Everyone needs to come up with a plan to manage distance learning. Even if you send your children back into the building, there is a good chance that the school may shut down. Who will staff or teach the kids when teachers get sick? Most of the substitutes in my building were older, retired teachers. They won’t be taking the jobs now with the risk of getting Covid.
There was a survey done that indicated that up to 20% of teachers may choose to not return to in person classes. How will that impact the schools ability to do hybrid classes that are supposed to be smaller?
I teach in a high school with over 2800 students. A decent number of parents surveyed don’t want their children to have to wear masks. If someone comes into the building with Covid, it will take off. Perhaps the kids won’t get too sick but the staff, some of which are older, and some of which have pre-existing conditions will get sick. Some may get sick enough to be out for weeks.
I’m afraid too many people think that sending kids back to school will be a return to business as usual. It won’t. Prepare yourselves. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Unless you can wfh or have an extremely flexible work situation, the only way to prepare to "plan" to leave your job. Yes, we have local retired grandparents in their 70s, but who wants to risk their lives? And even if emergency, back up, on-call nannies existed in any sufficient supply, it would be cost prohibitive for most people.
I understand the difficulty. Families still need to prepare for schools to close again. Not all will close (rural low incidence areas), but some will. If your schools close you need to have a plan. I posted what I did because I think a lot of people are being optimistic and choosing not to see the reality that just because schools may reopen does not mean they will stay open.
I appreciate your perspective, and it's obviously realistic that many districts or schools will have to change course throughout the school year. Earlier upthread I emphasized that I understand this is a tough situation all around but I also want to reiterate an earlier point I made and echo charis' comments -
Distance learning is not equitable or fair for all students. I'll have to go into the office more frequently as the year progresses and I won't be able to help my wife at all. How is she supposed to supervise Zoom learning while our 10 month old is screaming or our 3 year old is trying to pull his older brother into playtime? We have a grand total of zero family members nearby to help with the other two kids. And asking my wife and I to sacrifice every weekend so that we can tagteam 25 hours of homeschool curriculum over 2 or 3 days is just a nonstarter.
I'm not asking you, Cyanne for answers, but I posit this as more of a rhetorical question.
And again, recusing my own situation for a moment, I'll again bring up the situation of single parents who have to work outside the home - what the fuck are they supposed to do?
But on the flip side there's a glaring lack of funding, and worse there are plenty of teachers who would not do well if they were to catch this virus, so how are we supposed to protect them especially when kids often show mild symptoms to this?
Those are questions for the school districts to answer, not us as parents and not the teachers or other school employees. It's an impossible question but I think it's important to understand that I think we can all agree at least within this forum and especially in this thread, none of us are looking to send our kids to school to 'return to normal'. Normal is gone and statewide stay at home orders really can't happen again so they way I see it, we really all have to work together to figure out how to get schools to open.
Now, I will say that my wife and I will absolutely come up with a plan to handle distance learning because we have to, because our son would be a truant if we didn't. Not that truancy in younger students is really going to be enforced if distance learning were to happen, but you get the picture.
Edit: I also forgot to mention that I've heard half sarcastic/half serious responses from other people (not on this forum) "well, maybe you shouldn't have had kids" or "maybe you weren't ready for kids" and to that attitude (in case anyone here secretly holds that opinion), you can go shove it.