2020-2021 School year

[Neverland Scraps]

Good luck homeschooling, Wendy! You have a strength that I do not possess.


Robin, I too feel blessed to have older kids. I'm not a great teacher and don't want to try and be one now.

I homeschooled my girls for years.....these are the fun years! I miss teaching them things they'll need to learn in life like reading and writing. Now I get to do it with the youngest and when this is all over I can say I taught all the kids how to read/write! :wub:

 

[LynnZant]

Ugh! I went to the football game last night to see my daughter and the rest of the (only) senior band members perform in a monsoon after an hour rain delay because of lightening. They only did pregame because it was raining so hard. We get a bunch of emails today from the school and band director that some girl has a fever and is getting tested Thursday. They said all senior band member should quarantine for 14 days. Grrrrr!!! Really? So my kid who was no where near this girl at all ever has to miss her sport and what little was left of her final year of band? The band directors should also quarantine, and all the football players who ran on the field while she was out there, and every sport than any senior band member plays. Where does it end? I'm fine with all or nothing, but this dangling bits of a life in front of kids just to have it ripped away when someone has a fever is BS! They don't say that she was exposed--only that she has a high fever. They also say their decision to have them quarantine is based on the county board of health's guidelines, but they aren't following their guidelines anyway by having band and sports in the first place. The county recommended to not have any of it. Again, it's not safe to go to school wearing masks and socially distancing, but it's okay to do sports!?!


Okay, sorry, rant over.

 

[lovely1m]

Ours is doing hybrid learning. They are in class 2 days a week and virtual 3 days a week. I have no idea how the virtual day will look, they haven't told us yet. I am pretty nervous about that. Last spring my son struggled with it a lot. We don't start until until after Labor Day.

 

[aussiegirl]

Ugh! I went to the football game last night to see my daughter and the rest of the (only) senior band members perform in a monsoon after an hour rain delay because of lightening. They only did pregame because it was raining so hard. We get a bunch of emails today from the school and band director that some girl has a fever and is getting tested Thursday. They said all senior band member should quarantine for 14 days. Grrrrr!!! Really? So my kid who was no where near this girl at all ever has to miss her sport and what little was left of her final year of band? The band directors should also quarantine, and all the football players who ran on the field while she was out there, and every sport than any senior band member plays. Where does it end? I'm fine with all or nothing, but this dangling bits of a life in front of kids just to have it ripped away when someone has a fever is BS! They don't say that she was exposed--only that she has a high fever. They also say their decision to have them quarantine is based on the county board of health's guidelines, but they aren't following their guidelines anyway by having band and sports in the first place. The county recommended to not have any of it. Again, it's not safe to go to school wearing masks and socially distancing, but it's okay to do sports!?!


Okay, sorry, rant over.

Oh how frustrating!! I can understand wanting to err on the side of safety, but things like the regular flu, pneumonia, just a common cold...none of those things went away! They are all still out there! We have had common colds in our home since this whole thing started! We have had ear infections and sinus infections (from wearing a mask as far as we can tell since we never had either before all this).

We can't live our whole lives in fear of what could happen. And I'm sure many of you will disagree with me on parts of this, but I am not starting an argument, just stating my opinion and beliefs on this. They would have been better to let the parents know that she was running a fever, monitor her (if she wanted to take the test, more power to her). And see how she felt maybe 24 hours later. Leaving the option of how you as a parent wanted to handle the information. Personally, I would have monitored my child for any symptoms of sickness, but if they were fine (no symptoms in that time)...gone about my life as normal. Normal illnesses did not just disappear through all this. They are still around! I wake up almost every morning with a sore throat, because it's summer, because I have a fan blowing on me all night, because I'm thirsty and not drinking enough. Sickness is a normal part of life, and something that yes, can be monitored...but don't overreact and create panic among the kids, parents etc!

Hang in there! Praying your daughter finds ways to enjoy her Senior year! I'll have to send you a pm with some of the things our school, Youth Group, family did to encourage our Senior during the end of her Senior year and approaching what would have been her graduation date!

 

[LynnZant]

Oh, I didn't mention that a player from the other school's football team tested positive; however, their county's board of health said no one else needed to quarantine. Hmmmm It all seems weird. The only reason that no one would need to quarantine is if that player NEVER practiced or had any contact with any of his team, so why mention it in the first place. I can only hope that they are not playing with these kids' health by being selective because football makes money.

 

[StacyLynn]

So our public schools start next week. I only have one left there and he is at the high school. To start, they are all online.... at home.... We are hoping that the schools will do hybrid in October... so only half the kids in school at a time (which I like for now, they have really big classes when in school regular)

I have freshman at our local community college and she is all online.... most classes okay for her right now...except spanish...

I have a junior at University of Pittsburgh... and now she is all online as well, she has a house out there so her and 5 girls all live together.

Our biggest issue right now is I will have to up our internet... I did get a second router back in March, but it's still too slow.

 

[aussiegirl]

So our public schools start next week. I only have one left there and he is at the high school. To start, they are all online.... at home.... We are hoping that the schools will do hybrid in October... so only half the kids in school at a time (which I like for now, they have really big classes when in school regular)

I have freshman at our local community college and she is all online.... most classes okay for her right now...except spanish...

I have a junior at University of Pittsburgh... and now she is all online as well, she has a house out there so her and 5 girls all live together.

Our biggest issue right now is I will have to up our internet... I did get a second router back in March, but it's still too slow.

This was one of our fears too! But I called ATT when I was having an issue, and they saw the problem and sent us a new router! since then, we haven't had issues. Although, we haven't all been online doing zoom type calls for 6 hours of the day all at the same time yet! Praying it holds out!

 

[biancka]

My son went back to school last wednesday. I know there are covid restrictions in place but he told me noone follows those restrictions...which freaks me out. We got an email before school started that the school's ventilation system is up to date and covid safe so that makes me feel a bit better. I guess we just have to wait and see what happens...sofar, I have only heard of one school in the Netherlands needing to close again because a teacher had covid. Other than that...numbers are not bad at all over here. Hoping it stays that way.

 

[SeattleSheri]

We are 100% virtual for my older two boys who are in HS (my husband is also a teacher at their school). Only 12 hours of instruction per week

• M/Th: Periods 1, 2 and 3, 60 minutes each
• T/F: Periods 4, 5 and 6, 60 minutes each
• W: Office hours offered for all 6 periods, 30 minutes each

For Tyler, he starts preschool in-person on Tuesday. We pulled him from childcare back in mid-March and he's returning to the same school, but has been elevated to preschool. I'm a bit nervous, but with my husband and I working full time and two kids who will also be in classes, there is no way for us to watch him. I'm usually in 5-10 meetings per day, sometimes up to 15 and Ian is in front of students. The school is keeping the kids "quarantined" in their respective classrooms.

 

[KristinCB]

It's so interesting how all the systems work. I live in a small town in British Columbia Canada. They are not offering online learning here. Both my kids will be in the high school this year (grades 7 and 12) and they will each have 2 courses for 10 weeks at a time. A morning course and an afternoon course. They start september 10th. I am unsure on my 12th graders schedule but we found out the first ten weeks for my 7th grader will be social studies as well as wood shop/home ec. One will be in the morning and one will be in the afternoon. They will be long classes but the nice thing is the subjects will be done and over with in 10 weeks time.

 

[LynnZant]

I just got the email that if our county level remains where it is, they will go back hybrid style third week of September. I was getting used the remote learning. Gotta keep rollin' with it! They have been remodeling and building more on to the high school for a few years now. The kids are going to go back and not know where anything is.

 

[rach3975]

Only 12 hours of instruction per week

• M/Th: Periods 1, 2 and 3, 60 minutes each
• T/F: Periods 4, 5 and 6, 60 minutes each
• W: Office hours offered for all 6 periods, 30 minutes each

Even when kids are in school in person, they only spend so much time on direct instruction. The rest of the time the kids are doing the work. So if they truly use all of each hour for instruction, hopefully they won't miss out on too much!

Our virtual MS/HS schedule is also 4 days a week.
T/TH-4 classes for 80 minutes each
W/F-the other 4 classes for 80 minutes each

But they've told us that the kids won't be online for 80 minutes straight. Within each 80 minute block they're trying to replicate the school day, with some time spent in direct instruction to the full class, some time spent in small groups, and some time spent offline doing individual work.

 

[nesser1981]

My kids went back today.

Here they offered 3 options (we have less than 1000 cases in our county of almost 100,000 people). Completely virtual self paced, a Distance learning model which mirrors the in person learning and then in person learning. No staggered starts or anything like that.

We went with in person, my kids wanted it, I'm still working from home, and I assume I will be until the new year, but just in case, I'd rather be prepared.

Pre-K to 4th Grade, we have one dedicated teacher per elementary building that is offering the distance learning, so essentially, that teacher's class is online.

The upper grades, the distance learners are required to log in at the same exact times that the in person kids are attending classes and their poor teachers are basically teaching to two different groups of kids.

We had about 30 percent of our district pick some sort of distance learning from what I understand.

Today seemed to go well. Although, I wasn't loving the environment when I dropped Keira off at the high school. Lots of kids not wearing masks, not social distancing, or not wearing the masks correctly. I was worried about the bus, but that doesn't seem like it's an issue, at least not today it wasn't for my big kids.

Tomorrow is a new day.

 

[mmbstaley]

Today starts the second day of virtual school here at my house in western Richmond area. After lots of issues with getting all 60,000+ students and associated teachers logged on in the morning yesterday things seemed to go OK for the most part. They are making the kids follow the regular bell schedule like they were sitting in the school building, as they hope to get the kids back there for a hybrid model when health numbers allow. That could be as early as the end of the month for the first groups of kids - maybe if the COVID case numbers don't start to go up again because of the holiday weekend we just had.
Our older daughter is in the Tech Center classes for child development this year, so she is in the "Phase 2" group for half of her classes. They are supposed to spend part of their class time working with kids elementary classrooms - kind of hard to do if there aren't any other kids back yet, as the majority of kids are in the Phase 3 and 4 groups.
The girls complained some about the amount of downtime yesterday, but I guess that is better than the teachers trying to fill it all up with useless busywork. I imagine that will change some as everyone settles in and gets used to this way of doing things. Overall Brenna summed up the day/her senior year so far as 'disappointing' - meaning not what she had hoped for.

 

[aussiegirl]

For those of you with Seniors (myself included) who are slightly disappointed in how this year is starting out....I can share some of what we did for our Senior from this past year (she ended the year less than normal, while the others are beginning less than normal).

*decorate your front door. We put my daughter's "senior" shirt on a hanger and hung it on the door during the day (I brought it in at night). Others used sports jersey's etc. We cut out "2020" large numbers and taped them below her shirt. We made a banner in school colors and also hung that on the door.

*decorate their car. Buy some removable paint (we got ours from Party City). You can purchase them in school colors. Let them decorate their windows etc to celebrate their Senior Year.

* start getting ideas for their grad party/Open house. Our school colors are patriotic, so we actually started buying things after Memorial Day/4th of July. If you find something that can work for your school colors or even grad party things on sale, pick them up.

*organize college brochures. They get these almost every day in the mail (my girls love getting new ones). have them decorate a shoe box or something to store them in. Pick a time to go through them and weed them out, keeping only ones they are considering!

Hope some of this helps. This will be another interesting school year, but praying it gets back to Normal VERY soon!

 

[HavaDrPepper]

I have no children in school but I have been following what my small town's school district is doing. I live in a small, rural county in west central Ohio.

The district chose to go 5 days a week in person. A virtual option is available for those that weren't comfortable going back. Decision had to be made beginning of August.

School started Aug. 25th. The high school had its first positive case Aug. 26th. A student was randomly tested by employer and it came back positive. As of Aug. 28th there were 4 positive cases in the district (none in elementary). On Aug. 28th I found out from my neighbor that his SIL that is a teacher at the middle school is on quarantine for 14 days because her son was sent home from college and tested positive (he got tested after a friend received a positive test). The son is living with her.

School did not shut down for any of the positive cases. For 1st case, 22 students were put on quarantine. When the next 3 showed up, a total of 150 students were in quarantine. As of Sept 2nd, 6 positive cases in the system but no shut down.

My county is on the top 10 list of counties when ranked by highest occurrence. We've been there for about a month. In August the number of cases in the county doubled from what we had the end of July. We don't meet the criteria to move to Level 3 but we've been in Level 2 for awhile and a neighboring county is Level 3 and will stay there until the number of cases goes below the CDC threshold.

The last couple of weeks my area of the state has been the hot spot. COVID is moving into the rural areas.

As for football, our league is playing 6 games. Only home team band can perform so the band only gets to perform for 3 games. Only family members of team and band can attend. We've got a brand new $1M plus stadium not being utilized to its full potential because of it. Stadium was just completed in beginning of August.

Several schools in the Dayton area have had to postpone football games because of positive cases on 2 different teams. The 2 teams didn't play each other either!

 

[rach3975]

We're now through the first week of virtual school. My kids say it's boring compared to regular school, but we expected that. The kids and teachers are all doing the best they can with it. Unfortunately, I don't think we're ever going to go to hybrid--the district seems to be leaning toward keeping most of the district virtual and concentrating on bringing in certain populations that need it most and are easier to bring in. So until there's widespread vaccination I expect us to stay 100% virtual.

There are only a few things I find problematic for now. First, back in the spring there were so many lag issues that many teachers required cameras to be off. So now that's the culture, and although students are encouraged to turn cameras on none of the kids do. I can't imagine spending the entire year teaching to just a blank screen, and I think it makes the kids feel isolated not to see their classmates, too.

My son is in special ed classes where there are a lot of kids with ADHD (in addition to other learning disabilities). Yet the teachers are PLAYING MUSIC when they send the kids off to do work within the class period. Kids can't mute the music because then they won't know when their teacher calls them back. My son always struggles to complete work, but with that distraction he's getting even less done. So now I get to email all the teachers and ask them to rethink this. Four days in and I'm already on my second email--I'm going to be the problem parent this year! (First was about some modifications my son needs that they'd realize for themselves if he were in person but won't while he's virtual.)

And last, they told us that there would be times within classes that kids were doing things offline. So far that hasn't happened; it's way more screen time than they led us to believe. I'm hoping that changes as we get further into the year.

 

[navaja77]

We are remote learning until mid-October. They are discussing going to hybrid. I find myself in the minority that I would rather we remain remote learning. The Navajo Nation was devastated by the virus - even healthy people I knew were infected and died from it. I am not in a rush to get my kids back to in-person school. I am in AZ but recently moved to a different county. The Navajo Nation has all of their schools on remote learning through first semester. They also cancelled fall sports and in discussion with the state sports association on an alternate schedule for fall, winter and spring sports starting in Jan 2021. They now only have 20 or less cases per day and doing very well but they did the more extreme measures compared to the rest of the country so their efforts paid off. They are not about to rush to go back to normal. I don't live on the Navajo Nation but close by. Our school district has 25-40% students from the Navajo Nation. I will be watching closely to see what they do. I finally am able to see my family more often, including my mom who is in the high risk category. If remote learning is offered, I will take that option. Yes, remote learning is hard. But we explained to our kids that we have to adjust, make the best of the situation and work through it. Both are doing well with their classes. My son does miss going in-person but the thought of wearing a mask all the time at school and physical distancing doesn't sound appealing. His former school district is doing hybrid and he has heard from his friends complaining about school not being the same with the restrictions in place. I am working full-time at home and my hours are flexible. I can work on Saturday to make up work. That allows me to be available to help both of them out throughout the day.

 

[LeeAndra]

The saga continues...

The district is going back to their original plan from July with 5-day in-person and alternative virtual instruction and will start September 21st. I would say at least 85% of the student population will be in-person.

My 6yo has already been told that he will have a new teacher, and it looks like he will be part of a K/1 class since there are not enough other first-graders at his school that are signed up for virtual learning to make a complete class. There was some talk about having the same grade level from multiple schools taught by one teacher but I don't know if that is still the case. There's literally nothing that I can do but it just makes me sick to think about how badly my son's school experience has been thus far: a series of subs his first 6 weeks of kindergarten last year, then a terrible regular teacher, then the pandemic from March-June... and now the pandemic again + working on his second teacher with only a month of first grade under his belt. I don't feel in-person is safe at his age but virtual is not a good fit for him (lots of down time) and I'm worried that it will be made even worse if he's in a class with kindergarteners. I'm not even sure how that would work since most of the kindergarteners wouldn't know how to read yet. There is a self-paced option which I think would be best for him but I don't know what I'd do with him during school hours if he were to do that as I work from home & am starting a new job next week. It's a lose-lose-lose situation, and I hate that for him.

My 11yo is supposed to have the same teacher & classmates from last year and currently does. She's doing really well with virtual learning and is not particularly interested in going back to school with all the COVID regulations in place. Her teacher has not yet said whether she will be in-person or virtual but statistically speaking, chances are slim. I'm not sure how she will manage to have the type of work she's supposed to have if they don't put her with that teacher, however.

I know everyone's children are being shortchanged just like mine but it doesn't make it any easier to accept.

 

[rach3975]

There's literally nothing that I can do but it just makes me sick to think about how badly my son's school experience has been thus far: a series of subs his first 6 weeks of kindergarten last year, then a terrible regular teacher, then the pandemic from March-June... and now the pandemic again + working on his second teacher with only a month of first grade under his belt. I don't feel in-person is safe at his age but virtual is not a good fit for him (lots of down time) and I'm worried that it will be made even worse if he's in a class with kindergarteners. I'm not even sure how that would work since most of the kindergarteners wouldn't know how to read yet. There is a self-paced option which I think would be best for him but I don't know what I'd do with him during school hours if he were to do that as I work from home & am starting a new job next week. It's a lose-lose-lose situation, and I hate that for him.

What a rough first few years of school! Do you know any other first graders who chose virtual? If so, is there any chance that you could pair up with one family so that you and the other parents could trade off days and the kids could maybe have each other to play with during the down time?

I can't say this for sure, but if he ends up in a K/1 class my guess is that they'll be together for things like morning circle, specials, listening to stories, and community building. Then when it's time for their lessons the teacher is likely to work with just the K's while the first graders go do an assignment (or take a break) and vice versa. I don't know what the situation is like there, but in the small sample of kindergarteners I know (the 2020 graduates of the preschool I teach at) many kindergarteners have opted out of the public schools for this year. The youngest kids with the option to delay a year did that, and some others are either homeschooling or in a pandemic pod. If your area is similar, there may end up being more first graders than kinders in his class.