Let me run through what a typical school day will look like for the parties involved in an in-person environment in the time of Covid.  We all want to return, and we all want to return safely.  I’m going to note the practicality and cost of each item, so we get a clear picture.  This will also likely be missing things, since my experience is on the secondary level.  For the most part, I’m breaking things down in to money (districts already have none) and logistics, which districts/admin have to have 100% figured out before return.

So here goes:

1. Pickup at the bus stop.
   • Mandatory social distancing while kids wait.  Hard to enforce.
   • Bus driver temp scans all students.  Commute takes longer. Equipment costs money.
     • What happens when a kid has a high temp?  What if the kid/parent refuses to remove the child from the bus?  Bus drivers aren’t enforcers.  Logistical/legal nightmare.
2. Kids drive/dropped off for school.
   • Temp scans at door.
     • Same problem as above.   Entry into school takes longer.  Equipment costs money.
     • More resources for non-compliant kids/parents.  Who wants a cop detaining a kid with a fever of 100?  Still a logistical nightmare.
3. Having breakfast, heading to lockers.
   • Social distancing almost impossible to follow in halls.  Logistical nightmare.
   • Social distancing hard to enforce since eating together is a social activity.  Logistical nightmare, also miserable for kids.
4. Being in classrooms throughout the day (homeroom, classes, studies, etc), which is a bit of a long one.
   1. Capped at 12-ish kids, depending on room size.  Think of how scheduling will work  Logistical nightmare.
   2. Keeping kids from violating guidelines.
      • What happens when a kid takes off a mask, coughs on another kid, refuses to move his/her seat?  Kids are kids.  These things happen.  But now we have added danger.  Logistical nightmare.
   3. Prepping air quality– changing filters, cleaning vents.
      • I’ve seen high quality air-filtration systems in doctors’ offices.  I don’t see districts spending money to do this.  Costs money.
      • This is a lot of extra work for maintenance staff.  Costs money, logistical nightmare.
      • Run tests on air quality after the work as been done.  Costs money.
        • What happens when the tests come back bad?  Costs money, logistical nightmare.
   4. Sanitizing.
      • This can happen before school or after, but will require more time from maintenance.  Costs money.
      • What about between classes?  Kids come in and have their dandruff and sweat all over desks (this is a thing).  So we need to sanitize.  Who does it?  Maintenance?  Teachers?  How much time will this take?  Costs money, logistical nightmare.
   5. Eating.
      • It might be better to have kids eat in classrooms, rather than in a lunch room.  But that’ll require more sanitizing.  Costs money.
   6. Bathrooms.
      • How do you enforce social distancing in this situation?
      • How do you deal with sanitizing?
      • How do you deal with air filtration?
        • Each of these are borderline impossible, especially if there is a line.  Lots of kids use the bathroom after lunch.  It’ll increase the time out of class exponentially.
      • Who polices this?
      • All of the above are logistical nightmares.
   7. Special Education and Life Skills classrooms.
      • These tend to be smaller in both physical size and are required to be small in terms of numbers.  They are also going to have issues I don’t have the qualifications to identify, because these kids have a lot of needs I’m not trained to handle.  Logistical nightmare.
5. Teaching.  How in God’s name do I do this?
   • Passing out papers/materials is out.  That’s fine, we go digital– but not all districts have computers for every kid.
   • Group projects are gone.
     • I teach a Mass Media class that does a lot of film projects that require proximity, from the actual filming to editing.  On top of that, there’s a lot of shared equipment.  I know I can adapt, but districts haven’t really provided teachers with any help on this front and we are about a month out.
   • Presentations are gone (kids often use shared equipment to project).
   • No getting close to a kid who is struggling/needs help.
     • This one sucks.  Some kids are embarrassed if they don’t understand and when I walk around I can help them more closely.  Not anymore.
     • I think this increases the likelihood that kids don’t reach out when they have issues.
   • How do I get kids the books they need without some kind of contact?  I can go digital in some cases, but this is really up in the air without help/guidance/budgets.

I’m going to stop.  There’s so much more.  I haven’t covered the administrative side– actually running a building.  I haven’t covered what the job of a maintenance person might look like.  What about serving food in a cafeteria?  How do you do counselling?

Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be a way to be safe right now because cases are increasing all over and schools, before Covid, were disease incubators.  Now the stakes are higher.

What DOES make sense is admitting that the best bet for right now is going full remote.  Nobody wants to.  But nobody wants to watch the stream of a funeral of a colleague or student.  I’ve dealt with student death and it stings even years and years later.

We should be prepping teachers for that transition so that we are more prepared than we were in the Spring.  Districts, however, have been moving way too slowly.  There’s barely any information and next to no guidance and we are about a month out.  How do you build a brand new system (in-school with Covid or out of school with online learning) from scratch?

The lives of my students are worthy of respect.  The lives of my colleagues, be they admin, teachers, secretaries, paras, IT, or maintenance are worthy of respect.  We aren’t getting that from the White House, but we have power locally.

We can take positive steps to make sure the kids get the best education possible.  And we can do it without risking lives.