% and 80% in-person students depending on school.

No one in the district administration will share their metrics for closing a class, or a school, or the district moving back to full virtual, only that those things MAY happen if needed. I expect we'll see a rash of positives because everywhere there are groups indoors, you get cases.

I'm letting that other 50-80% figure out how to have in person classes without spreading covid. My kids will be virtual for at least the first 9 weeks. Given the districts previous falsehoods about a wide variety of things related to both educational content and school safety issues, I don't believe them wrt any covid safety plans. No way have they hired enough staff to do the disinfections they've promised. We've got buildings now without custodial staff… and a lack of supplies.

What's more appalling to me is the totally superficial and glib "education" our kids have been getting. I think a lot of parents are figuring out that what looked good at first glance was really just the appearance of learning. That's been the case for me, and I was volunteering in the school every month and should have been able to extrapolate what I saw with the other kids to my own.

The current model is broken. Maybe something better will come out of this.

nick

*our district used to brag about letting each kid excel and exceed the minimums in the classroom. Now they'll be held back to the slowest, if they're virtual.

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