How is everyone doing?

[robert.]

This is just schools baby sitting your kids. You can bet that the school district saw how much money was headed to charter schools. They quickly changed their tune to allow kids to sit there and the teachers union wont allow the teachers in front of the class.

[rogruth]

Remote teaching has been predicted for some time, I think. It will probably be the way of the future. Schools of all types will find that a lot of money will be saved by have one teacher teach the class and much lower paid aides grade "papers". No class limit size. I know it has been done at university levels
so why not lower levels? We would have to make many adjustments in our thinking about education. Some tech and trade schools might continue on a more traditional manner.
The hard part ( ) would be what to do with all of the extra curricular activities especially money making sports.

I'm happy that I am retired from teaching.

[chuck]

Why can't the teacher stand in front of the class and teach? If the room is safe enough for a teacher's aide and students. Then it's safe enough for a teacher.

That's the $64,000 question/issue. I wouldn't send my kids back to any school knowing how poorly designed and even more poorly maintained the HVAC systems are in most US buildings. If the room was as clean as out old class 100 clean room at work I'd consider it. They aren't, so I wouldn't. This isn't rocket science per se. They technologies are available and not necessarily bank breaking but the work needed to be done over last summer. It wasn't. Everyone keeps thinking/hoping/wishing it would go away. It's not. We either deal with reality or we risk perishing as a society.

As far as "remote" is considered, the technology has evolved considerably. They could conduct lessons with effectively ZOOM meetings IF everyone did what they are supposed to. They won't. You can run a pretty fancy multicamera console with features that would allow an instructor to lecture, demo, even walk up to a wipe board and scribble or do so on a "document camera" and the cost should not be an object. Training is minimal. We just have to decide it's worth doing and do it.

It is the kids who are getting hurt by all of this. As parents and allegedly adults we should be setting examples and letting them know what we collectively are up against and how we will have to behave to make it through. Even if they don't die from exposure they are risking potential long term health effects.

This is hard, it's inconvenient, its uncomfortable, I don't see why I should have to, I don't want to and lastly I am not going to. And this is just the "adults".

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Why can't the teacher stand in front of the class and teach? If the room is safe enough for a teacher's aide and students. Then it's safe enough for a teacher.

That's the $64,000 question/issue. I wouldn't send my kids back to any school knowing how poorly designed and even more poorly maintained the HVAC systems are in most US buildings. If the room was as clean as out old class 100 clean room at work I'd consider it. They aren't, so I wouldn't. This isn't rocket science per se. They technologies are available and not necessarily bank breaking but the work needed to be done over last summer. It wasn't. Everyone keeps thinking/hoping/wishing it would go away. It's not. We either deal with reality or we risk perishing as a society.

It's all been available for many years; last place money gets invested by schools is in building / infrastructure.

That might be a bit much; maybe the current society gets replaced with the next............that's already happening.

As far as "remote" is considered, the technology has evolved considerably. They could conduct lessons with effectively ZOOM meetings IF everyone did what they are supposed to. They won't. You can run a pretty fancy multicamera console with features that would allow an instructor to lecture, demo, even walk up to a wipe board and scribble or do so on a "document camera" and the cost should not be an object. Training is minimal. We just have to decide it's worth doing and do it.

Universities and college have been doing this stuff for a long time; nothing new and readily available to any that thought ahead at all.

It is the kids who are getting hurt by all of this. As parents and allegedly adults we should be setting examples and letting them know what we collectively are up against and how we will have to behave to make it through. Even if they don't die from exposure they are risking potential long term health effects.

They are getting a good lesson as to how badly prepared parents and adults are, and how badly behaved they can be -- children behave better...

This is hard, it's inconvenient, its uncomfortable, I don't see why I should have to, I don't want to and lastly I am not going to. And this is just the "adults".

Boo-hoo.......... This turns down hill suddenly we're going to be in a pool of baa-baa sticky right fast. Another pharma company halted it's phase 2 and 3 trials.... Why anyone thinks that creating a vaccine is easy is beyond me.

[robert.]

If vaccines were easy. There would be one for herpes

[chuck]

If vaccines were easy. There would be one for herpes

LOL, Thanks, I needed that.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

If vaccines were easy. There would be one for herpes

You should send that in rephrased as a question for tomorrow night's debate,

[robert.]

I have a friend with an hvac business in Hoboken NJ. He was contacted about changing systems in Newark's public schools and a few senior living centers. After reviewing all their parameters. He came up with a few options. His main change to their systems was relocating all elevators. He claimed "having several centrally located elevators made it real difficult to isolate airflow". He told these facilities to mount their elevators on the outside and use a vestibule entrance. His reasoning is central mounted elevators act as lungs pushing and pulling air through the building. That cost was to high for those that contacted him. It boils down to he did not want to really get involved with the whole thing.

[chuck]

A multi story building with banks of elevators is a real problem. He is correct in the way they can move/circulate air. That isn't the same as a 1-3 story school with only a single elevator at most for freight and/or students with disabilities. Adding heppa filters and led based UV lighting arrays to the ducts would go a long way to mitigating viral transmission/movement. Biggest problem is just getting the ducts clean enough to do the work. We had several building on campus where the ceiling tiles were discolored from all of the dust that was accumulating near the air vents.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

A multi story building with banks of elevators is a real problem. He is correct in the way they can move/circulate air. That isn't the same as a 1-3 story school with only a single elevator at most for freight and/or students with disabilities. Adding heppa filters and led based UV lighting arrays to the ducts would go a long way to mitigating viral transmission/movement. Biggest problem is just getting the ducts clean enough to do the work. We had several building on campus where the ceiling tiles were discolored from all of the dust that was accumulating near the air vents.

Few people have a good grasp of what it takes to set up HVAC systems to provide adequate lean air and filter it appropriately. I used to have all sorts of battles with contraction & renovation gangs at my prior place of employment -- they seemed to think that the air cfm and filtration that was acceptable in cubicalville was just fine in my labs.......usually took a few phone calls to the right safety offices to force them to meet the higher standards required.

Take home message here is that very few buildings are set up to be upgraded to the needed levels of cfm and filtration w/o spending truckloads of money. It's not like going down to your basement and putting a different filter in place.

[v8vega]

My Toshiba Chromebook II works perfectly but will be 6 this Thanksgiving so I spent some time in the evenings researching Chromebooks. They are hard to get right now because so many buying them for so called school.
Teachers get full pay taxpayers money for staying home and doing nothing.

[rogruth]

A good teacher is not "doing nothing".
You are forgetting that many teachers have retired rather than have many added duties.
In this area teachers are "responsible" for cleaning, sterilizing and anything else required.
Most schools do not have enough custodians so teachers are doing that also.
They are also cleaning cafeteria equipment and anything else.
By the way, the "unions" of any type or name are useless in education.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

A good teacher is not "doing nothing".
You are forgetting that many teachers have retired rather than have many added duties.
In this area teachers are "responsible" for cleaning, sterilizing and anything else required.
Most schools do not have enough custodians so teachers are doing that also.
They are also cleaning cafeteria equipment and anything else.
By the way, the "unions" of any type or name are useless in education.

Pay him no mind, Roger. Clueless and full of misinformation.......

[healey36]

Teachers get full pay taxpayers money for staying home and doing nothing.

Yeah, that's why they're quitting in droves. It's such a great gig.

[HONDO74]

Teachers get full pay taxpayers money for staying home and doing nothing.

Yeah, that's why they're quitting in droves. It's such a great gig.

Just curious as to where all these teachers that are quitting in droves are located ??