All public school in my county in CA are closed from March 16. My district will be closed from March 16th to April 13th. We are on call and need to check email twice a day and need to be 1 hour from our site since we are on paid leave.
I really don't think they can do that. I have only seen this type of thing happen 1 other time, but the governor made it so no1 had to work summers. The days were just like "forgiven." This is different because we have to work online. If your state has already declared a State of Emergency", I am pretty sure your governor can/will do that.
It was just announced that the whole state of Alaska is shutting down until at least the 30th. Teachers are going to be teaching online. I am glad too. I think it'll be a nice change of pace.
Oh believe me, I agree, my p agreed, our superintendent agreed. That petition has been made to the state but right now it’s still up in the air and until we know officially, well, it’s business as usual. The option has been put on the table to allow districts to choose, but the concern with that is that next year the state could go “well your test scores weren’t that great so we’re gonna do some wicked mess”. I’m not saying that they put us in a bind next year because of electing not to treat this year, but I am saying it’s a possibility.
This will probably cause a bit of an instructional hole/echo for quite a while no matter what we do. But, as long as our students are safe, I will count my blessings. Fingers crossed!! It felt so weird to say goodbye the other day not knowing when I'd see them again.
I am in Indiana, and our governor has given us a 20-day waiver. We have not shut down as a state, but instead, districts are setting their own guidelines. My entire county is shut down starting Monday until April 10. With spring break, Good Friday, and one other built-in day off, we only use 8 of our waiver days. E-learning will happen two days each week except for Spring Break. Schools have asked for state testing to be expempted this year. We will see how that goes.
We do not make up the days because students are working from home and teachers are available during school hours for assistance by phone or email. I am communicating via email, Google Classroom, and Remind. DH is doing Google Classroom, Plus his school is calling every student every day. we do, however, have to have a minimum of 80% completion of assignments in order to get credit for the days.
I work in one of the biggest districts in GA. We are closed starting Monday but we are having online classes. We decided to split our core classes into one day each week and I will have a virtual classroom for 2 hours a week. Other than that I just have to check emails and grade the assignments as they come in. We usually have spring break the first week in April. Our state testing starts the following week. I feel like we will probably go back after that (depending on how all this plays out of course) but I'm not stressing about test scores. I have a ton of standards in my class and I barely finish them in time on a normal year, this year I'm losing a month most likely and that means 3 units just wont get done.
Well, my county in South Florida has joined the school canceling club. We were starting our spring break (next week) and are closed the week following. (We are private). We have 2 cases. So.......we are doing the e-learning thing the week that is not spring break. I'm working on including resources and videos through my school's site which will be interesting. For those of you who might benefit, Scholastic has some resources for K-9. https://www.scholastic.com/teachers...home--free-resources-for-school-closures.html I don't mind the closing in the sense that people will be keeping their kids home in fear, so why teach to an empty room, only to have to make it up again when the kids all return. It does impact our testing somewhat. As mentioned before, we definitely should consider canceling the testing or moving it until the last week of school. Stress is a real factor for everyone, and kids are no exception. With tests being such a high stakes issue, the expectations need to be adjusted or postponed. Just a thought. I pray you each stay healthy and that the caution was unnecessary.
Where my son teaches, they are out starting on Monday, and go back a day after they would normally go back in around the middle of April, I think a day or two after the Spring Break ends. Of course, my son hasn't called to share any of this with us, but it was available online.
Quite a few so far. https://www.wane.com/news/list-states-that-have-closed-all-schools-due-to-coronavirus/ I expect all to close here soon.
CDC says we need 8 weeks. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/us/school-closures-cdc-long-term-trnd/index.html
I can't imagine being out for 8 weeks and still getting summer break. You talk about unprecedented...........
Gov closed all schools in my state through Mar 30. We have a brave plan to implement e-Teaching. Lots of room for success and forgiveness for errors. Is it just me or won't most early elementary parents be more concerned with daycare rather than making sure their kids can attend school online?
DH got a text Saturday that he did not have to report to work two days a week as planned. He is working from home like I am now. We got a month’s worth of groceries, and we are staying home.
I’m in Australia. Our prime minister has elected to keep schools open for now, but practice social distancing and have students 1.5 metres (about 6 feet) from each other. Im not quite sure how to do that! A lot of people are calling for schools to be closed and some private schools are voluntarily closing. My state has few confirmed cases so I’m not too concerned personally. Although because I live in a small city, my faith in our healthcare system being able to handle mass sickness is quite low.
There are few confirmed cases in the US, but that is because symptoms take awhile to show up, and there are not enough testing kits.
Missy, I do not believe it is a shortage of kits. I believe, in most cases, it is doctors who do not feel people need to be tested. It is true that kits aren't available on-site. Tests need to be sent away for processing. But you still need a doctor to agree to test. Most people turned away weren't because of shortages of test kits. Doctors determined that the symptoms don't fit the need for testing. If you weren't exposed, doctors were hesitant to test.
NC schools are shut down statewide for "at least" the next two weeks. We report on Monday, students and parents can come get "personal items" on Monday if they wish, and that's about all we know in my district right now. I've been teaching for over 18 years, and this is definitely a first.
Just a question. If your school closes will you still be paid? In the UK Teachers will be paid. Other staff may or may not depending on their contracts although most probably will be paid.
Our schools are "soft closed". This means slightly different things per district, but the big idea is all kids are mostly home, teachers are more or less at the school arranging online classes. As far as I'm aware all schools are doing grab-and-go meals for those who qualify. My daughter's school will have hours where students with no internet/computer access can come in. I'll be at school arranging online learning, working typical hours. Para staff in my district is on voluntary furlough if they choose in order to maintain benefits. I know in other districts, certain types of employees are functionally off but still getting paid. There do seem to be certain employees who are out of luck. So, contracted staff is still getting paid per contract, at least.
Enjoy it! Husband will likely be able to work from home part of the week. He does do trainings at the office--one was cancelled last week because the event they were training for was cancelled, so I'm not sure what this week's scheduled trainings will look like. We went to the store for fresh things, but we have a decent supply of rice and beans and canned stuff and a freezer of meat. And actual packaged food storage branded as such. And MREs. And, weirdly enough, people are offering to buy even expired MREs...
In Arizona there are plenty of doctors who are complaining that they are seeing patients who need to get tested, but then people aren't tested because of a shortage of kits. Maybe this situation will improve soon, but last I heard, it isn't very good.
I read some of the articles about AZ. I am confused about doctor's not having "kits" because another state lists all of the different ways that samples may be collected to be sent to labs to be tested. None of which require a special COVID-19 kit. The labs have the kits. In several of the articles I read, it said that the labs aren't receiving near the number of samples that other states are providing. Interseting.
All schools in this area are closed for a month. I told my coworkers Friday morning, I'd give it 2 weeks before this happens, they didn't believe me. By 6 pm that night we got the email and the call. We still have to go to work Tuesday, obviously we need to find out what we'll do. I teach independent study along with most teachers. We have 4 teachers who also teach 2 block classes (3 hours each), but even those students are somewhat independent study. Only our child development and construction / welding teachers are classes only. We can go about this two ways: 1. students come in and pick up 3 week's worth of work (1 week is spring break). It's nothing new to them, they get a week at a time, sometimes 2. 2. we can go online. I have been using Google Classroom for a long time in some capacity with all my students, some are just on it to do a quickwrite every week (but they're at least familiar with how everything works) with most at least ding one subject, some are doing 3-4 online. So it wouldn't be hard to explain to them them how to do everything and I could upload everything even from home There are 2 problems with this scenario: all teachers were supposed to do the way I was doing, at least have each student do one activity on Google classroom every week. I gave a PD aout this 2 months ago with all the things they can do, and then I was to train teachers one on one depending on what they needed. No o ne signed up !! This is mostly due to resentment, not sure why, we have some weird personalities. I actually have taught 1 teacher along the way and she is as involved in GC as I am, another one fairly knowledgeable and the 4 classroom teachers already were doing it. The rest will now pay the price for not following our principals directives (I'm just sharing this because I have been very annoyed by these teachers' attitudes and it's only our kids that are hurt by it). The other problem is that not every student has computer or internet at home. Out of my 22 students there are only a few who don't, but this percentage might be higher school wide. I am very curious to find out Tuesday how this will be handled. Are we gong to work from home/ From school? Work to make it up in the summer?
2020 is a 41 week school year for us here in Australia. The norm is a 40 week school year. So if many of you have schools being closed for a week or 2 weeks, does having a 41 week school year give you an extra cushion to finish all content and curriculum?
Teachers are being paid because we are still working. We have to be online every day from 8 to 3 for students to contact us. Classified staff are working a set number of hours on other activities. I know our assistants are doing book studies or other activities to count hours.
Most of the schools in my district are at or over capacity. Kids can barely get through the halls the way it is. Our schools weren't designed with large classrooms. So, even classes that don't have huge numbers still don't have enough room to keep kids 3 feet apart.
Exactly. With that reasoning, all schools should be closed. Social distancing is impossible in a classroom. Even if I old school style spread all desks apart into rows and columns, which takes up so much space, there would still be maybe only 1 foot between each child. I have fewer students, but some classes here have ~45 kids in one classroom due to chronic underfunding. There’s no way that’s safe or sanitary. We are closed now for the next month. I’m surprised this hasn’t been decided on at a national level at this point.
I found out what's going on at my schools. I'd like to (figuratively) stab our executive board with the number of staples I'm going to burn through. This morning when we came in, it was, "put together 3 days of paper-based work," which then became 5 days and then 3 weeks. Originally, this was all supposed to be done today, for the kids to pick up tomorrow. That changed when they realized just how long it takes for every teacher to print 3 weeks of material for every student. We now have until tomorrow. 2 days to create/adapt 3 weeks of curriculum because we're a 1:1 school that isn't going to give the kids' laptops back to them. We're also jumping to 4th quarter, which means I have new kids and new IEPs to consider. Oh, and it's all supposed to be review and not new material. The parents/kids will have a 5-hour window on Wednesday to pick up their materials. We're not being allowed to mail them to anyone who can't come. AAAND, we're not feeding the kids. We're in a gray space as a public charter, but I hated hearing, "they can go to the city library to eat." The board has no plan for if we're out past early April, and from what I gather has no intention on making one in advance. The only plus is that I don't have to go in after Wednesday and work is 2 hours of "office hours" online for the rest of our current closing period.
