The Elk Grove Unified School District announced Saturday it would be canceling classes and all student-related activities after a family from the district was quarantined after testing positive for COVID-19, the novel coronavirus.Actually, what's happening is that the district, to avoid losing school days, is swapping Spring Break week (in a couple weeks) with this upcoming week. Oh, you had plans over Spring Break? Tough noogies! (Actually, I'm sure everyone will continue with their Spring Break plans and the district will lose funding because of all the student absences--and they'll struggle to find substitutes for all the teachers who will take off because of their plans.)
The district is closing schools and canceling classes and activities that were scheduled from March 7 to March 13.
"We do have confirmed cases of family members, but no student and/or employee of Elk Grove Unified has tested positive," officials said in a press conference Saturday afternoon.
Is one week long enough? How are those "family members" being isolated from district employees and students?
It's not that I'm not hoping for an extra week off myself (as long as we don't have to make it up in June!). It's just that this seems to be a "we're doing something" reaction when they should actually be committed to a "we're doing something smart" action.
6 comments:
My first principal once told me, “Richard, anyone with a high school education could run this school ninety percent of the time. What they really pay me for is that other ten percent, the difficult call.”
We are now in that other ten percent territory. Close schools or not? At what point? School is not a normal situation. You have several hundred kids on crowded busses, classrooms, lunchrooms, hallways between classes. That’s a real petri dish that can go south in no time. We all know that.
Close school early and you’ll probably get some grief and never know if you were right. Wait too long and you have the real possibility of having a funeral or two to attend.
So who on this forum is willing to sit in the big chair and make the call?
I’d personally be real slow to criticize whatever decision the people responsible make.
As we said in the 60’s, “that’s heavy, man”.
Richard-the-liberal
What is the average age of people who are dying? It's older than *I* am. Kids aren't dying.
Princeton shut down classes. There are *6* known cases in the entire state of New Jersey. Does that seem reasonable, or an overreaction?
Yes, people are put in charge to make the tough decisions. They still deserve censure when their decisions don't make sense.
Closing down schools would be the dumbest decision. Not one kid under the age of 10 has died from it. How many people between 11 and 25 years old have died from it? Would we close down schools if one kid might have the flu or a cold?
This is all a big overreaction like Italy closing down all of Italy. Tens of thousands of Americans die from the flu every year; almost all of them are older people. People need to stop going to extreme measures on this.
Berea College is shutting down school for the rest of the year. Let's think about the impact on kids about to graduate. Will they still get diplomas or be stuck? Will programs that run sequentially be restarted to allow for students to make up classes only offered in Spring? Will students get back their tuition and housing money, which has probably already been paid? This will extend the college time for those graduating, inflating their student loans. How in any way is this responsible when from what I read in story, nobody has the virus?
I'm 70, teaching 100 HS kids every day. I'm in early stage 3 kidney disease. Retiring in May. So should I use up my sick days and avoid the kids if Covid19 shows up in our school? Something I have to think about, and I don't scare easily, nor do I panic.
Anonymous: at 70, the calculations are different. For the rest of us:
Closing schools and canceling large public events without an immediate threat of people contracting coronavirus is only serving to spread fear in the hearts of Americans, Fox News medical correspondent and NYU Langone Professor of Medicine Dr. Marc Siegel said Tuesday.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-marc-siegel-coronavirus-events-canceled-closings
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