Oh, I used to be a teacher. Trust me; I know you’re spot on about this.
I remember a call from a principal about my child’s “excessive absences”. I said, “She has a fever. Is the rule still 24 hours fever free?” She said yes but the state made her call after x absences. I later discussed this with a teacher from a poorer district and she said they never made those calls bc 1-It would take too much time/resources; 2-The #’s they had usually weren’t right; 3-It wouldn’t do any good anyway.
So we have truancy laws but the kids who miss school the most aren’t affected by them and you have principals calling parents of kids who are clearly on or above grade level talking about how they might not get credit bc of absences. (We could have had most of the absences excused with dr notes—we just usually did not get those when the kids were small.)
But really, we sent our kids except when feverish, puking, or fainting.
I was talking to a teacher in Ohio, where I’m from originally and she was saying that the state has this “report card” for schools, and attendance is a significant part of the school’s score. This was pre-Covid… no clue if it’s changed since.
So the richest school district in Cincinnati was getting Bs on the report card because the kids were getting pulled from school by parents who were taking the kids to Paris and on African safaris and such while the nearby upper-middle class schools were scorching them. Not actually a reflection of the quality of education the rich district was providing at all.
But if your district is overly concerned about their metric then the administrators might be really pushy about attendance.
I used to have kids in school. Yeah, lotta truth there.
our district does track attendance and reports to the state regularly. contacts ALL who are within the truancy window and has to. reporting to DPS is required at some point.
I mean, it’s my understanding that reporting is required but I don’t know who’s checking.
Yeah, the issue is with the lowest performing schools. Turns out the kids who attend the most do the best.
A couple years ago there was a story about a school in one of the poorest areas of SLC and they were pouring a bunch of money they got from a couple grants into school buses and drivers. Their policy was if they were notified by a certain time, where the child could be picked up, pretty much anywhere in the county not even just in the city, they would send the bus to pick the child up. They had significantly reduced their absenteeism and their state test/achievement scores were through the roof. Turns out for those type of kids, attendance and achievement were directly related with a very high correlation.
2 Likes
Oh, I have no doubt.
But that will be reflected in the school’s other metrics. Such as state test scores.
Measuring attendance directly seems a bit odd.
Or not. Maybe that’s just a burden rich school districts have to bear, and the shame of losing out to upper middle class districts will teach them some humility or something.
This is not an issue that keeps me up at nights or anything. But it does render the state “report card” essentially meaningless for people in my income bracket who are on the cusp of upper class vs upper middle class a d trying to compare school districts.
“If I could put on a statewide mask mandate, if the health department could, we would do it … The legislature has made it very clear that if we put on a mandate for kids in schools to wear a mask, that they will take it off," DeWine said. “I’m counting, frankly, on the good will of our school boards, the good will of the people of the state of Ohio.”
From the question answer period DeWine said he will not mandate in fear of the GOP legislature retaliating such that schools that are requiring masks now would have to stop.
We’ll see how well the bold will work for the state.
2 Likes
My friend’s son’s school’s entire kindergarten and first grade students have to quarantine for ten days, and a student in my son’s fourth grade class tested positive (TBD if son has to quarantine or not).
School requires a full seven days of quarantine if the student is tested on or after day five and tests negative.
I wonder how the school is going to handle these situations. Remote learning? Email packets of homework for the week? I am just bracing for when we have to do it, too.
1 Like
I’m not sure about this year, but I know that last year the local elementary school was keeping kids in pods. They sat with the same kids all day including at lunchtime.
And they had the same “special” (gym, music, library, etc.) all week.
So when a kid in neighbor’s son’s kindergarten class tested positive for Covid during gym week, the 3 other kids in the pod and the kindergarten teacher and the gym teacher all had to quarantine. But not the kids in the other pods (including neighbor’s son) nor the music teacher and art teacher and so on.
School kept going with substitute teachers.
1 Like
That’s also how it worked here last year.
This year there are no pods. Lunch is open. Recess is mask optional (I am glad they have a mandate in the building at least and most kids do wear masks at recess). I still think in our school quarantining is done by table and known other exposures, but my guess is that this year there will be causing a lot more spread than they know about.
Wait and see.
Ah yeah, that stinks. Sounds like a lot more possibilities for exposure. At least the teachers are hopefully vaccinated.
And for the 7-12th graders who have the option to be vaccinated that’s maybe fine. But for the elementary kiddos who can’t be vaccinated it seems like they should keep the pod system going at least until a month or two after the EUA for 5-11 comes through. Maybe at the start of second semester assuming the EUA comes in October or November and the semester switches sometime in January.
Too bad your school district didn’t put me in charge! 
1 Like
districts I know will pivot to a remote learning for those students. if the whole class is quarantined, then it is simpler. if only like half the class, then if the rest remains on site and regular hours, how they do the remote will be a challenge. synchronous or not, etc.
the principal should be able to give you the plan in a 3 second cut and paste. it is definitely written down somewhere
1 Like
I’ve been wondering how common it is for people to be infected by asymptomatic or presymptomatic people. Fauci says
35% infections from presymptomatic infividuals
24% from asymptomatic individuals
that’s more from completely asymptomatic people than I would have guessed.
That’s about 8:30 into the second lecture, the one given by Fauci.
By the way, this was a terrific course last year, and I expect it will be terrific this year, too. And it’s free to anyone to audit, Wednesdays 9-10ET, or to watch the lectures after-the fact (takes a few days to get posted).
I’m more surprised that 41% of people are infected by symptomatic folks.
Then again, #murica.
As usual, he’s wrong. The Johansson paper he references is a GIGO model that’s not supported by real world data.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2774707
1 Like
As usual the grade schooler thinks she knows all
3 Likes
But maybe she can get vaccinated soon.
2 Likes
That vaccine can’t get here soon enough.
Just got an email this morning that a student in my son’s first grade class is positive. TBD on whether we need to quarantine; they are still reaching out to students impacted.
If not this week, then soon we will need to quarantine, I’m sure.
2 Likes