More than 100 students and staff quarantined in San Diego County 2 days after resuming in-person lea

[riversedge]

Source: cnn




More than 100 students and staff quarantined in San Diego County 2 days after resuming in-person learning

Updated 11:03 AM ET, Sat February 6, 2021


(CNN)Two days after officials welcomed back students to on-campus instruction, about 100 students and staff across a San Diego County school district were ordered to quarantine due to Covid-19 infections reported across various K-8th grade campuses -- raising questions about whether schools in the region are ready to reopen their doors.

"While the quarantines so early in the reopening are frustrating and concerning, positive Covid cases and quarantines were not unexpected," Escondido Union School District Superintendent Dr. Luis Rankins-Ibarra said in a statement to CNN.

The challenging environment created by Covid-19 has impacted schools nationwide as teachers and students grapple with the new reality of distance-learning models, wearing masks, and social distancing, following the recommendations of local and state health officials.


After months spent learning online, many officials are eager to reopen classrooms, which has sparked debate over whether it is safe to return to in-person learning.............

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/06/us/san-diego-school-100-quarantine-in-person-learning/index.html

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. Who could have predicted this?

[iluvtennis]

2. Until schools can put in place all measures to ensure safety, learning should be remote. Schools

need to ensure:

0) All kids, teachers, staff test negative for covid and the tests are continuously done on weekly basis
1) kids, teachers, all staff are wearing masks
2) classrooms are configured so that kids are 6 feet apart or each student seating area has plexiglass around that student
3) proper ventilation is in place
4) hand sanitation stations are in place

Etc, Etc, Etc

[CottonBear]

3. All teachers, administrators, school staff, parents & guardians vaccinated

before resuming in-person classes.

[EndlessWire]

4. Yes

You just left out the students. EVERYBODY vaccinated in order to reopen. Includes all ancillary personnel like custodians, etc.

They are telling us to brace for a surge like we have never seen. We may be in the lull before the storm. While everyone is eager to return to normal, there is no normal. If we truly want to reopen, we'll have to be smart about it.

Bump up the schools to priority one nationwide, and give them vaccinations. Just try it that way. We'll get a lot of families vaccinated by inclusion. But, just trusting to luck won't work. If I had a school age child now, I wouldn't send them back to school. They'd be stuck on home schooling a little while longer.

This virus isn't going away. Wear a mask, social distance (and no school is going to be able to enforce that,) and handwashing. Plus, get a vaccination as soon as you possibly can. Continue your precautions after your shot. One day, we'll be clear of it.

[CottonBear]

5. I have a school age child who's been home & virtual schooling since March 2020.

Vaccines haven’t yet been approved for children. My child has asthma and would be higher on the list whenever a vaccine is approved. I’m not sending my child back to school this year.

The school tried optional in-person learning for pre-K-8 during the 2nd quarter of the 2020-21 school year. My kid stayed virtual. The in-person school lasted less than 2 weeks before teachers and staff started getting sick.

We live in a university town. Even though both our town and the university have a mask mandate, the college students and other young people are partying and going out to bars and restaurants without masks. The surrounding red counties have worse infection rates, no mask mandates and most have in-person schooling, some without mask mandates. Not to mention the college football games that brought thousands of people to attend football games.

[EndlessWire]

6. Keep doing what you're doing.

The thing that deeply concerns me is the after affects of this virus. It isn't the flu. If it can cause such lingering affects, it might well cripple our generations. Children may recover but never be what they would have been if not for contracting it.

So, people who get it and recover enough to say, well, I had it and I'm well now, may not truly be well, ever. I think we need to slow down and reassess. Meantime, the work that is being done in manufacturing and distribution has also got to smarten up. Keep going, keep researching, keep the pressure on the virus up.

I feel that Biden/Harris are going to lead the fight and get the right people in there to lead to recovery. All the parts of the economy are interconnected.

Freeing parents up to work outside the home is important. But, they have to know what is going on with their kid. That's their first duty, and not to open just to open because that's "normal" and what they feel comfortable with.

[iluvtennis]

10. My kids aren't school age anymore, but if they were, I'd take your approach - all virtual.

I'd sit mine down to explain we will do virtual if it isn't as effective, then we just repeat the grade level once Cv-19 is under control.

I want my kids alive rather than putting their lives at risk.

Graduating high school at 19 versus 18/younger and being alive is what would is critical.

[iluvtennis]

8. I'd agree that vaccinations should be prerequisite; but give the lack of supply, I think

young students will be the last to be given vaccines. Also, the vaccine suppliers (Moderna, BioNTech/Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson) have yet to complete trials for those under 18 years old.

[CottonBear]

9. I didn't list students because no vaccines are approved for children.

If everyone else in the student’s home and at the school are vaccinated, then it will be much less likely that the children will contract COVID19.

[iluvtennis]

11. Yes, agree with you CottonBear. nt

[BigmanPigman]

7. Escondido may be doing this but not San Deigo Unified,

which is the 2nd largest in the state. San Diego teachers union just said NO WAY to in person learning on Wed.

"...it’s unclear whether other school districts will choose to reopen even once San Diego County reaches the case-rate thresholds. Some school officials and teacher unions say they need to consider their own local case rates before reopening, not just the county’s overall rate. They note that communities in San Diego and South County have always had disproportionately higher case rates than the county as a whole. In some zip codes, the rate is as high as two or three times that of the county."

"San Diego Unified will not decide what conditions need to be met to reopen schools until it hears the opinions of a panel of UC San Diego experts that the district consulted with last August, said Board President Richard Barrera. The district expects to hear back from UC San Diego in February."

"Barrera said the district is going back to UCSD because it wants clearer guidance on how to factor several issues — such as recent research, vaccines, COVID testing, and new and more contagious strains of the virus — into its existing reopening plan, under which schools won’t open for instruction until the county is in the less-restrictive red tier. “All of that puts us in a position where we say its time to go back to our UCSD team and get guidelines that we can actually work with,” Barrera said.

"Barrera also said the governor’s plan for reopening schools has been confusing and flawed. Newsom proposed offering schools hundreds of dollars per student for schools to reopen, but Barrera said it’s not enough to pay for the frequency of testing for staff and students that Newsom wants for schools in areas of high COVID transmission. Newsom’s proposed incentives have not been approved by the state."

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/story/2021-01-31/closed-san-diego-school-districts

[aggiesal]

12. I've been keeping San Diego County Coronavirus stats on both ...

Cities and ZipCodes since 3/31/2020.

I've been advising friends who do have kids in public schools not to send their kids to in class learning.

Where I live, the top 5 zipcodes are completely surrounding me.
So I do absolutely no shopping in my or surrounding zipcodes.
I drive 30 miles away, where the numbers are considerably better to do my shopping.
And I only do it 1 day a week.

Escondido has been spiking as cities go and has moved into 3rd place averaging 63 new cases per day
over the past week, behind SD (251) and Chula Vista (88).

[BigmanPigman]

13. I only go out once or twice every two weeks

and when I do I wear the real McCoy...my N95 masks. I have been wearing the same five since last March, rotating when I wear them. Since they are the gold standard in masks I won't even give any away.

None of my friends who are teachers still don't think the ventilation systems are good enough. I know from my own experience that they suck. I got very sick from black mold in my classroom, along with all of my first graders. We were on inhalers and I had to sleep sitting up in bed. The district gave me a can of Lysol and a fan for a classroom with NO WINDOWS! I finally was so sick I called the union and within a week I was told to pack up since they were ripping down all 8 classrooms in my group. When the guys took out the ventilation screens they were thicker than two quilts (probably not changed in the 20 years the classroom was there). Actually, I found out later that the cheap district donated the classrooms to Mexico, probably for a tax write off. I bet the Mexican students and teachers had even less $$$ than San Diego did and left the classrooms intact with black mold. Cheap bastards. That was when I finally realized the district does NOT care about the staff or even the students, the bottom line is what they care about. Meanwhile I have permanent respiratory issues.