01-12-2022, 09:30 PM
(01-12-2022, 08:28 PM)ZEBuilder Wrote:(01-12-2022, 04:01 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: What do you think re-opening will look like? What if the school has no teachers and all students who do show up are forced to sit close to each other in a large room and learn nothing? What if they get COVID sitting in that room because there is no cohorting and they are combined with hundreds of other students?
I want kids in school as well, but I also understand that our government has put us in a position where re-opening is exceedingly dangerous, and increasingly pointless. My daycare is open, but my daughter is not there.
Being someone who has close connections with people who work in the school board they don't want kids back in schools because they don't believe it is safe to do so, the HEPA filters that the government is giving to schools are primarily being used in Kindergarten classrooms and most highschools don't have many. They want students to have just as much protection as themselves because it doesn't make sense for them to have protection when the 20+ students they're with don't necessarily have the means to get high quality masks.
Many staff members are already having to isolate because of Covid cases within their families and going back is just going to make this issue worse. Staffing was already a major issue before Omicron since there already was a lack of supply teachers/ECE's/EA's that it was extremely common for their to be fail to fills and with Omicron that's only going to make the problem worse.
In kindergarten and highschools students are already forced to sit close to each other, in many highschools there are classes of 30-40 people who are elbow to elbow and many students stay in their classrooms for lunch because of the cold so you have 30+ students without masks on for all of lunch so Omicron is inevitably going to spread through school's.
It just doesn't make sense to open schools right now when our hospitalizations aren't close to peaking since opening of schools is just going to result in another wave that's going to start in kids and work it's way to everyone all over again.
Yup, that is on point.
FWIW my example is not a hypothetical, it's literally the first hand account of multiple students and teachers at different schools in NYC right now.