From the article:
"Parents and guardians have differing opinions, feelings and plenty of questions about OPS’s back-to-school plans. Last month, OPS officials announced that the district’s 54,000 students would be divided into two groups, each of which would attend school in person part of the week. Students whose names start with A through K would attend every Monday and Tuesday. Those whose names start with L through Z would attend every Thursday and Friday. The groups would attend on alternate Wednesdays. On off days, students would be learning at home. District officials are calling it the Family 3/2 Model."
"...Superintendent Cheryl Logan has said that OPS has had crowded classrooms for many years, especially in South Omaha, and that to reopen schools in those crowded conditions would put too many people at risk.
"...Some parents have said they are so unhappy with the plan that they’re trying to enroll their children in neighboring school districts or will home-school their kids. "...School districts such as Millard, Elkhorn, Westside and Bellevue all are planning to have all their students attend school every day. Many of those districts have backup plans that are similar to how OPS students will start the school year. "...A critic of the plan is Aleh Bobr, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “The intention of the plan is good,” said Bobr, who will have two students in OPS elementary schools this fall. “It tries to achieve the education with decreasing the exposure to the virus. But unfortunately, it does not achieve either, either preventing the virus transmission or getting the education.” Studying at home for two or three days a week may work for older kids, Bobr said, if they are assigned a specific project such as a paper. But elementary students, he said, do not operate that way."
I was talking to my younger son last night. The school his girls attend, which is their parish K-8 school, is planning to reopen in August, with a full five day week, with masks and distancing. The school where he is a staff member, (a secular private school) is likewise planning for a five day week.
The public school districts mentioned in the article, Millard, Elkhorn, Westside, and Bellevue, are all suburbs of Omaha, but are not in OPS, the Omaha public school district. None of the schools, public or private, are "lily white", though OPS has the greater percentage of minorities. The dividing factor is income. The private schools and the public ones not in OPS have the space available to distance, though they may have to use spaces which were not previously used for classrooms, such as gyms and auditoriums. OPS has already maxed out all available space.
A likely outcome is that students who started out behind the learning curve are going to stay that way with less in-person teaching. This will further exacerbate income inequality.
Update: See this article on Vox News by an epidemiologist. He feels that schools can safely re-open.
Update: See this article on Vox News by an epidemiologist. He feels that schools can safely re-open.
"The dividing factor is income. The private schools and the public ones not in OPS have the space available to distance ..."
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of Catholic and public schools sitting empty in my area. I wonder if local school boards could rehab/rent those facilities for overflow.
It would mean hiring more teachers, maintenance, and security. Is there the will in Congress to allocate a big spending package for schools like there was for business?
Also what about the trailers they used to use for overflow students 30 years ago?
If public schools fail to come up with a quality in-person education plan, they will lose more well-off people to parochial and private schools, widening the gap between haves and have nots, and killing millages. People tend to vote down millages for schools their kids don't attend.
Trailers are still in use. They are a temporary solution that tends to become permanent. Not officially of course. But the can gets kicked down the road.
DeletePrior to the quarantine our state was working on some plans to re-balance school support away from the almost total dependence on property taxes. Then the virus hit and all bets were off.
DeleteIllinois' legislature has shown itself to be virtually extraneous when it comes to dealing with the crisis. The governor, who by and large has done a pretty good job, has been calling the shots unilaterally. As they all belong to the same party, it seems that they're all fine with this arrangement.
DeleteIf the alternative to property taxes is income or sales taxes, then it does seem prudent to wait until the economy bounces back before undertaking reform.
Just saying that there are likely some temporary facilities schools can use to spread out students to maintain social distance.
DeleteAs Stanley has noted, more pandemics could pop up as climate conditions change, and people do need to work on long-term plans that factor that in, assuming people of The Future care about public education at all.
I don't think that's a given. I see increasing numbers of well-off people using private schools or joining like-minded patients in loose-knit home school groups, and public schools becoming the choice of last resort for the poor.
About the use of temporary facilities to spread out students, we have seen this happen if there is fire or storm damage to a school building. The classes meet in church social halls or a public auditorium; this could happen now as well.
DeleteAbout public schools becoming the last resort of the poor, I think we need to see preventing this as a social justice issue.
Katherine, are the Omaha Public Schools unionized? It's quickly becoming a Republican talking point that teacher unions are the ones who are objecting to having the children in class five days per week. Maybe not the dumbest political strategy: try to drive a wedge between teachers and parents.
ReplyDeleteI sympathize with the teachers and other adult staff; probably they are considerably more at-risk of serious complications from an infection than the children as a whole are.
The OPS schools are unionized. But so are the ones in the suburbs that are planning 5 day weeks. I'm pretty sure it's the same union. The private and parochials of course aren't unionized.
DeleteThe adults are more at risk than the kids, especially if they have any health issues. From what I am reading the children are also more likely to be symptomless carriers.
Everyone will wrap themselves in the mantle of "But what about the children?!" But in fact there are multiple stakeholders in a well-functioning school system, and the requirements and needs of all must be considered.
DeleteTo some extent, I think the quality of the education needs to be subordinated to the health of both adults and children. Even if the learning environment is not optimal, my experience is that children are flexible, and can even "catch up" in future years from a semester or a year of less-than-perfect schooling. This is how we already survive foisting a sub-par teacher on a entire grade.
Having children home some days certainly will be a hardship for some parents. I believe that school districts and teachers will need to accommodate the economic reality that some parents simply can't stay home. Those students should be permitted to be in school five days per week.
The irony is that the students who most need to be in school five days are the ones least likely to be able too, at least in Omaha.
DeleteKatherine, are you saying they are least likely to be able to because their schools are the most crowded?
DeleteYes OPS is the most crowded. Hence the "3/2 Model". Also tends to be a lower income area, with the parents less likely to have flexible work situations. There is open enrollment in the sense that you can opt into another public school, if they have room for you. If it is a reasonable commute from wherr you live. Of course the available slots in the 5 day schools are likely to fill up fast.
DeleteI do not see this COVID-19 pandemic as a one time occurrence. There have been several zoonotic crossovers in the last few decades. This will probably continue and a virus more destructive than COVID is certainly possible. I think we need to retrofit our schools to weather these natural disasters. UV-C light in air recirculation systems would be one approach. Apparently there's even a sweet wavelength (220nm I think) that kills germs, doesn't produce ozone, and doesn't penetrate human eyes and skin. In tornado alley, they're building monolithic dome school buildings that are tornado-proof. We'll have to do it for pathogens. The money can be pulled from the military budget. Sorry to be a broken record.
ReplyDeleteStanley, I agree with you, we have to adapt our strategies. And tech and science can help us.
DeleteOK, principal, what do you do when one of your kids tests positive? Quarantine student? Quarantine the class? Quarantine the whole school?
ReplyDeleteNext question, principal, What do you do when one of your teacher tests positive on a test he took seven days ago, the results of which just became available?
Last question, for extra credit: Will a monument like the Iwo Jima one be unveiled next July 4 by President Trump for the teachers and students who died to make this country free?
Tom, I don't know if you intended those questions to be rhetorical, but in fact we hope that every principal, teacher and school board are working out answers to those questions (or will already have worked them out) right now.
DeleteSome of it isn't as difficult as it seems. Every school already has policies (or should) to deal with ill, contagious students and teachers. I'd imagine the same policies and protocols should be followed in case of a coronavirus infection.
The last question is rhetorical, of course. No sense erecting more monuments. But what kind of a protocol is there for late-arriving knowledge of infections? I'd hope schools already have a plan for that, but I would not bet on it.
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