EPftF: In Person Schooling
Jun. 7th, 2020 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutThe CDC has released a decision tool for schools considering reopening. The first item on the list is: “Will reopening be consistent with applicable state and local orders?”
As one would expect based on the history of public health decisions in the United States AND the deep history of local control of decisions relating to schooling, local and state decisionmaking is explicitly deferred to by federal policy.
Their considerations document clearly states this as well:
“These considerations are meant to supplement—not replace—any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which schools must comply.”
With the exceptions noted in previous posts (isolated communities that either have very little travel in and out, or places like Hawaii which were able to control their borders, enforce quarantines, and had few cases and have gotten new cases down to a very low level), I have read these statements and the lack of real detail on how to go about reopening as essentially stating: We Hate To Be the Ones to Tell You, But, NO.
There are other ways to interpret these statements. The states and large cities in our countries operate as experimental laboratories for all kinds of ideas in governance; things that are popular and/or seem effective then will be replicated elsewhere as other areas notice and eventually scale up to the national level. So in a way, the CDC is inviting localities to decide on their own when and how to reopen, with the understanding that we all get to be experiments in how (not) to do this.
Keep all that in mind when you see proposals for reopening. What follows is a list of What To Do To Reopen, organized by category. Any given proposal will have some combination from this list, and will usually have more than one item from more than one category. Mix and match, basically, endless variations on a theme.
(1) Reduce the total number of people in the small room, so that social distancing is (more / sort of) possible. Ideas in this space include A/B schedules (half the kids go for a day or a week or whatever, then they switch), choosing particular grades to attend in person (perhaps on A/B schedules) and having the other grades continue with remote / distance learning, surveying the population of parents and asking who wants to go back soon vs later, and, if the numbers seem reasonable, allowing people to volunteer to go back first vs second vs later.
(2) Create pods or sections so that if a case is found and close contacts must be quarantined, it will not be all of the school. Ideas in this space include no recess, eating meals in the classrooms at desks, keeping one teacher with a group of kids through the whole day.
(3) Screening and testing: filling out a form each morning, perhaps on a phone, answering questions about symptoms, perhaps taking temperature at home before going to school, taking temperature on arrival at school and perhaps again later in the day, testing wastewater at the school, testing students twice a week.’
(4) Using physical barriers to limit transmission: masks, barriers around each desk, barriers around each seat in the cafeteria, barriers to create separated spaces within a classroom.
(5) Additional cleaning: at night, throughout the day, of objects, of hands.
(6) Reduced sharing of items which might transmit disease.
(7) Increase air exchange: open windows, doors, do not just recirculate air but include outside air, keep filters clean and replace often, possibly redesign ventilation system, hold classes outdoors where possible.
(8) Movement rules to reduce the amount of in-passing contact: one way halls and stairs, eliminating use of elevators except where absolutely necessary.
Every single change in a school breaks something else. Increased cleaning means there will be a lot more chemicals around to become their own problem. Opening doors and windows can increase exposure to pollen or pollution and make temperature regulation much more difficult. Reducing sharing of items strains budgets or creates equity issues if students must bring their own items. Some of these are pointed out in the CDC document, but some of the things that get broken are easy to miss.
For example: cleverly creating an A/B schedule that lets everyone go back to school part time may seem — if well-designed — like a great way to reduce risk and avoid equity problems, regression, etc. However, when my friend talked about that with her children, she was surprised to learn that both kids hated the idea, even tho her kids really wanted to go back. The reasons, once she figured them out, were sound: with smaller classrooms, and no ability to see friends outside of class at recess and lunch, most of the social appeal of school is eliminated. If your friend(s) are not in your section, why bother at all? And with smaller sections, the odds are pretty bad. Additionally, a lot of the appeal of school from home is the malleability of most of the schedule: school systems that have a limited amount of zoom meetings and pick reasonable times for them equal I Get to Sleep More. But if you have to go back to getting up early in the morning every other day or every other week, you will probably wind up waking up early every day. An A/B schedule, astonishingly, may be worse than remote learning for kids who otherwise want to go back.
Surveys sent to parents to figure out what will work and what will not may also fail to capture this kind of concern, especially if the parent fills it out without consulting adequately with the children. Given that compliance on the part of the students is absolutely necessary to maintain staff willingness to work (or we are right back to fearing kids coughing on them on purpose), the hazards here are real.
As one would expect based on the history of public health decisions in the United States AND the deep history of local control of decisions relating to schooling, local and state decisionmaking is explicitly deferred to by federal policy.
Their considerations document clearly states this as well:
“These considerations are meant to supplement—not replace—any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which schools must comply.”
With the exceptions noted in previous posts (isolated communities that either have very little travel in and out, or places like Hawaii which were able to control their borders, enforce quarantines, and had few cases and have gotten new cases down to a very low level), I have read these statements and the lack of real detail on how to go about reopening as essentially stating: We Hate To Be the Ones to Tell You, But, NO.
There are other ways to interpret these statements. The states and large cities in our countries operate as experimental laboratories for all kinds of ideas in governance; things that are popular and/or seem effective then will be replicated elsewhere as other areas notice and eventually scale up to the national level. So in a way, the CDC is inviting localities to decide on their own when and how to reopen, with the understanding that we all get to be experiments in how (not) to do this.
Keep all that in mind when you see proposals for reopening. What follows is a list of What To Do To Reopen, organized by category. Any given proposal will have some combination from this list, and will usually have more than one item from more than one category. Mix and match, basically, endless variations on a theme.
(1) Reduce the total number of people in the small room, so that social distancing is (more / sort of) possible. Ideas in this space include A/B schedules (half the kids go for a day or a week or whatever, then they switch), choosing particular grades to attend in person (perhaps on A/B schedules) and having the other grades continue with remote / distance learning, surveying the population of parents and asking who wants to go back soon vs later, and, if the numbers seem reasonable, allowing people to volunteer to go back first vs second vs later.
(2) Create pods or sections so that if a case is found and close contacts must be quarantined, it will not be all of the school. Ideas in this space include no recess, eating meals in the classrooms at desks, keeping one teacher with a group of kids through the whole day.
(3) Screening and testing: filling out a form each morning, perhaps on a phone, answering questions about symptoms, perhaps taking temperature at home before going to school, taking temperature on arrival at school and perhaps again later in the day, testing wastewater at the school, testing students twice a week.’
(4) Using physical barriers to limit transmission: masks, barriers around each desk, barriers around each seat in the cafeteria, barriers to create separated spaces within a classroom.
(5) Additional cleaning: at night, throughout the day, of objects, of hands.
(6) Reduced sharing of items which might transmit disease.
(7) Increase air exchange: open windows, doors, do not just recirculate air but include outside air, keep filters clean and replace often, possibly redesign ventilation system, hold classes outdoors where possible.
(8) Movement rules to reduce the amount of in-passing contact: one way halls and stairs, eliminating use of elevators except where absolutely necessary.
Every single change in a school breaks something else. Increased cleaning means there will be a lot more chemicals around to become their own problem. Opening doors and windows can increase exposure to pollen or pollution and make temperature regulation much more difficult. Reducing sharing of items strains budgets or creates equity issues if students must bring their own items. Some of these are pointed out in the CDC document, but some of the things that get broken are easy to miss.
For example: cleverly creating an A/B schedule that lets everyone go back to school part time may seem — if well-designed — like a great way to reduce risk and avoid equity problems, regression, etc. However, when my friend talked about that with her children, she was surprised to learn that both kids hated the idea, even tho her kids really wanted to go back. The reasons, once she figured them out, were sound: with smaller classrooms, and no ability to see friends outside of class at recess and lunch, most of the social appeal of school is eliminated. If your friend(s) are not in your section, why bother at all? And with smaller sections, the odds are pretty bad. Additionally, a lot of the appeal of school from home is the malleability of most of the schedule: school systems that have a limited amount of zoom meetings and pick reasonable times for them equal I Get to Sleep More. But if you have to go back to getting up early in the morning every other day or every other week, you will probably wind up waking up early every day. An A/B schedule, astonishingly, may be worse than remote learning for kids who otherwise want to go back.
Surveys sent to parents to figure out what will work and what will not may also fail to capture this kind of concern, especially if the parent fills it out without consulting adequately with the children. Given that compliance on the part of the students is absolutely necessary to maintain staff willingness to work (or we are right back to fearing kids coughing on them on purpose), the hazards here are real.