Thread by @ehaspel

THREAD: Yes, it sounds Kafkaesque to open school buildings that are closed due to safety concerns for kids to do virtual schooling from.

And at the same time, I've become convinced it's wholly reasonable. I'll explain.

washingtonpost.com/local/educatio…

First, let's get this out of the way: there's no question, as @DanWuori points out, that this is another manifestation of the risk shift to undervalued care workers. By definition, a child care/after-school staffer is more at risk than a teacher at home.

nytimes.com/2020/08/04/par…

HOWEVER, set that aside for a moment. We're only talking here about what facilities should be in play. And from that standpoint, school buildings can actually keep children & staff *safer*, plus there are some other major benefits I'll get into.

"How can it possibly be safer to take groups of kids into school buildings? Didn't we have a whole big debate about that?" Well, no! We're talking about two qualitatively different concepts. Let's consider a school that normally has an enrollment of 600 kids:

Even under a hybrid model, there would be 300 kids + teachers + a full suite of administration + support staff.

Under a child care/supported virtual learning model, you can have 100 kids + staff + minimal administration.

That's a LOT less adults and kids in the building.

10 groups of 10 kids spread out across a school built for 600 effectively means those kids & adults (and remember, the danger is primarily adult-to-adult transmission) are never going to see each other. You can even limit exposure around bathrooms, etc.

Now, here's another reason it's safer: If a school district is only choosing a handful of school sites to open, it can choose the most modern ones, the ones built within the last 5-10 years, with the best ventilation, etc., as opposed to having to press into service the old ones.

But of course you can't evaluate risk in a vacuum. And here's the thing no one seems to want to tackle head-on: these kids are going SOMEWHERE, watched by SOMEONE. So, you choose: do you want them in a windowless, ancient church basement or a modernized school? (or home alone...)

Just saying "let the churches/rec centers/libraries deal with it" isn't a solution when you start saying the next sentences. They're certainly pieces of the puzzle! School buildings alone can't meet the need. But those other sites aren't magically safe, and they have no scale.

In fact, arguably those other sites are even higher-risk because many of them are one big room, as opposed to a series of enclosed classrooms, and when you scatter children & staff to the wind, the odds of them coming into contact with COVID may well be higher!

The other thing you get from school sites -- and this is BIG -- is the ability to co-locate (virtually or in-person) services. You can set aside a room for (tele)therapy. For tutoring. For (tele)health checkups. For special education services. Don't underestimate the importance!

So it is incumbent on us to move past our initial furrowed brow of "wow, that sounds weird." It does sound weird! But we have to see the whole picture in context. Just because school buildings have the word "school" in front of them doesn't make them unsafe-at-any-speed.

I'll wrap up by saying this: I want care/facilitated learning at these sites to be free. It's absurd that we're charging parents money when we've pulled the care aspect of school away. But that's more on Congress than anyone, because the fees are mainly driven by fiscal need.

(Oh, and lest anyone forget, this whole entire mess is largely on our inept leadership that has failed to control community spread in most the country, and given us a cheese-grater of a safety net that leaves many many families with no good choices)

nytimes.com/2020/08/13/ups…

Keeping children safe - much less learning! - during this school year is going to be a Herculean task under the very best of circumstances, and those are off in the Kuiper Belt somewhere. **We should not make this harder on ourselves and our families & kids than it needs to be**

That's what we're doing when we refuse to open, or may hay about opening, a very limited number of school buildings for a very limited use. Making it harder than it needs to be benefits NO ONE, because, again, we're just forcing air to another part of the balloon.

So let's lay this one to rest. Modernized school building should be allowed to take in a small number of students for care, facilitated virtual learning, and support services.

Now let's move on to the next problem. Take your pick, there are plenty to choose from. /end

*make hay