cap'n grunge said:
I don't believe this has been scientifically proven.
German Study - My preference for my kids (going into 10th, 8th and 4th grades) would be to keep them home for at least the fall semester, but this study from Germany seems promising. Granted, from my recollection, Germany had a much better handle on the virus at the time they went back to school compared to where we currently are at in many places, and I would want to see additional studies and review of them complete before I'd be more comfortable with the results.
That said, I also am very fortunate that I am in a position where I can handle online learning - my kids are old enough to be at home if needed, for the most part I am able to work from home if need be, and we have the technology at our house to enable distance learning. But I realize not everyone is in that position, and I don't believe there is a one size fits all solution.
Regarding teachers, I would like to think that with an entire summer to adjust, and had they been given adequate time to prepare, that a potential adjustment to distance learning would be much smoother and effective. One analogy I saw (I don't believe it was here, if it was apologies for butchering it) was that in the spring, when given essentially a weekend to adapt, teachers were more in a triage mode to have something going on. Some were able to make the adaption quicker/more efficiently than others, some were not. Same goes for parents - some were able to make the adaption, some were not.
Additionally, many schools and/or teachers are also not set up with the infrastructure to handle remote learning. I know locally they have found the funding to put up the plexiglass shields around desks and are working on other physical barriers and plans, which includes having students sitting in alternating rows, switching those between classes - so for example if a classroom has 6 rows of desks, in period 1, the kids sit in the odd number rows, in period 2, they sit in the even number rows, then have a deep clean period, rinse and repeat. Personally, I think the funding that was found for this would have been better spent on upgrading the technological infrastructure (improved network connectivity on campuses, etc.) so that teachers could teach from the classroom and stream to students online. As it currently is, I don't believe any of the local schools are set up to be able to handle the kind of network traffic that streaming 60-70 classes (for junior high/high schools) simultaneously would require.
I don't know what the answer is - I want to take teacher/staff safety into consideration as much as possible. I am intrigued by one of the ideas presented above where you could have certain classrooms designated for students to do remote learning, while teachers could be set up in other classrooms to conduct the class online for all in the class. This would require some creative scheduling as many schools likely do not have the space to do this separately, but perhaps the schools within the district could really come together on this, where certain campuses have the students (with lower risk staff supervising) and a different campus was used to conduct the teaching from, so at risk staff could keep up major social distancing. This would also provide greater structure for the at home learners with a set schedule where they had to tune in to their class, which could help alleviate one of the main complaints I had and heard about the initial switch, which was a lack of structure (obviously some adapt to this well, others not so much - my then 7th grader did well as he liked getting all his assignments for the week on Sunday night/Monday morning and he would work real hard to try finish them all in the first couple of days of the week so he could have more free time the rest of the week - my older son would more likely put off until the day before something was due)
