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Pretty sad though that they we have private religious schools refusing to listen to the local Health Dept. I really don't want my kids going back.
You said you read the article tho.
".......While the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District has forbidden any private or public schools from resuming in-person instruction this fall until at least after Labor Day over COVID-19 concerns, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has said such local orders don’t apply to religious schools. With Paxton’s blessing, some San Antonio schools have already announced plans to bring students back...."
Then you asked me "you don't like the 1st Amendment?".
I asked you to clarify to which you then went into rant mode, made a strawman, pretended it was me and really went to work on it. Pretty funny, tbh.
Pretty sad though that they we have private religious schools refusing to listen to the local Health Dept. I really don't want my kids going back.
That's your choice - just as every parent should have a choice.
Way I heard it, the Sheriff couldn't guarantee security for the convention, as in could not find enough willing and able bodies in a pandemic.The petulant child had the convention moved out of Charlotte NC because the NC Governor wouldn't commit to no social distancing requirement.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...ecurity-373089
det antifa threat
Why not bring his Portland Schutzstaffel for security?
At this rate they're going to end up having the convention in a potato field in eastern Idaho.
True, I could put them in public school so they can distance learn. It would be a huge inconvenience and suck for so many reasons for me and then, but the real issue is sending kids back after just setting another death record here in Texas.
It's an open defiance of local Health directives and Paxton is just playing partisan politics.
Wait. We haven't even started school, right?
You have kids? Damn. More tadpoles in the shallow end of the gene pool.
The Importance of Reopening America’s Schools this Fall
As families and policymakers make decisions about their children returning to school, it is important to consider the full spectrum of benefits and risks of both in-person and virtual learning options. Parents are understandably concerned about the safety of their children at school in the wake of COVID-19. The best available evidence indicates if children become infected, they are far less likely to suffer severe symptoms.[1],[2],[3] Death rates among school-aged children are much lower than among adults. At the same time, the harms attributed to closed schools on the social, emotional, and behavioral health, economic well-being, and academic achievement of children, in both the short- and long-term, are well-known and significant. Further, the lack of in-person educational options disproportionately harms low-income and minority children and those living with disabilities. These students are far less likely to have access to private instruction and care and far more likely to rely on key school-supported resources like food programs, special education services, counseling, and after-school programs to meet basic developmental needs.[4]
Aside from a child’s home, no other setting has more influence on a child’s health and well-being than their school. The in-person school environment does the following:
provides educational instruction;
supports the development of social and emotional skills;
creates a safe environment for learning;
addresses nutritional needs; and
facilitates physical activity.
This paper discusses each of these critical functions, following a brief summary of current studies regarding COVID-19 and children.
COVID-19 and Children
The best available evidence indicates that COVID-19 poses relatively low risks to school-aged children. Children appear to be at lower risk for contracting COVID-19 compared to adults. To put this in perspective, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of July 17, 2020, the United States reported that children and adolescents under 18 years old account for under 7 percent of COVID-19 cases and less than 0.1 percent of COVID-19-related deaths.[5] Although relatively rare, flu-related deaths in children occur every year. From 2004-2005 to 2018-2019, flu-related deaths in children reported to CDC during regular flu seasons ranged from 37 to 187 deaths. During the H1N1pandemic (April 15, 2009 to October 2, 2010), 358 pediatric deaths were reported to CDC. So far in this pandemic, deaths of children are less than in each of the last five flu seasons, with only 64.† Additionally, some children with certain underlying medical conditions, however, are at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19.*
Scientific studies suggest that COVID-19 transmission among children in schools may be low. International studies that have assessed how readily COVID-19 spreads in schools also reveal low rates of transmission when community transmission is low. Based on current data, the rate of infection among younger school children, and from students to teachers, has been low, especially if proper precautions are followed. There have also been few reports of children being the primary source of COVID-19 transmission among family members.[6],[7],[8] This is consistent with data from both virus and antibody testing, suggesting that children are not the primary drivers of COVID-19 spread in schools or in the community.[9],[10],[11] No studies are conclusive, but the available evidence provides reason to believe that in-person schooling is in the best interest of students, particularly in the context of appropriate mitigation measures similar to those implemented at essential workplaces.
Educational Instruction
Extended school closure is harmful to children. It can lead to severe learning loss, and the need for in-person instruction is particularly important for students with heightened behavioral needs.[12],[13] Following the wave of school closures in March 2020 due to COVID-19, academic learning slowed for most children and stopped for some. A survey of 477 school districts by the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education found that, “far too many schools are leaving learning to chance.”[13] Just one in three school districts expected teachers to provide instruction, track student engagement, or monitor academic progress for all students, and wealthy school districts were twice as likely to have such expectations compared to low-income districts.[13]
We also know that, for many students, long breaks from in-person education are harmful to student learning. For example, the effects of summer breaks from in-person schooling on academic progress, known as “summer slide,” are also well-do ented in the literature. According to the Northwest Evaluation Association, in the summer following third grade, students lose nearly 20 percent of their school-year gains in reading and 27 percent of their school-year gains in math.[14] By the summer after seventh grade, students lose on average 39 percent of their school-year gains in reading and 50 percent of their school-year gains in math.[14] This indicates that learning losses are large and become even more severe as a student progresses through school. The prospect of losing several months of schooling, compared to the few weeks of summer vacation, due to school closure likely only makes the learning loss even more severe.
Disparities in educational outcomes caused by school closures are a particular concern for low-income and minority students and students with disabilities. Many low-income families do not have the capacity to facilitate distance learning (e.g. limited or no computer access, limited or no internet access), and may have to rely on school-based services that support their child’s academic success. A study by researchers at Brown and Harvard Universities assessed how 800,000 students used Zearn, an online math program, both before and after schools closed in March 2020.[15] Data showed that through late April, student progress in math decreased by about half, with the negative impact more pronounced in low-income zip codes.[15] Persistent achievement gaps that already existed before COVID-19, such as disparities across income levels and races, can worsen and cause serious, hard-to-repair damage to children’s education outcomes.[15],[16] Finally, remote learning makes absorbing information more difficult for students with disabilities, developmental delays, or other cognitive disabilities. In particular, students who are deaf, hard of hearing, have low vision, are blind, or have other learning disorders (e.g., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)) and other physical and mental disabilities have had significant difficulties with remote learning.[17]
Social and Emotional Skill Development
Schools play a critical role in supporting the whole child, not just their academic achievement. In addition to a structure for learning, schools provide a stable and secure environment for developing social skills and peer relationships. Social interaction at school among children in grades PK-12 is particularly important for the development of language, communication, social, emotional, and interpersonal skills.[18]
Extended school closures are harmful to children’s development of social and emotional skills. Important social interactions that facilitate the development of critical social and emotional skills are greatly curtailed or limited when students are not physically in school. In an in-person school environment, children more easily learn how to develop and maintain friendships, how to behave in groups, and how to interact and form relationships with people outside of their family. In school, students are also able to access support systems needed to recognize and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, appreciate others’ perspectives, and make responsible decisions. This helps reinforce children’s feelings of school connectedness, or their belief that teachers and other adults at school care about them and their well-being. Such routine in-person contacts provide opportunities to facilitate social-emotional development that are difficult, if not impossible, to replicate through distance learning.[18],[19],[20]
Additionally, extended closures can be harmful to children’s mental health and can increase the likelihood that children engage in unhealthy behaviors. An environment where students feel safe and connected, such as a school, is associated with lower levels of depression, thoughts about suicide, social anxiety, and sexual activity, as well as higher levels of self-esteem and more adaptive use of free time [19],[20] A longitudinal study of 476 adolescents over 3 years starting in the 6th grade found school connectedness to be especially protective for those who had lower connectedness in other areas of their lives, such as home, and to reduce their likelihood of substance use.[20]
Further, a review of studies conducted on pandemics found a strong association between length of quarantine and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, avoidance behavior, and anger. Another review published this year found that post-traumatic stress scores of children and parents in quarantine were four times higher than those not quarantined.[21],[22]
In-person schooling provides children with access to a variety of mental health and social services, including speech language therapy, and physical or occupational therapy to help the physical, psychological, and academic well-being of the child.[23], [24],[25],[26] Further, school counselors are trained in the mental health needs of children and youth and can recognize signs of trauma that primary caregivers are less able to see because they themselves are experiencing the same family stresses. School counselors can then coordinate with teachers to implement interventions to offer children a reassuring environment for regaining the sense of order, security, and normalcy.
Without in-person schooling, many children can lose access to these important services. For example, we know that, even outside the context of school closures, children often do not receive the mental health treatment they need. Among children ages 9-17, it is estimated that 21 percent, or more than 14 million children, experience some type of mental health condition.[27] Yet only 16 percent of those with a condition receive any treatment.[23] Of those, 70-80 percent received such care in a school setting.[23] School closures can be particularly damaging for the 7.4 million American children suffering from a serious emotional disturbance. For those individuals who have a diagnosable mental, behavioral or emotional condition that substantially interferes with or limits their social functioning, schools play an integral role in linking them to care and necessary support services.
For children with intellectual or physical disabilities, nearly all therapies and services are received through schools. These vital services are difficult to provide through distance learning models. As a result, more children with disabilities have received few to no services while schools have been closed.
Safety
Extended school closures deprive children who live in unsafe homes and neighborhoods of an important layer of protection from neglect as well as physical, sexual, and emotional maltreatment and abuse. A 2018 Department of Health and Human Services report found that teachers and other educational staff were responsible for more than one-fifth of all reported child abuse cases—more than any other category of reporter.[28] During the COVID-19 school closures, however, there has been a sharp decline in reports of suspected maltreatment, but tragically a notable increase in evidence of abuse when children are seen for services. For example, the Washington, D.C. Child and Family Services Agency recorded a 62 percent decrease in child abuse reporting calls between mid-March and April 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019, but saw more severe presentation of child abuse cases in emergency rooms.[29] Children who live in a home or neighborhood where neglect, violence, or abuse occur, but who are not physically in school, are deprived of access to trained school professionals who can readily identify the signs of trauma and provide needed support and guidance.[30],[31],[32],[33],[34]
Nutrition
Extended school closures can be harmful to the nutritional health of children. Schools are essential to meeting the nutritional needs of children with many consuming up to half their daily calories at school. Nationwide more than 30 million children participate in the National School Lunch Program and nearly 15 million participate in the School Breakfast Program.[35],[36] For children from low-income families, school meals are an especially critical source of affordable, healthy foods. While schools have implemented strategies to continue meal services throughout periods of school closures, it is difficult to maintain this type of school nutrition program over the long-term. This is a particularly severe problem for the estimated 11 million food-insecure children, living in the United States.
Physical Activity
When schools are closed, children lose access to important opportunities for physical activity. Many children may not be sufficiently physically active outside of the context of in-school physical education (PE) and other school-based activities. Beyond PE, with schools closed, children may not have sufficient opportunities to participate in organized and safe physical activity. They also lose access to other school-based physical activities, including recess, classroom engagements, and after school programs.
The loss of opportunities for physical activity from school closures, especially when coupled with potentially diminished nutrition, can be particularly harmful to children. Physical inactivity and poor nutrition among children are major risk factors for childhood obesity and other chronic health conditions. Over 75 percent of children and adolescents in the United States do not meet the daily physical activity level recommendations (60 minutes or more), and nearly half exceed 2 hours per day in sedentary behavior. Current models estimate that childhood obesity rate may increase by 2.4 percent if school closures continue to December 2020.[37],[38],[39]
Conclusion
Schools are an important part of the infrastructure of our communities, as they provide safe, supportive learning environments for students, employ teachers and other staff, and enable parents, guardians, and caregivers to work. Schools also provide critical services that help meet the needs of children and families, especially those who are disadvantaged, through supporting the development of social and emotional skills, creating a safe environment for learning, identifying and addressing neglect and abuse, fulfilling nutritional needs, and facilitating physical activity. School closure disrupts the delivery of in-person instruction and critical services to children and families, which has negative individual and societal ramifications. The best available evidence from countries that have opened schools indicates that COVID-19 poses low risks to school-aged children, at least in areas with low community transmission, and suggests that children are unlikely to be major drivers of the spread of the virus. Reopening schools creates opportunity to invest in the education, well-being, and future of one of America’s greatest assets—our children—while taking every precaution to protect students, teachers, staff and all their families.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...g-schools.html
The economist makes some decent arguments as well, you may find it a good read.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/20...h-the-benefits
Not yet.
School in just about every district in Texas is going to be distance learning.
I came across that article earlier and couldn't read it without a subscription. Do you mind posting the entire thing? thanks.
sometimes these sites are sloppy and have a 1-2 second delay before the paywall pops up. when i encounter sites like that, i reload the URL and quickly snipe Cntrl+A, and Cntrl+C to copy all the content, then dump it into a word doc or pastebin or some , and you can read it that way
https://pastebin.com/SXBUvfZ4
wapo paywall is bypassed when incognito. NYT, not so much
Let them learn
The risks of keeping schools closed far outweigh the benefits
Millions of young minds are going to waste
All around the world, children’s minds are going to waste. As covid-19 surged in early April, more than 90% of pupils were shut out of school. Since then the number has fallen by one-third, as many classrooms in Europe and East Asia have reopened. But elsewhere progress is slow. Some American school districts, including Los Angeles and San Diego, plan to offer only remote learning when their new school year begins. Kenya’s government has scrapped the whole year, leaving its children idle until January. In the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte says he may not let any children return to the classroom until a vaccine is found. South Africa has reopened casinos, but only a fraction of classrooms.
Many parents are understandably scared. Covid-19 is new, and poorly understood. Schools are big and crowded. Small children will not observe social distancing. Caution is appropriate, especially when cases are rising. But as we have argued before, the benefits of reopening schools usually outweigh the costs.
The new coronavirus poses a low risk to children. Studies suggest that under-18s are a third to a half less likely to catch the disease. Those under ten, according to British figures, are a thousand times less likely to die than someone aged between 70 and 79. The evidence suggests they are not especially likely to infect others. In Sweden staff at nurseries and primary schools, which never closed, were no more likely to catch the virus than those in other jobs. A new study of 1,500 teenage pupils and 500 teachers who had gone back to school in Germany in May found that only 0.6% had antibodies to the virus, less than half the national rate found in other studies. Granted, an outbreak at a secondary school in Israel infected over 150 pupils and staff. But with precautions, the risk can be minimised.
However, the costs of missing school are huge. Children learn less, and lose the habit of learning. Zoom is a lousy subs ute for classrooms. Poor children, who are less likely to have good Wi-Fi and educated parents, fall further behind their better-off peers. Parents who have nowhere to drop their children struggle to return to work. Mothers bear the heavier burden, and so suffer a bigger career setback. Children out of school are more likely to suffer abuse, malnutrition and poor mental health.
School closures are bad enough in rich countries. The harm they do in poor ones is much worse (see article). Perhaps 465m children being offered online classes cannot easily make use of them because they lack an internet connection. In parts of Africa and South Asia, families are in such dire straits that many parents are urging their children to give up their studies and start work or get married. The longer school is shut, the more will make this woeful choice. Save the Children, a charity, guesses that nearly 10m could drop out. Most will be girls.
Education is the surest path out of poverty. Depriving children of it will doom them to poorer, shorter, less fulfilling lives. The World Bank estimates that five months of school closures would cut lifetime earnings for the children who are affected by $10trn in today’s money, equivalent to 7% of current annual gdp.
With such catastrophic potential losses, governments should be working out how to reopen schools as soon as it is safe. This should not be a partisan issue, as it has sadly become in America, where some people assume it is a bad idea simply because President Donald Trump proposes it. In some countries teachers’ unions have been obstructive, partly out of justified concern for public health as cases climb, but also because teachers’ interests are not the same as children’s—especially if they are being paid whether they work or not. The main union in Los Angeles urges that schools remain closed until a long wishlist of demands has been met, including the elusive dream of universal health care in America. Children cannot wait that long.
Places that have restarted schooling, such as France, Denmark, China and New Zealand, offer tips for minimising the risks. They let the most vulnerable teachers stay at home. They commonly reduced class sizes, even though that meant many children could spend only part of the week with their teachers. They staggered timetables to prevent crowding in corridors, at school gates and in dinner halls. They required or encouraged masks. They boosted school-based testing and tracing. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has used these to draw up sober guidelines, which include measures such as separating desks by six feet (though the vice-president this week said that schools should feel free to ignore them).
European countries waited on average about 30 days after infections had peaked before they resumed some presence at school. Having started this way, many have since relaxed the rules to let most pupils return to school at the same time. There is no known experience of schools reopening in places where the virus was as prevalent as it is now in Arizona, Florida or Texas. Such places will have to bring the virus under control before the new term begins. This probably means that not all children will be able to go back full-time even then. But a few days a week with a teacher are better than none. And, as in Europe, schools can open up more as covid-19 recedes.
The trade-offs in the global South are even harder. Only a quarter of schools in the poorest countries have soap and running water for handwashing. However, schools in such places are also where pupils are often fed and vaccinated. Closing them makes children more vulnerable to hunger and measles, and this risk almost certainly outweighs that of covid-19. The prudent course for poor-country governments is therefore to act boldly. Face down unions and reopen schools. Conduct loud re-enrolment campaigns, aimed especially at girls. Offer small cash transfers or gifts (such as masks or pens) to ease parents’ worries about the costs of getting their offspring back to class.
Reopening the world’s schools safely will not be cheap. Besides billions of bottles of hand sanitiser, it will require careful organisation, flexible schedules and assistance for those who have fallen behind to catch up. It will cost taxpayers money, but taxpayers are often parents, too. Rich countries should help poor ones with some of the costs. Steep as these will be, they are nothing like the costs of letting the largest generation in human history grow up in ignorance.
EUROPE
The EU’s leaders have agreed on a €750bn covid-19 recovery package
LEADERS
With oil cheap, Arab states cannot balance their books
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "Let them learn"
--------------------------------------------
As I have noted before, I am not against schools opening per se. There are very good arguments for getting them back in.
BUT
You need some solid risk mitigation strategies. I am somewhat doubtful teenagers will have enough mask discipline to make that work, but the longer they stay closed the greater the harm.
Get control of the virus, and open the schools, especially for younger kids. Have a plan to protect the adults that work there.
Few Republican governors have acted in a responsible fashion though, to get the virus under control, and many are actively fighting measures that localities have implemented that would do something.
(shrugs) They will have to answer to voters as this drags on, and they keep ignoring the science for the sake of ed iden y politics.
This entire episode simply demonstrates in a very concrete way why Republicans can't really be trusted with governments. Its like handing car keys to drunks.
"...School officials should make decisions about school reopening based on available data including levels of community transmission and their capacity to implement appropriate mitigation measures in schools. ..."
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...fe-return.html
Private contractors are cheaper and provide a degree of plausible deniability for ups.
"....If there is substantial, uncontrolled transmission, schools should work closely with local health officials to make decisions on whether to maintain school operations. The health, safety, and wellbeing of students, teachers, staff and their families is the most important consideration in determining whether school closure is a necessary step. Communities can support schools staying open by implementing strategies that decrease a community’s level of transmission. However, if community transmission levels cannot be decreased, school closure is an important consideration. Plans for virtual learning should be in place in the event of a school closure..."
Thanks for sharing this. Basically the same arguments I've been making but since they are now coming from the economist you think they are decent
A panegyric on reopening instead of real guidelines, I'm sure the schools appreciate the gentle encouragement.
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