The most important concern about reopening schools is the health and safety of students and staff. The Trump administration has adamantly refused to provide funding to states and cities to enable them to make schools as safe as they should be.
As a result, Newsweek reports, significant numbers of teachers are quitting. This is a blow to students and schools across the nation.
It was hard to recruit teachers before the pandemic. How will these teachers be replaced?
Veteran K-12 teachers in states across the U.S. are resigning and retiring at higher rates as schools begin reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic this fall, with educators citing the stress tied to remote learning, technical difficulties and COVID-19 health concerns.
Several teachers who recently resigned, retired or opted out of their jobs ahead of pandemic reopening efforts say leaving their kids has been hard, but remote learning has made their jobs too difficult. One Florida teacher said she became paranoid due to the constant requirement of being live-streamed to dozens of students throughout all hours of the day. And an Arizona high school science teacher said he resigned from a job he loves after his district voted to return students to in-person classroom learning—creating a health risk he and many other teachers say they aren’t willing to take.
In New York State, teacher retirements are up 20 percent from 2019, according to data from the New York State Teacher Retirement System. About 650 teachers filed for retirement between July and early August alone.
A number of K-12 teachers said much of the joy they received from personal interaction with students has been undermined or eliminated altogether by teaching through a computer screen rather than a classroom.
“I had to consider the health of my family. I am a science teacher. We gather evidence and we make decisions. If there is competing data, we look at both and weigh them,” Kevin Fairhurst, who resigned from his teaching position at Arizona’s Queen Creek Unified School District on August 13, told Healthline. “The data from the experts in our health field suggested we should not yet be teaching in person because of the potential for this to cause more outbreaks.”
Fairhurst is among nine of 17 science teachers at two of the district’s high schools who have quit in the past few months. Students and teachers at school districts around the country receive daily temperature checks and are required to wear masks—even on recess playgrounds—as administrators are aiming to eliminate the chance of spreading COVID-19.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Someone yesterday left a note pointing out the following: Under pressure from the Trump maladministration, Fauci has described reopening schools as an “experiment.” Federal law prohibits experimentation on human subjects without their informed consent. This is especially important when the experimentation can lead to disease and/or death, which is certainly the case with school reopenings in the absence of testing and N95 masks for all who enter schools.
It’s a DEADLY experiment, too.
and not much of a controlled experiment when districts won’t follow the same procedures
Temperature checks are insufficient for detecting whether someone has Covid19. Many carriers, fully capable of transmitting the disease, are asymptomatic. And the types of masks and face shields typically available to teachers and students, while somewhat helpful, are not woefully inadequate. Both issues can be laid at the feet of the Trump maladministration, which has refused to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of PPE and testing sufficiently for reopening. Trump said at his Trump Love Fest 2020 last week that he would “always protect Americans.” This failure to do his job shows what a LIE that is.
correction: are woefully inadequate
What we really need (desperately) is not temperature checks on the school population but brain checks on our leadership class (both parties) to see if there is any active gray matter between their ears.
Betsy DeVos just said the covid19 pandemic is a”good thing” for US schools which ranks right up there with Arne Duncan’s statement that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to New Orleans schools.
These people are not just dumb. They are brain dead.
Many schools and districts have not even done the minimum to protect their staff and students. They have not cleaned and disinfected ALL of the HVAC duct work and system. They are just expecting magic to clean them and make it safe.
Some schools are old enough to not have an HVAC system. My school building is 56 years old. It has a boiler and no air conditioning. There’s no filtration system to clean and very little outside air coming in. And I know my building is one of thousands.
True
Interesting about teachers quitting, or opting out early. Most teachers are women. ________________________________
…and?
What does that have to do with anything?
Men will “tough it out” if it makes them look “decisive”, “brave” and “unemotional” even though there is considerable uncertainty about the safety and wisdom of doing so.
After all, men regularly sign up to go to war and risk their life even when they have absolutely no clue what it’s for (Haliburton and Lockheed-Martin’s bottom line)
There is absolutely no good answer to this one piece of the pandemic -how to educate our kids. If they are in school, because of severe restrictions, we cannot do many of the things we normally do that are the essence of a school community. Sitting 6 feet from each other, masks on our faces, in some cases shields separating us from her peers… Nightmare. And it is worse the younger you go. Kindergarten, the grade I teach, is the exact opposite of social distancing. Most activities and lessons are hands-on. All year long, but especially in the fall, we are building our class community with friendship circles and games and activities that serve to help kids learn about and connect with each other.
I totally empathize with teachers who just cannot continue under these conditions. I wish they would not leave their calling (we need you! The kids need you!) but I certainly understand it.
And if the plan is to keep students in the classroom for the full school day like it was in my district before they reversed and went fully remote, to enforce 5–6 year olds sitting in a chair for seven hours with a 30 minute recess break is not only preposterous but cruel. We were told “ No movement in the building, no movement in the classroom.” Any parent of a young child knows the untenability and cruelty of trying to enforce this.
And then of course there is the risk of transmission of the virus. To be honest, I’m not as worried about that as the quality of life for my students. But of course, it IS a concern.
Virtual learning is just as much a nightmare in it’s own special way. Again, especially for kindergarten and lower grades, but for ALL. Pretty much no silver lining here.
So that leaves us with only one way to approach this catastrophe: both parents and teachers must do what they know is best for their kids, make their own decisions based on their kids and the kids ages. Frankly, my district can mandate whatever they want. I will firmly stick to a plan that works best for my kindergarten students. And we will bumble our way through together as best we possibly can until we can actually go back to some semblance of typical, magical kindergarten.
Sounds like it will be Bill Gates to the rescue! I wish I could find the article that I read yesterday about all the “new” initiatives that the B & M Gates Foundation has schemed up to put into schools. Could it be that Bill doesn’t like it that Jeff Bezos has topped him for richest AND most important man in the world?
It was on Nancy Bailey’s blog
https://nancyebailey.com/2020/08/30/de-professionalizing-public-schools-during-covid-19-the-problem-with-bill-gatess-projects/
There is no end to this guy’s stunningly tone deaf hubris and arrogance. He is a bully billionaire with weaponized wealth that continuously inserts himself into issues in public education about which he has no training or expertise. His solutions always undermine and deprofessionalize the role that trained professionals do.
Gates pays big money to portray himself as the world’s savior.
Savior my A_S!!! He has red horns and a pointed red tail. Greed and power monger is what he is.
“Students and teachers at school districts around the country receive daily temperature checks and are required to wear masks—even on recess playgrounds—as administrators are aiming to eliminate the chance of spreading COVID-19.”
Unfortunately, temperature checks don’t mean much. My friend’s husband was in a secure expensive nursing home and all workers had their temperatures checked before entering the building. Nobody was allowed to enter who didn’t work there. He caught COVID-19 and died a few weeks later.
How many children are really going to keep their masks in place? Some are too young and some have parents who know Trump has said nobody needs to wear a mask. Some will just rebel and the younger ones will have all sorts of reasons to take it off or play with it.
I get tired, sweaty of wearing a mask just to go grocery shopping. I am relieved when i can take that thing off inside my car. If its hard for an adult, how ‘easy’ will it be for a child?
Administrators had the summer to plan for remote teaching. Nothing was done as far as I know. I’m not trained in how to teach elementary music remotely when kids don’t have any of the equipment that I use daily in classrooms.
I totally understand why teachers, if possible, would quit. Unfortunately many don’t have the luxury of being able to provide without that paycheck.
A quote from a friend who is a retirement counselor for the TCRS (Tennessee retirement program): I have never seen so many teachers retiring as I have this year. I do not know the. Data, but last year one system I read about had 35 teaching positions that never got filled.
What a hard decision to make in more ways than one. Naturally, people have to wonder how they are going to support their families given the state of the job market. Then there are all the health issues for both students and their families and the teachers and their families. There isn’t going to be any big payout to take care of survivors. We are all on our own. It’s a craps shoot!
We all hope that someday the COVID-19 pandemic will be over so we can go back to a normal way of life. Whatever “normal” maybe in the future. It is understandable why teachers and administrators are choosing to retire from the profession. Very understandable.
The question to ask is what is going happen when normalcy returns. Who will be in the wings to replace all the experienced teachers who have left? Many colleges of education before the pandemic were having a hard time recruiting students to enter the profession. In some states the number students graduating from the colleges of education were not enough to replace those that retire under normal circumstances. Federal and State leaders are treating teachers as collateral damage while schools open as something to be expected and tolerated. Respect for the lives and health of teachers and their families is non-existent.
Now what is going to happen? The shortage of teachers is going to be even worse than it was before the pandemic. It seems what we are experiencing is on a downward spiral that is a very slippery slope with no clear sight as to what will happen with education in the future.
Bill Gates has solutions for this. More crap out of the BM Foundation that will dumb down education even more. Read above from Nancy Bailey’s blog ^^^^^
This bit of information was sent to me by a Trump lover. I guess teachers shouldn’t worry since only 9,683 died from COVID-19 last week. Trump is working miracles. [I’m sure doctors recognize when COVID-19 is contributing to the death of a person who has other health issues.]
My response back to her: The Trump administration is instructing hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in reporting their COVID-19 data to the government each day, effective Wednesday.
“As of July 15, 2020, hospitals should no longer report the Covid-19 information in this document to the National Healthcare Safety Network site,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in a document providing guidelines for hospitals on how to submit coronavirus data.
……………….
Revised CDC Figures: Fewer Deaths From COVID-19 Only
Sunday, 30 August 2020 07:13 PM
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report late last week showing that just 9,683 Americans, or 6%, died with only COVID-19 listed on their death certificates, leading to a social media trending topic on the issue.
The other 94% of deaths were listed as having at least one additional medical condition linked to their death.
Some of the underlying diseases listed by the CDC include influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, heart failure and renal failure.
Twitter proponents on both sides of the issue made their case that the data either proved that the CDC had been wrong all along or that that health officials have said from the start that comorbidities were more likely to cause a person to die from COVID-19 anyway…
Revised CDC Figures: Fewer Deaths From COVID-19 Only | Newsmax.com
Never fear, Besty the Brutal Brainless Beast Devos and Donald Eek Thinkly Skin Always Lying Trump will allow any Fascist Trumpist to become a teacher even if they are illiterate and do not read books like their Dear Leader the Kremlin’s Agent Orange that is also known as MAGA Man, Moscow’s Agent Governing America.
This is off topic.
What type of ‘leader’ wants Americans to be killed in the streets? “Law and order” Trump does. Only he can ‘fix’ rioters. Of course, he exacerbates the chaos and wants his home grown loyal white militias to come out and fight. I wouldn’t be surprised if sometime in the future we learn that Trump was paying people to start riots just to make protestors look bad.
……………………………………….
Will America survive Trump’s effort to stoke a Civil War?
Aug. 31, 2020 3:58 pm
By Thom Hartmann A…
George W. Bush had 9/11, and Adolf Hitler had the burning of the Reichstag. In both cases, an attack on the nation brought people together behind their leader.
White nationalists, including those embedded in police departments, have been attacking Black Lives Matter protestors in high profile ways the last few months, and Donald Trump is hoping it will help him. Over the weekend, both Kellyanne Conway and Laura Trump said as much, even implying that people being killed in the streets is good for Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, white supremacist leaders are donating enthusiastically to the Trump campaign, including Louisiana’s head of the Aryan nation, while Trump’s national security chief says he’s no longer going to tell Democrats in Congress what the administration knows about foreign efforts to subvert our election. In the White House, his advisers are not allowed to use the phrase “domestic terrorism” because it is identified by the FBI as a tactic overwhelmingly used by rightwing white racists.
Historically, Americans come together when our country is attacked by its enemies. Historically, however, those enemies that attacked the nation are not the president’s friends and allies.
Trump is now tripling down on Richard Nixon’s 1968 strategy. Back then, following the murder of Martin Luther King, our cities were smoldering and Nixon, pointing to footage of Black people rioting, based his campaign on “law and order.”
In this iteration, Trump is actively trying to provoke riots so he can claim, like Nixon, that he’s the law and order guy who can fix things.
Outside of the Fox News and rightwing hate radio bubble, Americans are increasingly horrified by Trump and his followers’ constant glorification and provocation of violence by police and vigilantes.
Many Americans had worried that Trump’s actions might eventually lead to some sort of Civil War a few years down the road. But what if Trump himself, in an effort to influence the election, is successful at getting more and more Americans to kill each other right now?
Will that help him get elected? Or will enough Americans see through this transparent effort to create death and chaos so he can claim, “I, alone, can fix it!”
Trump, Conway and Murdoch all seem to be betting that the more often they can provoke people into the streets, the more likely it is there will be more property destruction and death.
If they succeed with this strategy, America will have been put on a course followed by numerous countries in the past, and in every single case it has ended badly.
-Thom
Would Trump say Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense if he was black or brown and killed two demonstrators? He came from Illinois with a gun. Nobody does that who isn’t prepared to use it.
……………………….
Trump defends Kenosha suspect as acting in self-defense
08/31/20 06:47 PM EDT
President Trump on Monday defended the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager accused of killing two protesters in Kenosha, Wis.
“We’re looking at all of it. That was an interesting situation. You saw the same tape as I saw,” the president told reporters during a news conference at the White House.
Trump described Rittenhouse as acting in self-defense, saying he was “very violently attacked” by demonstrators..
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/514515-trump-defends-kenosha-suspect-as-acting-in-self-defense
The two men killed by Rittenhouse did not have weapons.
Wow–such ignorance & mind sickness on all fronts! it45 had said if it wasn’t reelected there would be a civil war. & it is now rubbing its rodent’s feelers together in glee, contemplating its trip to Kenosha.
& the continued silliness of “temperature taking” which tells us…NOTHING (like “standardized” testing, & now we know better, wo why are they doing it & pretending as if people w/o fevers are perfectly healthy? Sounds like they’re all clones of Brian “I didn’t know people w/covid could be asymptomatic!” Kemp.
Early on, in March, I started wearing a mask (actually, I had worn one before when in airports, because I had spent at least 3 trips sick, in bed, for an entire weekend because someone had coughed or sneezed nearby, not covering his/her mouth, nose. OR people would sneeze or cough into their hands, then touch everything–escalator railings, bathroom stall doors, etc.). Lovely.
Anyway, I was asked in a grocery store line, “Why are you wearing a mask? Are you sick?” I said, “No, I’m wearing one so I don’t get sick.” He laughed & said, “Wearing a mask isn’t going to help!” I thought, then asked him, “Are you a doctor?” “Yes, an eye doctor.” Figures.
Funny, now, we’ve been told the virus enters through the eyes, as well. (Husband & I wear clear wrap-arounds when shopping.) Wondering if this eye doctor is now wearing a mask…& covering his eyes?
Unless you had access to the N95(?) masks, wearing a mask is for the protection of others from your germs, not the other way around. But you knew that… You are right about airplanes. They can be incubators of disease.
Teachers and students getting severely ill and dying is ‘good for schools’ says Ditsy DeVos. She is no better than Trump. Gad, what ignorance.
https://t.co/KVrbfXJ7OA?amp=1
In my opinion, it’s not just ignorance.
It’s incorrigible ignorance, aka stupidity.
Arne Duncan also made a very similar remark: that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to New Orleans schools.
Apparently, the only qualification to be Secretary of Education these days is that one be a nitwit who says everything that pops into his or her head.
It would actually be a quantum leap upward if we had a Secretary of Ed who had an EEG that was not a flat line.
Sounds like 45. The part about saying out loud whatever pops into his head.
I listened for about 30 seconds. That is all that I can stand of his LIES! The damage he is doing to this country is beyond comprehension. How can this country endure his destruction?
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President Trump goes one-on-one with Laura Ingraham | Part 1
Premiered 9 hours ago
Fox News
President Trump discusses the recent violent riots in Kenosha, BLM and Joe Biden’s attack on his presidency in part 1 of his interview.
After reading this article, I guess the question for each school becomes, “In our school, how many people infected with covid will it take to close the school?”
https://cbs6albany.com/newsletter-daily/cuomo-colleges-are-a-canary-in-the-coalmine-for-education-amid-covid-19
This Florida School Is What a COVID-19 Fiasco in the Making Looks Like
“I want people to see how messed up it is,” one former student who shared photos and videos of packs of teens told The Daily Beast.
Sep. 01, 2020
…Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, said he understood the arguments Cocoran and Gov. DeSantis made—that reopening schools was crucial to childrens’ development and making sure disadvantaged students don’t fall behind. But the reality is too dire. “From a health perspective, I regret to say it is not safer to send them back to school,” Redliner told The Daily Beast. “It’s a risky business that won’t end well.”
Referring specifically to the 16.4 percent pediatric positivity rate in Polk County, Redliner said, “Let me be crystal clear. Those schools should not be open because they will be hotbeds for exacerbating the outbreak and pose a serious risk for children, their families, and their teachers.”
Polk County School Board member Sarah Fortney, whose district includes Bartow High and Sumerlin Academy, agrees. “Our administration has worked tirelessly to really do the impossible,” Fortney said. “But we have allowed public schools to become the safety nets for everything relating to students. I think it’s politics over people.”
The district is also not providing the number of students and teachers that have been instructed to quarantine. Other Florida school districts in Orange and Martin counties, for example, do publicly release how many pupils and staffers are in quarantine…
https://www.thedailybeast.com/polk-county-florida-school-bartow-senior-high-is-what-a-covid-19-fiasco-in-the-making-looks-like?source=email&via=desktop