Covid Support Thread
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I don’t want to be doom and gloom but I wouldn’t depend on there being a fall school year with in person instruction. We don’t have anything under control in this country and the schools don’t have the competence or resources to operate successfully in an exploding pandemic. I hope to be wrong, but I think that excepting a few places where things are relatively under control, in person schooling will be shut down at some point in the fall even if they open.
Our school is supposedly going to start off teaching in tents. There’s going to be some kind of technology to follow the teacher and allow her to be broadcast to anyone using zoom for parents who do not want to send their kids in. My preference, all things considered would be for the Spawn of Fyodor to go in, but the Bride is I think uncomfortable with the idea and the Spawn does not want to go if she has to spend all day in a mask distanced. I have grave concerns about keeping her away from people for a year or year and a half.
I vaguely get the impression that a lot of places expect to cancel the year but parents will rebel if they do it preemptively so they’ll wait for an outbreak to force them.
Fyodor,part of me wonders if my county isn’t releasing their plans because they know school’s going to be shut down before they even open. One good thing about GA is its extremely easy to homeschool. All I have to do is submit a letter of intention to homeschool, that’s it. If I don’t like the online option that’s what I’ll do. My good friend who has a 6yo is going to join quarateams with me. She’s been isolating as much as me so we’re going to expand our bubble to include each other. In a lot of ways I feel very fortunate. I’m glad my kids are young enough to just accept the new normal
I’m sure that a large part of it is that no one wants to be the one to pull the plug.
Our online experience has actually been pretty good. The school did a good program this year. And there have been upsides in terms of spending more time with the Spawn. She’s become kind of a little office worker, using her google calendar to manage her schedule printing her projects, complaining about wifi issues, etc. But a year year and a half is a long time to be away from people and I worry about what it’s doing to her. Ideally I’d like to find another family that’s being careful and maybe open our “bubble” but there’s no one that’s really a good fit.
Raising kids through this has been the hardest part. The financial stuff, my own well-being, feeling anxious about loved ones’ health and friends’ businesses – all of that is hard, but the kid stuff is the worst. Remote learning does not work for us. I have one kid who got robbed of almost half her pre-k year, and will likely miss out on in-person kindergarten – experiences that are so instrumental in developing a strong social-emotional foundation. And another kid who is 8 1/2 going on 17 and doesn’t think he has to do anything his parents tell him to do, which makes being the fulltime teacher a challenge to say the least. And I worry about his social-emotional foundation, too, if he misses too much more in-person organized structure and learning with his peers. We’re sending him to camp next week, which meets in small groups in the park. I don’t feel 100% confident it’s the right thing to do, but the benefits outweigh the risks when we ourselves are in a low-risk risk, we’re not mingling with anyone with higher risks (we’re only seeing a few people at all and always outside), and the transmission rate in NYC is currently very low and we’ve had the virus under control for close to two months.
But yeah, I don’t know about school in the fall. Camp outside for a week in very small groups is a different beast than crowded indoor classrooms in a school with 1000 students. We lost a third-grade teacher at the end of March and several parents soon after, so the anxiety of putting teachers and family at risk feels especially acute. And Jackson has said a few times that if school opens in the fall, he “hopes we don’t have more teachers die.” It’s a fear that is really real for our kids because they’ve lived through it already. They attended a zoom funeral for a favorite, beloved teacher and no one wants to do that again. (But no one wants their kids home, with no structure or social interaction for many more months either!).
They are starting to say this lack of social interaction will have cause more mental health issues than I guess health issues of the virus down the road for kids. But I also don’t know how you can keep the teachers safe. Here I think there will be shifts of kids but teachers will have to teach the in person session and keep the online group occupied on their home day. So it’s like double.
We have opened up and spent time with neighborhood families that have been very careful, as we have. We’ve have socially distanced hangouts and play dates and we go to our community pool almost daily. Not many people are going-if it was popular, I wouldn’t be going at all. Masks are required when not in the pool. That’s been really good for us.
But I honestly feel like we vacillate between feeling as though we, personally have little to fear, assuming all of us were exposed when I was sick and worried we’re not being responsible enough. Don’t get me wrong- we’re still being careful, but I personally feel not afraid to catch it now. Even though the information we get about immunity conflicts and we don’t really know how that works, I feel not afraid. I’m still being responsible for the greater good, though. I wish everyone was.
I am worried about school. I think even with measures in place, it’s going to be so hard for administration, teachers and students. I don’t want elementary school to be so regimented that the fun is gone. But I also can’t imagine trying to home school/learn remotely because even though my son is super bright and interested in learning, doing work via iPads was not exciting or even slightly fun for him. I don’t know what the right answer is. Socially distanced in person school? Skipping this year? I don’t know.
I am happy to be in a school district where I do really respect and appreciate our superintendent and our principal. Everyone works so hard and is really invested. I’m sure they will make the best decision they can, but hopefully those that makes the laws do, too.
My friends and co-workers are, like, hiring college kids to do outdoor activities with their kid and maybe a friend’s kid, and the parents sign contracts that they won’t go out to eat or whatever else. I do think kids need to go back to school in the fall. We can’t have a generation dropping out and having horrible mental health. I feel really bad for kids. Also their parents. Also old people. My aunt hasn’t had a visitor in 4 months, and there’s no end in sight. She’s also not mobile enough to like go outside and hang out. All I can do is go over and drop off clothes for her. Fortunately there haven’t been any cases at all in her facility, but the way to stay that way is to not have anyone in there.
Wendy: is Drew back at work at all?
Daycare pushed the start date back again because they couldn’t get a caterer and it’s required per DCFS. Hopefully they open, but the most recent email made it seem.. questionable. We’ve seen some of her friends from daycare in the park outside and she’ll run over to them, grab their hands and then skip hand-in-hand with them up and down the hill. It’s the sweetest thing in the whole world. She’s a lover and gets so excited to see her friends (and her puppy friends). Hanging out at home with mom and dad is pretty lame anymore. Can’t remember if I posted it on it, but we got our test results back prior to vising family: no antibodies and no virus
No, MG, our three sources of income – mine, Drew’s, and our rental income – have all taken massive hits. But we are lucky that we have savings (and unemployment benefits, through July), but we’ve definitely taken a big hit, financially. But, really, I am much more concerned about my kids than about how much money we’ll have left to retire on. And I am very concerned for kids whose families are not as privileged as ours. It’s a mess. Working families, kids, older people, people whose health or age puts them at higher risks – they are really suffering right now. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know if there are any answers. It’s just all sucks so much. And as a parent, I hate that I can’t make this better for my kids. I worry about the toll all of this isolation and lack of quality education will have on them.
