Peter Greene explains the CDC guidance for schools. He does so in his inimitable style.
He links to the official guidelines and reviews them.
Bear in mind that most parents, teachers, and students want to return to real school, but with precautions in place.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is an excellent analysis. You know what’s missing from all of this? The most obvious strategic moves that could be made in education: smaller class sizes, more and smaller schools, hiring more teachers and paying them well for being and valued as professionals who make their own decisions with their colleagues about what and how to teach, and separating athletics (but not physical education) from schools into a European-style club system (do we really need football and basketball teams masquerading as schools and universities any more?). None of this will happen, but it would be nice to have some policy makers think out loud about them. And one more thing struck me as I read Peter’s commentary. I remember the days when the word masking was linked to Mardi Gras.
I’ll agree with you on everything except athletics. Sports and being part of a team are such important factors in school (especially for boys). It teaches team work and persistence and is a source of pride for the school community. It factors in band and cheerleading and pep squads to form a whole community feel to public school. Club sports (OMG I have 2…..figure skating and ice hockey) is ALL about the extraction of money from lawn mower/helicopter parents to get their kids on “the best” teams with “the best” coaches and to attend the “best” off season camps. The amount of A’s in your category is all that matters (AAA is the elite in youth hockey….also the most expensive). Youth club sports is a billion dollar BUSINESS in the US and it’s not good for the kids…physically or mentally.
There are upsides and downsides to club sports. I’m a parent of a AA hockey player. There are no public school hockey programs in NYC public schools. Club sports is rare only way my son gets to play. (His inability to play in the last 2 months, and the increasing unlikelihood of him being able to play with his team for the rest of 2020, is one of the things that has him in a serious depression right now.) The same goes for most other sports, both team and individual: Many, possibly most, NYC public schools have no serious (if any) athletic programs at all. This is something that could be improved at costs that are not that high, and it would improve the lives of kids all over the city, but it requires education officials to care about it and think inventively. Here, they really don’t care about it, and it’s a shame.
I am not saying we should not have athletic teams and events for children, they just have no business draining funds from schools and universities, funds that should go to education. I used to make a living as a soccer coach, I understand this. The “club” sports you describe have nothing do with the European club model and I think the things you describe are reprehensible. We are discussing two very different things.
Let me try to, as briefly as possible, describe European sports clubs. First, they are community-based, offer a wide variety of sports with professional instruction, and are multi-generational. They are social anchors of their communities and neighborhoods. Go to any city, town or village in any European nation and you will see soccer and track fields, gymnasiums and auditoriums, and even things like archery ranges and specialized facilities for track and field. They are not attached to schools. They also often have small restaurants for people to gather. In a city of 50,000, there may be as many 10 clubs, some offering a wide range of sports, some specializing in a few (there’s a club in a suburb of Munich that has two sports, soccer and bobsledding). They are communally owned and supported by dues of the members, dues that are much cheaper than the clubs you know about because all people in a community or neighborhood chip in.
The emphasis is on participation. For example, in soccer there are team ranging from under 6s to old men and women teams. And within age groups there are multiple offerings, so if you have a lot of kids in a particular age group, they create more teams to allow more to participate and play rather than having them sit on sidelines all the time. Practices and games become neighborhood social events. Parents often sit in restaurants open spaces or patios to have a beer or a snack while they can watch their children practice. Older people with no children come to visit. When the men’s top teams (how every league in every sport is theoretically connected, from the lowest teams to the professional leagues is a sermon for another day) play their competitions, people from the neighborhoods come to watch ranging from the dozens to the thousands.
This is too long, but if you’re interested, I’m sure there are a number of articles to Google. But these clubs are in no way analogous to the “clubs” you describe. The idea of Southeastern Conference–Catholic and public high school football/basketball-style teams with schools attached to them does not exist. They’re as sports crazy as Americans, perhaps more so. It’s still linked to the education that sports provide, but not to educational institutions–where the only athletics are intramural social gatherings for students only and not about economic or bragging rights.
Flerp…..my son is also AA and he broke his arm playing hockey before the pandemic closed all the rinks. Sure, he wants to play again and see his friends, but he also needed a break both mentally and physically. Youth sports around here is a toxic nightmare which usually involves the same parents that strive for the high scores on standardized tests. The kids here have to be perfect scholars, stellar athletes, hold a PT job, do community service….all in an attempt to pad their HS resume for college…UGH! I’m really tired of it. I love the sport and watching him play, and he misses the friendships and team aspect more than the constant “drilling” of skills.
I hear you, Lisa, it’s a tough balance. A ton of it comes down to the coach and the other parents. I do wish I lived somewhere where high school hockey existed in public schools. Anyway, it’s all become moot now.
Here’s a nice short summary of what I did a horrible job of explaining above. I’ll see if I can find another.
https://www.pennlive.com/patriotnewssports/2011/04/club_sports_is_king_in_europe.html
Actually, I must apologize for letting that line distract from the cogent and important remarks Peter made. That was not my intent. I should have kept it at smaller class sizes, more schools, and teachers as professionals who deserve autonomy. That was my main point in support of his argument. Let’s table the club stuff for another day. It won’t change here. And what Lisa and FLERP! describe is semi-professionalism, not club sports.
Just saw this. This is the kind of leadership that has been woefully missing during the pandemic.
https://crooksandliars.com/2020/05/north-dakotas-governor-fights-back-tears
Until a vaccine exists, reopening schools under any conditions is a guarantee that teachers will die of covid-19. To anyone who says that’s a cost we have to bear, I would ask which if your family members will you volunteer to die?
I agree. And children will die as well. We are learning more and more about this inflammatory condition in children. I wonder if parents will even want to send their kids back to school with no really good understanding of it and good treatments for it.
You either open a school or you don’t. There’s no such thing as halfway open.
Distance learning during this crisis is akin to treading water and barely keeping from drowning. Unfortunately we need to keep treading until a vaccine is developed or when a real effective treatment is discovered. Then and only then can we freestyle swim
I was just going to head outdoors to enjoy some surprisingly nice (non-rainy) weather, but, wow, where does one begin? There’s so much good stuff on here.
I don’t know how Diane and all of you do it.
What more to say about the proposed guidelines that Peter and Co. haven’t already said better?
I mean you gotta love that kindergarten teacher who mentions in the comments section on Peter’s blog those kids “spitting, biting, kissing and face licking”. God bless you. I volunteered to help our elementary teachers a couple years ago at the end of June. It was the very least I could do. And, it took me, like, 20 minutes to get those 1st graders from some playground to the gym. The distance was 100 yards, tops. Those wonderful kids quickly wore me down like the stubby remains of pencil.
I will say the restrictions on classroom seating made me chuckle a bit.
I remember an administrator years ago who seemed to evaluate teachers on whether students were working in groups. Groups = good. Students sitting alone = bad. Always. The observations were simplistic and stupid.
What will that sort of shallow administrator do now? They’ll be lost.
I think that administrator is the superintendent of my local school system! Was the administrator the essence of bland and a scrupulous implementer of top down rules, no matter how inane?
I had those administrators, too!
The average elementary classroom is about 900 square feet (30ft x 30ft). The average high-school classroom is 1024 square feet (32 x 32). If a desk and chair takes up 3 square feet of space, and there is supposed to be 6 feet between desks on all sides, then there could be at most 16 desks in a classroom, including the teacher’s, which would have to shrink to the size of a student desk and chair. So, 15 kids and a teacher, with the outside desks against walls (3 + 6 + 3 + 6 + 3 + 6 +3 = 30). And how, given these desks in the way, are people supposed to be able to get to the white board AND maintain that 6 feet of social distancing? And how, exactly, will entering and exiting the classroom occur while maintaining six feet of distance from any other person at all time? And how do students collaborate, and how do teachers give feedback? If they can only do this remotely, then why be in a classroom at all?
And, at any rate, these are enclosed rooms, the aerosolized virus from a cough or even a simple exhalation can travel 26 feet in the air, the virus can linger in the air for up to 3 hours, and surgical masks are NOT an absolute protection against the aerosolizing of the virus. One study showed that they filter only 60 percent of aerosolized particles–some protection during a random, brief encounter with another person, but certainly not sufficient to provide protection in this situation. So, what’s to happen? Are all kids to wear N95 masks, and if so, where are all those going to come from? And, of course, kids touch EVERYTHING and are extremely social creatures, and it would take insane levels of policing and truly draconian disciplinary procedures to change that.
This just doesn’t work.
Schools cannot be reopened until there is a vaccine. Otherwise, lots and lots of teachers and administrators and many kids as well will die.
Oh, and office cubicles are open at the top. And how, at any rate, is a teacher or student to see through a cubicle? This makes no sense. And floor-to-ceiling plexiglass enclosures with space to maneuver between them would require even fewer desks per classroom. Eight kids and one teacher per class? Ridiculous. Did the folks at the CDC think about their guidelines AT ALL? And, as Peter says, have they ever met a human child or teen?
“Schools cannot be reopened until there is a vaccine. Otherwise, lots and lots of teachers and administrators and many kids as well will die.”
The only caveat I’d add is that we have no way of knowing how long it will take for a successful vaccine to be developed, deployed, and administered to all students and teachers. It could take a year. It could take several years. It might never happen at all. So in the interim, we have to focus on 100% remote learning, including investments to ensure every household has broadband access and one working device for each school-age child (with replacements as needed), more sophisticated software tailored to remote instruction (simply using video-call technology that was designed for small groups of friends or business conference calls isn’t going to cut it), and teacher training that ensures all students are receiving live instruction remotely. If this is going to be the new normal, we have to take it really seriously.
We certainly do. Kids need books and supplies and computers and internet connections at home. And real teachers delivering instruction. Lord, Flerp!, I wish we had some leadership in this country.
Wait who is paying for my housing. And food and everything else I need if I have to stay home with my 5 & 7 year old because there is only remote learning? If there is no real vaccine or treatment do my children just never make it past a third grade education? This makes no sense for families not wealthy enough to hire a personal home teacher. Because make no mistake- that kid who is taking off a year from college because they don’t want to distance learn is NOT going to make my young boys sit at a computer all damn day instead of run around d the yard etc. My father was born in 1920 and spent his entire school career going to public school with out measles or mumps or polio vaccines.
Well, the bad news is that parents still have the same problem under plans to partially reopen, with students only attending school twice a week.
The tech industry has always used a fake crystal ball to market its products: In x years, everyone will wear Google Glass. Buy Glass! In x years, everyone will wear VR headsets. Buy headsets! In x years, cars will drive themselves. Buy autonomous vehicles! In x years, surgeons will operate on live humans remotely. Buy stock in medical tech! In x years, AI will reach the singularity and become smarter than humans. Surrender your data! In x years, robots will do all jobs and humans will have nothing but free time. Stop fighting for decent wages! Build “smart” surveillance cities! It’s the future! Teachers, put your lessons online! It’s the future!
Nonsense.
Coronavirus is not a hoax or a conspiracy, but the cascade of hocus pocus, tarot card, crystal ball predictions about schools “flipping” and “blending” instruction to keep people physically distant from one another into the long term future is a hoax and a conspiracy. No one knows how many covid-19 cases there are going to be next week, let alone three months from now. No one knows if or when there will be immunotherapy. Online instruction stinks and everyone hates it. There is no way to make it work. It is not the future. So I have an idea: How about if all the techie twits and their sycophants stop making silly predictions, and we all take care of ourselves and each other in the present.
I agree. It does stink. But for a time, we are going to have a choice between making something work at a distance or having a lot of teachers, administrators, staff, kids, and parents die. No one except the delusional Donald Trump and his mini mes like Bolsonaro and our Governor DeSantis here in Flor-uh-duh thinks that this is going “to go away like magic,” to quote our toddler president.
We should fully reopen when it is fully safe to do so, when infection cases are one in a million. That said, it’s just as irresponsible and wrong to predict that the pandemic will last for years as to predict that it will end by the next national holiday sale. Creating false fear is as irresponsible and wrong as creating false hope. We don’t know where we’re going to be months from now. Period. We need to take it one week at a time, wait until it’s safe to reopen, and then reopen. What I do not want to see is schools trying to figure out how to make online education work. It doesn’t. Trying to make it work is trying to open Pandora’s box. This summer, NYC summer school will be online, using AI grading to quadruple class sizes. Try to make that work, let’s not.
Not only can schools not “fully” reopen until it’s fully safe to do so, but they can’t even partially reopen until it’s fully safe to do so. That means a vaccine, and every student and teacher vaccinated. And if that is the plan, then we need to commit to doing remote education. School districts should not just take it one week at a time. Schools need to plan. Ensuring that every family has high speed internet and devices for every student is not a decision you can make out of the blue.
Left Coast Teacher, I never said that the pandemic would last for years. However, the Coronavirus is not simply going to go away. What would cause that to happen? Magic? It will be safe to open schools when one of the following is the case:
We have a vaccine, or
We have sufficient testing, tracing, and isolation to be able to keep new cases in check. We are far, far, far from such a situation. To do this, we have to be able to test EVERYONE, regularly.
One day, we shall have a decent vaccine. But the virus will continue to mutate. Will we be able to keep up with it, as we do with flu viruses, sort of? About that, who knows.
Gerry Brooks, principal extraordinaire, provides his own analysis of the CDC guidelines.
GREAT!!!