Well, that was fast!
Only minutes after news broke that Governor Cuomo had asked Bill Gates and his foundation to help “reimagine” education in New York, parent groups responded with a loud NO!
Don’t mess with New York parents! Remember, they started the biggest opt-out from state testing in history.
Here is their public letter:
May 5, 2020
To Governor Cuomo:
As educators, parents and school board members, we were appalled to hear that you will be working with the Gates Foundation on “reimagining” our schools following the Covid crisis. Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have promoted one failed educational initiative after another, causing huge disaffection in districts throughout the state.
Whether that be the high-handed push by the Gates Foundation for the invalid Common Core standards, unreliable teacher evaluation linked to test scores, or privacy-violating data-collection via the corporation known as inBloom Inc., the education of our children has been repeatedly put at risk by their non-evidence based “solutions”, which were implemented without parent input and despite significant public opposition. As you recall, these policies also sparked a huge opt-out movement across the state, with more than twenty percent of eligible students refusing to take the state exams.
We urge you instead to listen to parents and teachers rather than allow the Gates Foundation to implement their damaging education agenda once again. Since the schools were shut down in mid-March, our understanding of the profound deficiencies of screen-based instruction has only grown. The use of education tech may have its place, but only as an ancillary to in-person learning, not as its replacement. Along with many other parents and educators, we strongly oppose the Gates Foundation to influence the direction of education in the state by expanding the use of ed tech.
Instead, we ask that you fund our schools sufficiently and equitably, to allow for the smaller classes, school counselors, and other critical services that our children will need more than ever before, given the myriad losses they have experienced this year.
Yours sincerely,
New York State Allies for Public Education
Class Size Matters
Parent Coalition for Student Privacy
Cc: Board of Regents and Acting NYSED Commissioner Shannon Tahoe
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These educational first responders in New York are true heroes.
I agree. I wish I could help them. NY is the front lines of the fight to save public education now.
One thing people who don’t know what Cuomo and Gates are about with respect to education: they look at us like we’re crazy when we try to explain. Had an exchange with a sympathetic political friend tonight and he can’t understand my criticisms of them: but Cuomo is doing so much good right now (can’t be true about education) and Gates is funding vaccine research (can’t be true about education).
Vote out the dirtbag , he is a thug pos.
Maybe that friend should look into where Gates has “helped” in the past to see how well that worked out. Dig deep and see what has gone on or how much improvement was actually made in a truly measurable way.
Look forward to hearing what happens from this.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Stop Bill Gates from meddling in OUR public schools and damaging the education of OUR children, not his!
Oh yeah, Bill Gates, billionaire and an “expert” on education!!?????! Huh? In what universe? Before this clown pontificates from his perch on Mt. Olympus, ten thousand miles above the schools and ordinary mortals, he should first be in those schools for hours, day after day, all week, all month for at least a year. He should first start off as a janitor, then as a cook helper, then as a teacher’s aide, then as a paraprofessional, then as a supervised substitute teacher. Until then, he should shut up and just spend the next ten years listening to classroom teachers.
He thinks he’s a medical expert too.
Exactly
Good for the NY “on the ball” parents. How could Cuomo THINK Gates would be a good go to person. Here’s an idea, try a real live EDUCATOR!!! There are a ton of really talented educators around with…..here is another idea…..EXPERIENCE!!!!!!!! What an idea. So sad. Cuomo is doing a good job with the virus, but will tank it all with a Gates decision.
Hear, hear! Well said, NYS parents!
Well, if it’s too dangerous for schools to return to normal while the virus is still spreading and there’s no vaccine, then we may well have to “reimagine” schools around remote technology. Well played, Mr. Gates. (Also well played: persuading NYC schools to dump Zoom in favor of Microsoft products because of “privacy concerns.”)
My 6-year-old grandson loved Zoom, hates Microsoft Teams.
Zoom works very well. My daughter liked it a lot (for the week it was in use).
Zoom is back.
So clearly the conspiracy theory that Mayor deBlasio was doing Bill Gates’ bidding was wrong.
It seems like the DOE was working out a way to have ZOOM while still protecting the privacy of the one million + students who were using it.
Well played? Are you even serious? This will have a negative effect on our youth!
Well played as in, savvy positioning.
The current situation is harming our youth. If schools cannot reopen next year, I have no objection to increasing the role technology plays in education, and “reimagining” education to work better with technology.
Dear Melinda
Can you please ask Bill to take up a new hobby? One that he knows something about? This one has been, well, let me be honest, messy, very destructive. Ceramics, perhaps? Or watercolors of puppies, as George Bush, Jr. is doing?
Thanks,
Bob
Why doesn’t Gates just ensure that every student in the country has free access to the internet?
Like Carnegie but instead of access to a library make sure they can access the internet.
Much more useful and practical than another “reinvention” experiment that will benefit consultants more than students. Infrastructure lasts. The rest of this junk doesn’t.
He will not help anyone unless there is something in it for him. He is not a philanthropist; he’s a profiteer.
Precisely. Bill has the best PR team money can buy. That’s why we think of him as a gentle do-gooder today, when he was always a well-known ethically-challenged tyrant in his Microsoft leadership days. He’s power-hungry. I think his wife means well, and I think he’s also not entirely ill-intended, but there’s always an angle. He has to increase his control over society, because he believes he has the right answers. More money = more control. It’s not about the money. It’s about the influence. It’s about tech fetishism. It’s about creating his ideal society at whatever cost. You do you, Bill. Let us do us.
I think the ed reform billionaires don’t invest in infrastructure because they can’t control and direct what people do with it, and they can control and direct these experiments they conduct on public school children.
They won’t just give us the tools- they have to manage the whole thing or they’re not interested.
In that way they’re worse than the incredibly wealthy people of the last gilded age, who at least let us run our own libraries.
Spot-on.
It is a darker outlook for education in NY then even the Governor’s comments today suggest.
1) The parents groups that responded so eloquently and speedily today to the Governor are by no means “New York state parents” writ large. For every one of them there are many more NY state parents who would love to entertain ideas to slash teachers and teachers salaries and break NYSUT and thereby the NYSTRS….all under the label of “reducing property taxes” etc.
2) Ed. Tech has made huge inroads into schools already and are well positioned to exploit that position via politics as well as local school boards. In my own district, administrators and board members routinely fall for any Ed tech vendors pitch. In every way it’s the sophisticated (Ed tech vendors) .vs the provincial morons (school admin and board members.). The appropriate response to Ed tech from the beginning was and should have been: school is a place where human beings learn how to organize and function in society with the fundamental skills of reason, engagement, and enlightenment. Technology is a subject of inquiry not a venue for it, no matter how sophisticated and amazing it may appear. Thanks but no. (The cries of “luddites” etc would have been voluminous, but easily defeated with the right thinkers, of which there, alas, none in most organized teacher leadership.)
3) NYSUT didn’t adequately prepare for Ed tech’s onslaught and their leadership remain troublingly free of the ability to think tragically on the topic.
4) Gov. Cuomo is now a heavily-laden freight train of political capital. He is a “hero governor” now and he sees a huge inroad to really do some damage to organized teachers….something he has been all about from the beginning.
5) Organized teachers only real hope going forward is that we do have a role as physical babysitters for K-12 kids so mom and dad can go maintain their employment AND organized teachers represent a huge chunk of the facade of the middle class in New York State. Nuking is would really mess up tax rolls and the economy overall….though that is all stuff only seen in the rear view mirror of destructive policy.
So yeah, love the parents groups and their work but they in no way represent a powerful axis re. 1-5 above. NYSUT and organized teachers themselves would have to engage the fight and be willing to throw it all on the line. Not seeing that….I see tons of teachers day in and day out of this pandemic proving to administrators and board members how technology will make well-paid teachers a thing of the past.
For what it’s worth, two of the three parent groups are essentially (possibly literally) just Leonie Haimson, who is not an NYC public school parent. (She also is on the board of the third group.)
Not worth a reply. You couldn’t polish Leonie’s shoes.
Amen, Fred.
Leonie is amazing.
Brilliant, knowledgeable, savvy.
NYSAPE is composed of more than 50 parent and educator groups (not the unions).
Cuomo is running for President in 2024.
…or possibly 2020.
I detect little empathy from Governor Cuomo for the most vulnerable amongst us, such as the homeless or the poor. I see him give much more deference to billionaires and Wall Street.
I also see him as a man willing to suffocate democracy, such as siding with Republicans to halt progressive legislation and creating barriers for the Working Families Party, when it does not fit his agenda.
We are fortunate that a judge yesterday derailed his attempt to not hold a presidential primary, even though down-ballot primaries are taking place. Unfortunately, the state plans to appeal that decision.
We’ve experienced what the Obama administration did to public education,which begat us Betsy DeVos.
Should Cuomo become president, the commodification of public education and the vilification of public school educators will go forth, full steam ahead.
My ole pal, Bubba, is re-imagining education too. He wants to start with a series of memorized, value-based ideas that are too good to pass up. Life lessons. You hear?
Don’t never stand right behind a cow while she’s eatin’.
Don’t never give up a chance to eat a piece of Aunt Flossie’s chess pie.
Don’t never believe a man that’s gonna make money off of what his advice makes you buy.
Don’t never listen to a preacher that gits hisself confused with God.
Don’t plant no corn in cold ground.
Don’t listen to no rich people, they didin’ git that way worrying about you.
I bet that would be cheaper than any advice Bill Gates has to offer.
Roy,
Thanks for priceless advice.
Don’t never listen to a broken Windows salesman.
“Don’t listen to no rich people, they didin’ git that way worrying about you.”
It was hard to choose one favorite, but this one seems most appropriate here.
As you know living here in Florida means I am among many Trumpers and conservatives. And based on that fact, I find many conservative sites on my little laptop. I read your blog about Cuomo and Gates and even though this link I am sending you talks BS, the part I found interesting was how this speaker, whoever he is, describes Bill Gates. I hesitated in sending it but since your blog mentioned Gates, I thought you’d find this interesting…How both Gates and Bloomberg worked together etc. How on Oct 2019 Johns Hopkins had a pandemic exercise sponsored by Bill Gates,and Bloomberg and how Gates put out a movie called Pandemic in Nov 2019…Did he know in advance? Was it coincidental? Anyway here it is… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdbIEDn9_aY
Virus-free. http://www.avg.com
On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 4:01 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Well, that was fast! Only minutes after news broke > that Governor Cuomo had asked Bill Gates and his foundation to help > “reimagine” education in New York, parent groups responded with a loud NO! > Don’t mess with New York parents! Remember, they star” >
Cuomo is a crisis manager: never let a good crisis go to waste.
Oh one more thing….can’t forget this:
New York State is currently rethinking graduate job requirements! That was happening before all of this and now that’s gonna get politicized (more) nicely!
Let me do some tragic thinking for those that can’t in NYSUT and teachers unions:
The only thing that makes being an organized teacher in NY a middle class thing is graduation requirements (elementary, middle, high school.) Whatever those requirements are, those are sort of the teacher’s equivalent to a doctor’s job security in their legal ability to write prescriptions. Without those state mandated requirements, teachers don’t have to have any real knowledge, training, or licensing themselves. You can hire any old person for $15k a year to sit with the kids for 180 days or whatever. Soooo, and here comes the crux of the issue: if NY substantially alters their fundamental requirements, you can hack away tons of currently licensed, middle-class (-ish), salaried teachers. My department (social studies) is a robust one in my building. It’s all because of 3 regents and 2 courses
Required to graduate. So we have a bunch of people servicing that need. Trim the requirements for social studies to graduate you get to trim the staff substantially. This is what’s up. They’ll keep x number of classes required for graduation (likely STEM stuff to look all gritty and rigorous), and everything else will be offered via Ed tech with no actual real teacher required.
Watch! You’ll see! NYS is about to significantly change graduation requirements so as to need less teachers. Now you’ll have to keep K-12 kids in school all day so mom and dad can continue to be underemployed (unless you live in a Gucci district and everyone is….you know…overemployed,) so what you’ll have is classes in front of smartboards with software or some corporate Ed tech production running things, with the logo on the polo shirt and everything. Then all you’ll have to do is pay a security monitor to sit in the class and make sure nobody get’s metoo’d or whatever. No teacher required!
Call me crazy…..but this is how NYSUT leadership should be gaming things out. They aren’t.
Simple rules in life: assume your adversary is smart and maybe smarter than you, and always alway always know that the worst can happen and worst than than can follow. Basic. Instead we have people bred in familial, institutional, corporate, and academic vats of irrational optimism somehow being seen as good.
meant to say “graduation requirements” not “graduation job requirements.” Sorry.
I don’t know what you mean by “tragic thinking,” but he’ll yeah, the grad requirements should not be based on test scores as they are currently. The same folks who wrote the letter that is the subject of this post also wrote this one: https://lookaside.fbsbx.com/file/FAQ%20on%20exit%20exams%202.3.20%20v2.docx.pdf?token=AWz77LXkWKjGJTquikGdwHx0zEICVLbF2CMOd5gC1qKaaHkEk5YcBcFcwcTzogyNkS-61GzfB2-7deCU2MzckUmLkSwQLX4NqHKDMhffc1JwXvTzhuJpocDwc9d-KFq-oLw4cp9l1X5MYaRb1h1LMFEQZkmCjFSFG1bjwXTArxlILK9FD4Jiget3cI8O_22ql4Nc4iVZqoQGNWmm3WO6YpGE
Nothing in New York would be this bad if the federal government helped the Northeast through this costly crisis. The Northeast has been underwriting the South for decades. Students should not be forced into accepting cyber instruction. It is not an equivalent alternative to instruction from a qualified teacher.
Being a teacher and not working in a building with children is very upsetting socially, mentally, and academically for the cheldren and all of the staff. There is so many factors that go into teaching. Come into a classeoom and spend a week and see if all that could be covered with on line teaching
@Chiara. Yes. Like Carnegie. Infrastructure, not ideas, with your rich self. Bricks n mortar and routers on the streetpoles, player. And I’m still putting two spaces after my period. Period.
Cuomo needs to start respecting our school teachers. Enough is enough! He embraced common core orchestrated by the Gates foundation and it destroyed education as we knew it. These Are our children not guinea pigs! Start managing our state properly and stop taking Billionaires money (who know absolutely nothing about education) to fill your fiscal gaps!
Unfortunately one of Cuomo’s big, broad goals has always been to neuter the New York State United Teachers. His first pass got too messy. His second one will take.
The thing we tend to overlook is that this isn’t 1955 or 1965 when society was much more interconnected. The town someone lived in had manufacturing and industry. Those businesses were deeply interested in the schools and what was happening in them. Why? They were the future employees. Communities were integrated economically and that made the school a central part of things. Today, those bonds are gone. There is no company in town employing masses of people at middle class levels. There is no local business owner caring if the senior class could read a ruler right and vote and be literate and competent. In the absence of those bonds school is floating in the ether, sucking up all kinds of resources. Nobody cares anymore about the skills of the graduating class. The dollar store doesn’t care. Walmart doesn’t care. The rich game public school quite easily via AP and honors and their usual college admin games. But the vast bulk, nobody is looking. So politicians, in that space, will seek to “create efficiencies” and sell it all out. Just like an empty nest parent repurposing their kid’s former bedroom.
Parents you may ask? They are shot, overworked, worn out, and don’t see the bigger picture….If they are present at all. They and their kids have had their expectations lowered so substantially that having a citizen’s meta-view of things is totally absent. Education…schools….they only mean something in the context of a broader society and economy. We lie to ourselves when we say the opposite: that schools create and build society. They don’t. That thinking is the product of the ego of educators wanting to see themselves as something more than workers. Until we sort that bit out we will always get our thinking wrong and never fight back as organized workers should.
“neuter.” EXACT word for this.
RE-IMAGINING SCHOOLS
With schools finishing out the academic year by way of remote learning, Cuomo announced the state is collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on a plan to take advantage of technology to re-imagine education.
“The old model of everybody goes and sits in the classroom and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms. Why, with all the technology you have?” Cuomo said.
Critics wary of Gates’ influence over national education policy quickly pushed back with a letter urging Cuomo to abandon the plan.
“Since the schools were shut down in mid-March, our understanding of the profound deficiencies of screen-based instruction has only grown,” said the letter signed by three organizations: the New York State Allies for Public Education, Class Size Matters and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.
New York State United Teachers union President Andy Pallotta said remote learning will never replace connections built in classrooms between teachers and their students.
Andy Pelotta .vs current hero-Cuomo?
Cuomo wins that no problem.
Some organized parents .vs current hero-Cuomo.
Cuomo wins without even knowing a fight occured.
Virus-enhanced Cuomo + Gates + upcoming economic devastation + tax relief rhetoric + redefining graduation requirements + district admin and school boards already won over to any Ed tech shiny things = perfect storm against organized teachers that was pretty well predictable for some time.
I have zero hope as of today that I will finish a 30 year career as a unionized public school teacher in New York State.
God I hope you are wrong. I will fight this tooth and nail. I homeschooled early years, then public schooled my kids. And the kids loved the interactions w teachers,peers, sporting, chorus, networking. Neither is perfect, but they are struggling terribly with online college learning now. One is very motivated, but hating it, the other is in electrical trades. Try learning that one online only. I hope we crush this like common core. Both these guys need to stay in their lanes.
Whole heartedly agree. Common core was a disaster. My daughter graduated with honors from SUNY NEW PALTZ with an elementary teaching degree. She loved teaching children and was good at it. The teachers she worked with during her student teaching phase said she was the best they ever had and they even learned a thing or two from her and her approach to the children. She said the common core program ruined her desire to teach. She went back to school and will graduate with her RN in a couple of weeks. The educational system lost what would have been one of its best teachers. My other daughters had to deal with inclusive classrooms. It’s alway something, and usually not for the better. Start listening to parents and teachers instead of the people on the outside looking in.
Annie Tan teaches fifth grade and special education in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. She knows way more than Gates ever could.
Here’s her perspective in The New Republic:
“I have 12 students, and I have three paraprofessionals in my classroom. And in our class alone, we’ve had something like 13 deaths, among our students’ and staff members’ families. So it’s been a challenge trying to roll out assignments while also supporting the mental health needs of my students, their families, and staff: Is this assignment I’m pushing right now really important when my students’ relatives are dying or sick? Some students really need an assignment to feel like there’s some normalcy in their day, but some kids are really struggling because they can’t focus, they’re scared. Some of my students have told me they haven’t gone outside since schools closed, so they’ve been inside for over a month. I’m trying to find a balance.”
https://newrepublic.com/amp/article/157601/im-teaching-home-dont-know-long-can-keep?__twitter_impression=true
Excellent! And thank you New York Parents.
DeJaVu all over again. Haven’t the predatory philanthropists and Corporate Disrupters done enough damage to our public schools? Help me to understand why, oh why, we are heading down this path of destruction of one of the last bastions of democracy and decency.
This is great news for Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris! This means they get to re-imagine Microsoft operating systems. You go girls!
Love to re-imagine the GATES FOUNDATION!
Re-imagined by the IRS as a taxed entity.
Imagine (apologies to John Lennon)
Imagine there’s no Windows
It’s easy if you try
No Gates Foundation
And no obnoxious guy
Imagine all the people sharing code today
Imagine no tax loop-holes
It isn’t hard to do
No way to beat the taxman
And no accountants too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no billyanthropists
If you just take a minute
No need for buggy software
A brotherhood of Linux
Imagine all the people sharing all the code, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
That’s a LOUD NO for me too!!
They are correct. The data collection is scary. The profits by the private testing agencies and textbook companies is driving education decisions? Common core is due right silly. Those of us educated decades ago laugh at that learning process. Shame on Mr. Gates if he uses the pandemic to make money off public schools!
Lets not forget how he got Bloomberg hooked on the idea that large comprehensive high schools were no good and needed to replaced with small schools within schools. Another Gates failure.
Gates is not as smart as he thinks. The small school initiative did nothing to strengthen the weakest links in the educational chain. Unfortunately those weak links are mostly beyond the control of educators – and nowhere near Bill’s and Melinda’s radar screen.
So we rightfully criticize the unequipped president, and the administration he hires with complete lack of experience to the positions they hold. Cuomo will dance around Trump out of dire necessity as to not anger him with the possibility of not allowing emergency medical equipment and gear supplies to our hard hit state during this pandemic, but he will do exactly the same with a deja vous of Gates meddling in on the backs of our children. I expected more from Andrew thinking he wised up to this from the present scenario of unqualified decision makers in Washington that he has undeniably voiced his dissatisfaction with. But then to regress backwards to the hurdle we all helped each other climb over in education running, (not sprinting) from the “Rotten to the Common Core” and the involvement of the Gates Foundation is a rude awakening. What’s the expression? “Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on me!”
Masha Gessen writes eloquently in The New Yorker of what it will take to move on after the coronavirus emergency has receded. Billy Gates would have a different take.
“The idea that we must change the world to survive this crisis and thrive in its aftermath is itself practically self-evident. In a stunning essay published last month, Arundhati Roy called the pandemic a ‘portal’: ‘We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.’ Naomi Klein has observed that ideas which seemed radical in the week before the pandemic hit the United States became commonsensical the week after; these include universal health care, universal housing, debt-free education, and the Green New Deal. But these ideas, too, cannot be suddenly picked up and slapped on—they have to be not only reasoned through but thought. And it terrifies me that, when thought is so necessary, there is so much loneliness, and solitude is so hard to come by.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-political-consequences-of-loneliness-and-isolation-during-the-pandemic
This!!!!❤️❤️
Disaster Capitalism (aka Fascism) at it’s finest. Cuomo and Gates are enemies of America,
And people have been idolizing Cuomo, even proposing him to be this year’s Dem. nominee rather than Biden. Even Randy Rainbow did a video about being in love w/Cuomo (coining a new word, “Cuomosexual”). When it was made, he wasn’t making fun of Cuomo–before this latest WaterGates, everyone has been thinking of Cuomo being a synonym for hero.
Oy vey!
Agree! Mr. Gates has a totally different agenda then parents and educators!
This is good advise but it is hardly possible to have 10 or less in a classroom. Kids will congregate in the hallways and lunch rooms. It would be extremely difficult to manage. I am surprised at Idaho taking such good care of its teachers and students in this time of crisis.
…………………….
Unless a school can do it in groups of fewer than 10, Idahoans should generally not expect their local public school or charter to reopen this academic year.
STATE BOARD REVISES SCHOOL REOPENING CRITERIA
Clark Corbin 05/04/2020
Unless a school can do it in groups of fewer than 10, Idahoans should generally not expect their local public school or charter to reopen this academic year.
The State Board of Education voted unanimously to modify the school reopening criteria Monday to align with Gov. Brad Little’s Idaho Rebounds plan for a staged reopening in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
The revisions mean Little and the State Board are providing consistent guidance when it comes to coronavirus response. But they could represent a roadblock for any medium-sized or large districts that are considering reopening this spring.
Little lifted a stay-home order and outlined a staged recovery Thursday, but public education likely won’t return to normal any time soon. The current first stage of Idaho Rebounds says gatherings, public and private, should be avoided. The second stage — tentatively scheduled to run May 16 to 29, if there is no significant spike in COVID-19 cases — allows for gatherings of fewer than 10 “where appropriate physical distancing and precautionary measures are observed.”
State Board President Debbie Critchfield and member Andrew Scoggin deferred to Little’s guidance on gatherings several times Monday.
Andrew Scoggin
“If I’m understanding this, what we’re saying is there will be no reopening of school this year based on our reentry criteria,” said Scoggin, pointing out the limit would basically allow one teacher and nine students in a standard classroom setting.
“Correct,” said Critchfield, adding that exceptions could be approved on a case-by-case basis.
Those exceptions would be considered for small groups. Schools would still be required to meet physical distancing requirements for proctoring exams or working one-on-one with special education students.
In that regard, State Board members aren’t planning for a return to normal classroom operations. Instead, they anticipate schools slowly working with very small groups, in phased settings, for short periods of time.
“If someone could keep the physical distancing requirements that are stated in the phasing in their small groups they could have pockets of things that happen,” Critchfield said.
Here is the meat of the language the State Board approved Monday (the full language, including exceptions and more specifics, is available online, scroll to Tab 2, Attachment 1).
Minimum reentry criteria:
No statewide stay-home orders are in place, and schools have a physical distancing plan in place that the local health district has approved.
The statewide reopening criteria have been met as defined at rebound.idaho.gov. School districts and charter schools located in communities that have experienced no community spread may consider returning to in-person instruction within the physical distancing guidelines and approval by the local public health district.
Approval by the local public health district, after review of school district and charter school cleaning, disinfection and physical distancing protocols.
Additionally, the State Board approved a new requirement that any school planning to reopen must have a plan in place for immediate closures should a student or faculty be diagnosed with COVID-19.
Nobody should mess with our children’s education! Not even you! Leave it alone!