Formula To Calculate Moving To Hybrid

DeKalb Schools administration stated the school district will begin the transition to a hybrid learning model if the Cases Per 100K (Last 2 Weeks) is below 100 for 14 days straight. How do we calculate that?

The data comes from the Georgia Department of Public Health Daily Status Report. If you roll over DeKalb, you will see the statistics for DeKalb County. If you roll over the bar graph on the right, you will get the Confirmed Cases for that day.

Cases (last 2 weeks): The sum of the Confirmed Cases for the last 14 days
Population: 793,154 – Using 2018 U.S. Census data to derive population
Cases per 100k (last 2 weeks) = 100,000 x Cases (last 2 weeks) / Population

 click to enlarge image
DeKalb Cases Per 100k


CASES PER 100K (LAST 2 WEEKS)

It’s been 4 months since the Shelter In Place time period and it was the last time DeKalb Schools has seen less than 100 cases per 100K (last 2 weeks). Here are the cases per 100K (last 2 weeks) for every day since July.

DeKalb Schools Cases Per 100K Last 2 Weeks

57 CASES PER DAY = 100 cases per 100K
If DeKalb County averages 57 cases per day for 14 days, that will be 100 cases per 100K (last 2 weeks). Since July, DeKalb has gone under 57 cases for the day half a dozen times.

RAW DATA – CASES PER 100K (LAST 2 WEEKS)
Date Cases That Day Cases per 100K (Last 2 Weeks) Date
9/21 30 117 9/21
9/20 65 115 9/20
9/19 82 116 9/19
9/18 52 117 9/18
9/17 67 118 9/17
9/16 75 123 9/16
9/15 76 122 9/15
9/14 77 124 9/14
9/13 44 121 9/13
9/12 82 122 9/12
9/11 77 122 9/11
9/10 71 124 9/10
9/9 60 126 9/9
9/8 71 128 9/8
9/7 11 131 9/7
9/6 72 135 9/6
9/5 94 135 9/5
9/4 55 137 9/4
9/3 112 144 9/3
9/2 68 150 9/2
9/1 91 152 9/1
8/31 55 165 8/31
8/30 48 166 8/30
8/29 80 171 8/29
8/28 92 175 8/28
8/27 88 183 8/27
8/26 81 189 8/26
8/25 93 200 8/25
8/24 39 211 8/24
8/23 76 224 8/23
8/22 105 237 8/22
8/21 111 255 8/21
8/20 164 269 8/20
8/19 86 279 8/19
8/18 187 292 8/18
8/17 69 286 8/17
8/16 84 296 8/16
8/15 112 303 8/15
8/14 155 317 8/14
8/13 135 322 8/13
8/12 168 330 8/12
8/11 184 332 8/11
8/10 137 337 8/10
8/9 185 337 8/9
8/8 243 330 8/8
8/7 227 327 8/7
8/6 244 335 8/6
8/5 188 330 8/5
8/4 138 337 8/4
8/3 147 342 8/3
8/2 142 337 8/2
8/1 222 345 8/1
7/31 192 357 7/31
7/30 199 355 7/30
7/29 187 354 7/29
7/28 218 358 7/28
7/27 139 357 7/27
7/26 129 381 7/26
7/25 222 386 7/25
7/24 288 381 7/24
7/23 208 381 7/23
7/22 245 382 7/22
7/21 178 378 7/21
7/20 106 386 7/20
7/19 204 387 7/19
7/18 315 392 7/18
7/17 181 383 7/17
7/16 187 382 7/16
7/15 222 392 7/15
7/14 206 395 7/14
7/13 327 7/13
7/12 173 7/12
7/11 184 7/11
7/10 283 7/10
7/9 217 7/9
7/8 213 7/8
7/7 241 7/7
7/6 114 7/6
7/5 245 7/5
7/4 242 7/4
7/3 176 7/3
7/2 269 7/2
7/1 245 7/1

208 responses to “Formula To Calculate Moving To Hybrid

  1. New Normal Won't Be Normal at All

    Edugator,

    Are you in an ES? I am in a HS and haven’t heard a thing about MAP testing, even though we give it to 9th and 10th graders.

    1
  2. MAP might be a MS thing. Not sure about other grades. HS teachers would probably complain more effectively.

  3. Oh Yes on MAP testing.
    The window will open October 5th and close November 11th.
    Students MUST be tested on TEAMS and as stated above no more than 9 students at a time.
    This is only for “practice” and to help drive instruction.
    The Winter MAP, probably January, scores will be used for program qualification.
    The county said they’re sure we’ll be in the buildings by then, January! Ha, Ha, Ha.

    1
  4. @Teach1, Do you have any written communication regarding what you just said?

    2
  5. High schools are giving MAP to 9th and 10th graders and it’s my understanding that MAP scores will be used in TKES evaluations for non-EOC classes. That’s what we were told in a faculty meeting though I don’t have written documentation.

    1
  6. Teach 1 is correct- all info is being handled by school based admin, and I don’t want to throw any of them under the bus (it’s getting crowded under there) but there have been numerous school meetings about this. I’m stunned that the county hasn’t communicated. Stunned!

    6
  7. None of what I wrote has been given to us in written form.
    It has all been word of mouth from administration in faculty meetings.
    They told us because they wanted us to start planning as it is only a little over a week away.
    I will let you know if any written communication gets sent our way.
    It will take huge amount of instructional time to do this , several weeks most likely.
    I wonder what the other students in your class do while you’re MAP testing 9 students…. lots of busy work, sadly.
    What a waste especially if it doesn’t count for anything other than practice.

    6
  8. Stan,

    Has there been any discussion on why there is focus on the one metric as a guide to whether or not to re-open schools? Cases per 100,000 over the last 14 days is just one indicator. The reason I asked that is that this number has more or less leveled off over the last couple of weeks. At the same time the total test number has headed back up and the percent positive continues to trend down.

    There continues to be a push for increased testing which means we are going to find more asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases. I wonder if the 6 cases per 100,000 number is realistic without 100% inoculation of a highly effective vaccine.

    If that is the path we are on, the administration and School Board should make changes now to how we move forward. For example can money be saved now by putting our buildings into “hibernation” for the next 10 months?

    1
  9. Did anything ever get started with the “Micro-Schools” concept?

    Also, are Substitutes “allowed” to tutor? Subs all have a Bachelor’s Degree, but for many, it’s not specifically in “Education” (or else they would have taken the next steps to get certified as a Teacher). I am 59, and too old to have to back to college for two more years just to re-major in “Education”, as required by the teacher Professional Standards Commission. I have no problem taking the general GACE exam, and the few subject matter exams, but two more years of college is not happening for me.

    I have 25 years of corporate Human Resources leadership experience, including assessing learning needs, designing training programs, and presenting training to adult learners (employees) at all levels, from entry level through Directors and MD’s. Additionally, I have created individual employee development plans, monitored, and mentored. I’m a smart woman with the ability to really teach children beyond just being a Substitute. With the continued and growing Teacher openings, is anyone tight with someone at the teacher Standards Commission who might be able to drive change and thinking “outside the box” for the sake of our kids? I am a Substitute, the County has no work for me, and I would really like to help our kids. I miss them SO much.

    1
  10. Shameful to be Dekalb

    It is clear Dr. Tinsley and her office are not supporting the new Superintendent. She’s too busy packing her office to go and work in APS. Has anyone stopped to wonder why her office has failed to provide any guidance and support. Of all people, one with a background in counseling is failing us when she would be among the most knowledgeable. Why is there no built in support to relieve teachers of some of the burdens. We are catastrophically wasting money for too many positions that are not helping at the school house. Central office is empty and yet teachers are being vilified.

    7
  11. Hey @Ben, They are probably trying to keep it simple.

  12. Stan, I agree with you that cases per 100,000 is an easy measure to understand but it really doesn’t measure how prevalent Covid-19 is in DeKalb County, which is what I think the administration is trying to get at. Each day we are only testing about 0.26% of the county’s population. There are a variety of reasons why people get tested, but ultimately there are some people that are never tested that have it and some people that show no symptoms that get included in the “case” category because they test positive.

    If we started testing a significant percentage of the population, our daily case numbers would immediately go up. Are we worse off? No, we just have more knowledge. Conversely, what if we only tested people with severe symptoms for the next two weeks? Our case numbers would immediately go down, but we would not be better off.

    My point is this. As testing becomes more readily accessible, our cases per 100,000 metric will not get better even though the spread of Covid may be decreasing.

    During the last Board meeting there was some discussion about how we may be getting close to going below the metric to return to school. Depending on your point of view that gave some hope or dread that this could happen as soon as mid-October.

    My observation is that we are not getting any closer to going back even as a hybrid and are unlikely to go back to full face to face instruction probably for at least a year given that we would need to get down to under 6 cases per 100,000. I don’t think there is any county in Georgia that meets that standard and only a few counties nationwide that meet that standard. None come close to the population density of Dekalb County.

    3
  13. We have a plan of when to go back, but we need to add what policies will be in place. How will contact tracing work? Schools need to know immediately when a positive test comes in. Do we know if the health department can do this to prevent positive people are not returning and that notifications and quarantining can take place? Will testing be required for all exposed people? Relying on the honor system can not be enough, since we’re seeing in other districts that people have returned while positive. We need to know what protocols will be in place when someone doesn’t wear a mask. A safe return should not be just words.

    I’ve seen the arguments that if people can go to the stores, restaurants, and social gatherings, we can go back to the school building. It’s being around people who are doing these things and might have a cavalier attitude towards COVID that makes close proximity even scarier. Once we are in the building, we need to be vigilant about our behavior. The rules need to be enforced. I just read this article from a Gwinnett teacher. What drove him to leave seems less the actual returning, and more how exposed he felt when he returned. https://www.ajc.com/education/get-schooled-blog/lives-of-my-family-are-not-and-never-were-a-part-of-my-teaching-contract/NIMIK3KDWJAZVMA44TWKRSSLXQ/?fbclid=IwAR10YViQ2XsprkusCnGAoRxoCdo1j02GAS-3xxs-vmsKN9OcX6qk8SjCrks

    2
  14. Gwinnett teacher quits- Again teachers not following the rules and guidelines. Same old, same old. It’s teachers.

    “Worsening the problem is that even some teachers are not taking masks or social distancing seriously. Even the science teachers who should know better aren’t, which baffles me.

    At my school, I regularly see teachers not wearing masks, socializing within two feet. I mention it to them, send emails with my concerns to the administration, and stay well away. Since I only leave my room once or twice during the day to go to the restroom, I see a tiny fraction of my co-workers.

    Yet, walking from my car to my classroom, I saw six teachers with no masks covering their mouth or nose. The masks were worn as chin straps, if worn at all. During pre-planning, one such staff member was in a group putting together the school’s safety and emergency folders. Irony.

    Let’s be clear. There are signs posted stating masks are mandatory. We get reminders from the administration. We had two (albeit super-brief, maybe 10 minutes total) “staff developments” on COVID-19 safety.

    Today, each time I was out of my room, I saw teachers with no masks, and we have kids in the building now that are seeing this and learning the wrong lesson. From their teachers, no less

    Why? Because teachers are not medical professionals. It hasn’t been drilled into us through long training and by seeing diseases firsthand. We don’t have contagions in front of us every day.

    Most don’t get the virus doesn’t care if we’re slack in our habits. They don’t understand that to this virus, we, the teachers, are a tasty blood-bag buffet, while it looks for the next walking buffet.”

    1
  15. This story and her website is worth looking into. How can we even plan on schools ever going back when labs are allowed to dump data weeks after it was collected and the state marks it as new cases?

    https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/georgia-woman-dives-deep-into-daily-covid-19-numbers

    5
  16. Stan, can you give us some clarity on the numbers and going back. I have to admit, I am confused. Today the number is 111 for 100K. At some point last week it was 119 per 100K. As I understand the Super’s plan once we are at 100/100K the teachers have one week before they are in the building and then they have 2 weeks to prep. What happens if we go to 101 or higher in the three weeks do we start all over? I’m not trying to obtuse I’m just confused. What if the kids are in the building at we go to 101/100K?

    3
  17. Hey @D. Yeah. It’s quite confusing. That 111 has to be under 100 for two weeks straight, the the teachers get a one week notice before coming in. If that number goes over 100 at any time, we go back to 100% virtual and the clock starts over.

    2
  18. The thing about getting to 6 cases per 100K in order to get back to 5 days a week of F2F is insane. It will literally NEVER happen, or at least not within the next few years. Not in DeKalb or anywhere else. That’s a completely unrealistic benchmark set by a bunch of CYA bureaucrats that have no concept of reality. If they have decided that they don’t want DeKalb to go back to F2F learning EVER, just go ahead & say that.

    5
  19. Dunwoody Dad,
    You have to wonder what the cases per 100K are for other highly contagious diseases and viruses, remember we’re not just solely focused on healthy children and adults but ANYONE that happens to be residing in Dekalb. How many elderly die from the common flu? (even with a vaccine) The 5/100K metric is absurd, we need to close all school buildings indefinitely at this point and put them in hibernation mode as Ben suggested. Save the tax payers money while our property taxes are raised yet again.

    4
  20. Time for a Georgia Mandate?

    Not really a fan of our dear Gov, but Florida’s gov is mandating their schools open. Miami Dade was reported as being forced to open two weeks before they wanted.

    Is it time for Kemp to issue a similar mandate?

    DeKalb’s admin obviously has no clue on how to go about reopening. Seemingly every other school in the metro has a plan or has kids already back (without the sky falling, chicken littles).

    Is the only solution to come from Atlanta? But then that would require Kemp giving two shits about DeKalb, and I can imagine him laughing his ass off at how inept the admin is here…

    4
  21. What’s interesting to me is that other districts with higher county-wide infection rates have restarted in person school, and if there is a problem at a particular school, that school shuts down, not the entire district. That is what makes sense to me – each school’s population and the COVID spread within that population should determine whether it can be in person. It doesn’t make sense to me that, for example, Redan HS has to stay closed because of high infection rates in the Dunwoody HS area, which is 20 miles away (and vice versa). Using the entire county as the population for judging the safety of convening school in each building is an artificial and not very accurate way to measure the risks. I understand that charter schools which draw students from the whole county will need to be judged based on the whole county, but the majority of DeKalb schools have neighborhood attendance zones and should be allowed to go back if their zone has low COVID numbers. If any of the teachers or staff who work in that building live in an area with higher COVID numbers, require that they have negative tests before reopening. I know this isn’t perfect, but the current plan is overly restrictive and will ensure that the schools never reopen this year.

    2
  22. CDC study on COVID in kids bolsters case for elementary-school reopening

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/cdc-study-on-covid-in-kids-bolsters-case-for-elementary-school-reopening/ar-BB19vDTX?ocid=msedgntp

    So, will Dekalb follow the science or rely on their feelings and politics?

    4
  23. DSW2Contributor

    ^ Second paragraph of that MSN article:
    ——————————————————————————-
    “The new study also found that Hispanic children were hit hardest by the coronavirus, composing 42 percent of all cases for which ethnic data was available. That highlighted another uncomfortable truth about the pandemic: People of color have been disproportionately affected by both its medical and economic ravages.”
    ——————————————————————————-

    4
  24. Does DCSD have anyone (Stan? Nancy?) who can persuade Gov. Kemp to give a sufficient number of these rapid tests to DCSD to help get our schools reopened?

    https://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/us-to-ship-millions-of-virus-tests-in-push-to-reopen-k-12-schools/A5ZCZ6V2CFAFHHJRV6VTR6CIPU/

  25. DSW2Contributor

    ^^ Dekalb Mom, college sports teams are testing their athletes for Covid at least twice a week. I presume we would have to test at the same frequency. We have about 115,000 students and staff, so we would need around 230,000 tests per week….. or about 920,000 tests for a 4-week long month.

    We’d need just under a million of those tests to keep DCSD open for just *one* month.

    The AJC article says that there are 100 million tests being distributed over the whole country….. if Trump were to distribute the tests evenly and ignore DC and PR, then each state would get 2 million tests. I really doubt Kemp would use half of those test just to keep DCSD safely open for 1 month.

    5
  26. Common Sense Isn't

    @DSW2Contributor, whats your angle here? You seem to try to cherry-pick anything and everything to keep schools closed to face-to-face, even a CHOICE of F2F.

    If schools opened up to in-person learning would you be out of a job or something?

    Skies too blue? Water too wet? I mean what gives….

    4
  27. I don’t think raising the issue of Hispanics being more susceptible to COVID is cherry-picking. We’ve got a whole (gerrymandered) cluster of schools that are predominantly Hispanic. Many of these families may lack health insurance. We must take into consideration what is best for our most vulnerable communities. And also protect teachers who serve these kids who might also be more at risk.

    16
  28. Questions for Stan

    Stan: a few questions for you regarding teacher return and virtual teaching.

    1. What will happen for teachers without their own classrooms? Will they be expected to teach in another teacher’s room virtually to students or will they be able to continue teaching from home?

    2. What about immuno-compromised teachers who don’t have their own classrooms and those with immuno-compromised family members?

    Will teachers be able to teach virtually on a case by case basis?

    4
  29. Hello @Questions.
    I’d look to other school districts that have already opened. DeKalb Schools is regular contact with the other districts. I would expect DeKalb Schools to take what has been working in other districts and employ those solutions in DeKalb. DeKalb Schools must see 2 weeks of every day below 100 Cases per 100k (last 2 weeks). If that happens, it’s still another 3 weeks before students see the classroom. Since we haven’t seen that number go below 100 in months, I’d say we have a while before these details must get hammered out. That being said, regionals and principals are starting to meet to discuss how F2F learning might go.

    1
  30. F2F Option Now

    @proud teacher Miami Dade County, with 350K children and close to 80% of those children Hispanic (90% non white), are going back full face to face in October, with an option for virtual. Just FYI.

    2
  31. What are the discussion points for next week’s Board Meeting? It is doubtful that COVID cases will drop to single digits in this large county, possibly ever, so is the reopening case goal being revised, esp since surrounding counties are offering a “hybrid” approach? I see school-age kids outside during the day, every day. They are Not on their “lunch break”. How are they learning what they must in order to be successful in life?
    Also, are there new survey results? I am more interested in knowing what our kids say. They will be honest.

    3
  32. F2F

    They are opening because they are being told to by the Florida education commissioner and the governor. And teachers and parents are protesting.

    FYI

    2
  33. F2F Option Now

    Proud Teacher, I am sure that the governor and the education commissioner want them all to die, just like in all the other counties across the country that are open. Or they are following science and weighing the risk/reward to having children in school. One or the other.

    3
  34. F2F Option Now

    Proud Teacher, Sorry. I got snarky. I regret it. You point out that parents and teachers are protesting reopening. There are lots of parents and teachers protesting here that Dekalb is giving no option to parents. Why don’t our voices get heard? Why does it have to be black and white? Why can’t we have options? Why do we not have leaders in our county that can take charge and do what Cherokee did? What Gwinnett did? That is the frustrating part of all this. We are giving parents NO choice. And kids are the losers in this (if your kid is doing fine – that’s great. Many are not). We need strong leadership that follows science and weighs risk/reward. Schools around the country and the world are reopening. We should be too.

    4
  35. Demographics

    Your weekly dose of TOD blog

    Virtual Reality
    The rhetoric around a return to in-class instruction is heating up in Dekalb. Hyperbolic comments (no risk is worth taking; blood on hands) are being made and hard-line stances (quit before I go back) have been taken. Some of this is emotional, perhaps the result of fear-mongering from some camps and some is political-after all, what isn’t these days? In one sense this is a detachment from reality but in another this is all very real. And it suggests a very interesting thought exercise.

    Let’s take the “hell no, we won’t go” teachers’ position, take them at their word and see where that takes us. It may just be a better place.

    If we accept that virtual learning is the exclusive modality until such a time as there is no risk of anyone, particularly teachers and their loved ones, falling ill due to SARS-CoV2 then what does that really mean? Even with a vaccine that meets the FDA sixty percent efficacy and given the presence of clandestine anti-vaxxers the condition for return-to-school will not be met for the foreseeable future, if ever. And now reports are emerging of a virus mutation that is even more contagious than the previous variant. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that all “learning” will be “virtual” from here on.

    There is an issue on which teachers have been somewhat contradictory. In spring there was much concern about the effectiveness of virtual learning, about the difficulty (primarily for the teachers) and confusion around the technology involved. More recently in their push back against returning to the classroom protesting teachers are waving placards touting their skills: “I can teach online just fine.” Clearly that needs to be evaluated and fortunately there is a “control” for comparison.

    And this is where parents come into play. They’ve been exposed to classroom teachers pivoting to virtual but Georgia is blessed with several online/virtual academies. These operations were built from the ground up for exactly the modality that classroom teachers are (indirectly and inadvertently) demanding. It should be a straightforward comparison between a classroom teacher who seems to think a bitmoji classroom is critical vs someone who is a “virtual native.”

    This brings us to the fun part of the thought experiment: what does the future hold?

    For parents and their children it offers flexibility and mobility in the day-to-day and longer-term. Once education is virtual, why stay in DeKalb? The real estate market hasn’t crashed, mortgage rates are low and a move to a lower-cost locale would free up cash to cover the cost of proctoring/supervision. If the wage earners are remote workers all one really needs is reliable, high speed internet. There is the issue of special needs students who cannot be remote but by removing a majority of students in-person facilities can be made safe for these students and their teachers and more resources will be available for their needs.

    For classroom teachers the situation is a bit bleak. They may prefer “virtual learning” to what they dramatize as “certain death” but what hasn’t sunk in is this means they are now remote workers. Begs some questions. Are they remote enough? Could we obtain more bang for fewer bucks with English teachers in Iowa and Math teachers in Massachusetts? Do they even need to be in this country? Many foreigners do quite well in English and are far more conversant in Math than the average U.S. K-12 teacher.

    Which leads another consequence of virtual learning. Thinking that all you need to do is video conference or live-stream your normal classroom performance is wrong thinking. This is a major paradigm shift and, as classroom teachers are pointing out, this requires a completely different process. It also offers enormous opportunity. We all know most teachers hover around average and there are, as in any endeavor, some absolutely outstanding performers. With properly designed and managed virtual learning this sage can be on many stages, multiple times with lesser “guides by the sides” ensuring students stay on task, get answers to questions and have moderated discussions with fellow students.

    But even this is just polishing an old apple that is well beyond its use-by date. We have burned through twenty years of the twenty first century and the era of the little red schoolhouse ended decades ago. We are surrounded by technology that listens to us, responds to our queries and commands. We have cars that watch us drive and alert us when we’re falling down on the job. Services understand us well enough to individualize services giving what we want, when we want it. They understand enough of us well enough to continually improve their services. Robots have entered the home as elder-care companions and child playmates. Handheld computers recognize us by face and fingerprint. Augmented reality is being used to entertain, inform and guide.

    We are immersed in sophisticated technology. Except in school. We have the capability, right here, right now, to create a system that provides individualized educational experiences that adapt in real time for each student in each subject. Constant adaption means constant evaluation and the end of high-stakes testing. AI analysis across populations drives ongoing improvement of various pedagogical techniques, modalities, and content creation and delivery. Technology makes every moment a teaching moment and eliminates boundaries between subjects and the arbitrary [mis]alignment of grade levels. Each individual learns each thing at their own rate in the manner best suited to that learner.

    If parents choose to pursue these goals, to push for this technological revolution, then thank a teacher-one of those who decided to step aside, making way for a twenty first century system.

    https://theotherdunwoody.blogspot.com/2020/09/virtual-reality.html

    5
  36. F2F Option Now

    I think that blog says it very well. Dekalb will reap what it sows. There is nothing keeping anyone here if our schools just stay virtual. Jobs will be lost, tax base lost, communities decimated. I know personally families who are moving to ‘free’ counties, and we are considering it as well. But hey, as long as we save one life! Morley said it herself in the August board meeting – if you don’t like it, get out of Dekalb!

    4
  37. Alison Mercer

    Stan,
    You are an amazing writer…highly intelligent, thought-provoking, courageous….. You belong on this Board of Directors. They need you. WE need you. I know this is your last year, and the Dekalb School Board will suffer from the loss of your Leadership. Truly.

    1
  38. Alison Mercer

    @DEMOGRAPHICS
    Thank you for your contribution today. I have now read it twice. There are some great “Thinkers” on this site, and I am thankful that Stan has provided such a great forum for All of us to share, learn, understand, respect, whine, safely express ourselves, and to “Just Be Real” in our current “unreal” world. ~Alison

    2
  39. Dunwoody Dad

    Quick note- if DeKalb was using Date of Onset rather than Date of Report to evaluate the case rate in the county, we would have just been below 100 per 100K of population for 14 days straight. On Sept. 16 our two week average dropped to 96 cases per 100K. Now, the Georgia DPH includes a two-week lag for Date of Onset data as opposed to Date of Report, but every preliminary indication shows that we have stayed well below 96 since Sept. 16. The number have been dropping significantly & consistently on an almost daily basis. For example, in the two week period from Sept. 4 to Sept. 17, Cases per 100K dropped 25%, from 124 to 96. People, we are past this thing, and long overdue to get back to face-to-face learning, even under DeKalb’s overly draconian protocols. The option to go back F2F should start Monday. We’ve already needlessly put too many of our kids further behind with the farce that is virtual learning. Again, at least give us the option, that’s all we’re asking for.

    3
  40. Common Sense Isn't

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/05/the-students-left-behind-by-remote-learning

    A long and depressing article that I feel effectively breaks down the current state of the educational decisions facing parents, teachers, and administrators alike. The longer people cling to specious misrepresentations (South Korea study; etc) of the risks while simultaneously discounting the perilous effects of remote learning, the worse off for EVERYONE.

    I challenge everyone to read the entire article.

    2
  41. Concerned Citizen

    ProPublica, hardly a conservative mouthpiece, questions why public schools across the country are not reopening. In the following article, Alec MacGillis notes that thousands of kids are being left behind: “about 80% of students had logged on, but only 65% were reliably present, according to the district. Before the pandemic, the attendance rate was 87%.”
    https://www.propublica.org/article/the-students-left-behind-by-remote-learning
    And also from the article, Becky Pringle illustrates why SCIENCE! is not really important to teachers, but outrageous numbers and predictions are believed as gospel:
    Becky Pringle, the president of the other national teachers’ union, the National Education Association, was also confident that parents now leaving the public schools for home schooling or private schools would return. “Our parents and communities still believe in our schools, that they are a foundation of democracy,” she said when we spoke on the second day of school in Baltimore. “I don’t think they’re going to abandon schools.” I asked Pringle why her union, like others, had put such emphasis on the virus’s health risks to children, and she said, “When we look at the data and they say only .1% of kids will contract it and get seriously ill and die, that’s actually around 50,000 children.” I noted that the number of children known to have died of COVID-19 nationwide was around 100. She said her estimate was what could happen if kids did go back to school.

    2
  42. DSW2Contributor

    It is cute how y’all think kids don’t get left behind during in-person classes.

    13
  43. tongue in cheek

    Dunwoody Dad
    Why don’t you volunteer to go to the classroom and get infected. Easy to be so brave when you are not exposed to room of kids.

    18
  44. Tired of the Teacher Bashing

    @tongue in cheek
    LOL! Have him take Demographics with him!

    10
  45. Rethinking things

    If President Trump could catch Corona with everything in place to protect him, I am beginning to worry about our students and staff returning to Dekalb facilities in a state of disrepair.

    18
  46. Concerned Citizen

    @DSW2Contributor: “It is cute how y’all think kids don’t get left behind during in-person classes.”

    Not cute that you think such a sentiment is somehow a persuasive argument against in-person classes. Similar to “Teachers are failing to teach students in virtual classes, but that’s no different than what happens in actual classrooms. Either way, teachers are failures and your kids are falling behind.” Brilliant!

    3
  47. F2F Option Now

    People seem to forget: Flatten the curve = allow time to make sure hospitals are prepared. We did it – hospitals are ready if they are needed. 7 months later, here we are.
    Virus was never going to go away. That was never ever the idea. Curve is flattened and it is time to get on with our lives. The virus is here to stay even with a vaccine.

    5
  48. Alison Mercer

    As someone with a medical laboratory background, I reiterate that COVID will never go away, now that it has been “Created/Born”. The Wuhan lab “experimented” to see if they could modify existing microorganisms, they succeeded, and they screwed up. “It” got out, unintentionally or perhaps not. Now the World will be paying for China’s recklessness permanently.

    With vaccines, COVID will “quiet down”, but it will never go away. Like other “germs”, it will likely mutate and change, much like strains of flu. We will always need to be vigilant with personal protection, like we should be every Winter during general flu season. Germs are “smart”, they figure out how to adapt to the drugs that are thrown at them sometimes…. BUT, germs/microorganisms are EVERYWHERE, ALL the time. In your home, your car, the gas pump, every door handle, your shoes, the money you handle, purses, etc., and Yes, on your hands and skin. ALL the time. Fortunately, with small “exposures” over time, our immune systems “change” and build up resistance, but not always.

    All humans can do is our very best to follow the medical guidelines we are all aware of. Shutting everything down and hiding is not among the guidelines. We have continued to go to the grocery store, and to the pharmacy for our prescription meds that cannot be mailed. We touch the boxes and bags delivered to our homes. We retrieve mail from our mailboxes that have been touched by multiple human hands. Since COVID can “live” for up to 72 hours on all surfaces, it is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid some type of contact. If we wash our hands and don’t touch our face first, we do well. If we cover our cough, this helps. Masks, even paper ones, are good to use in public settings, but they are not a “guarantee”. COVID is airborne AND tactile. There is no “guarantee” for Not contracting the seasonal flu, TB, West Nile Virus, and many other things. Yet, we go on…. move forward…. take unknown risks…. take known risks but manage our actions accordingly….We Do Our Best. This is all we can EVER do, but shutting everything down is Not “our best”. Failing our children and harming their chance for future life success and responsibility, is not “our best”. Virtual Learning is not “our best”.

    3
  49. As someone with a critical teaching background, I feel compelled to point out that “theory” about COVID being born in a laboratory has been discredited by scientists. Your MAGA is showing.

    https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/05/scientists-exactly-zero-evidence-covid-19-came-lab

    12
  50. Alison Mercer

    @SMH– You are incorrect.

    2
  51. Prove it.

    2
  52. Bless your little Fox-watching little heart.

    From National Geographic:

    “Prominent virologists, such as Kristian Andersenfrom Scripps Research and Carl Bergstrom from University of Washington, took to the internet and called out the paper for being unscientific. Chief among their complaints was that the report ignored the vast body of published literature regarding what is known about how coronaviruses circulate in wild animal populations and the tendency to spill over into humans, including recent publications about the origins of SARS-CoV-2.“

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/09/coronavirus-origins-misinformation-yan-report-fact-check-cvd/

    6
  53. Because I Said So

    Did you read the Fox News article? There is no evidence. She just says we should believe her because she works for the WHO.

    6
  54. In league with Clayton now

    Wow – actual plans, but not DeKalb. This is APS. Falling behind Atlanta. We should be so proud.

    “Also new on Friday, the district announced that middle and high school students would be given the option of returning to in-person classes four days a week starting Nov. 16.” AJC

    3
  55. DSW2Contributor

    ^ APS does NOT have a plan.

    What APS has is a superintendent and school board who are all bullshit masters. They and their bullshit are completely unencumbered because there is nobody in APS calling bullshit on their bullshit — there is no Stan or Nancy or Carstarphen in APS anymore.

    Go read what APS parents are posting on social media and you’ll see what I mean. For example, look at the parent comments under this APS tweet:
    https://twitter.com/apsupdate/status/1310681801061531649

    1
  56. Alison Mercer

    From reading all comments, it feels that the “majority” of contributors are Not in support of us getting back to the schoolhouse, in person. The next public Board Meeting should be pretty short. Nothing has changed. There are no plans for academics. We won’t reach the data goal for a very long time. We will continue to “fail” our children. But hey, at least football is back!

    3
  57. Well, Allison, you haven’t exactly offered a solid, science-based argument to convince me.

    4
  58. I would strongly urge parents with kids still “attending” DCSD schools to get them out of there ASAP. If private schools are full, then homeschool. If only for this school year. Try it out. They are worth the sacrifice it takes. Understandably, there are some kids out there that do well with a virtual learning model…I’d find a reputable one. Is it fair that those who can leave will leave, and those who cannot will be left to accept whatever DCSD provides? No. Inequities are being perpetuated by the decisions made by those in charge, and it is terrible, and I see the folks advocating for a F2F option pointing this out time and time again. Yes, the schools will reopen at some point. It will happen. But I just cannot see how the system will recover in any sort of timely fashion and meet the educational needs of the kids they supposedly serve. Teachers, I get that you are scared to go to work for DCSD. If memory serves me well, parents and teachers alike have been complaining about the failures of DCSD for a very long time. It is not going to have a grand reopening where all is new and improved, with all the problems fixed.

    5
  59. @Tired of the Teacher Bashing
    I’m happy to.

    County is under 100/100k. Have teachers received their notice?

    1
  60. @demographics

    We haven’t, but it dropped on a weekend so it may be Monday afternoon/ Tuesday morning before we hear anything.

    1
  61. DSW2Contributor

    ^^ The only reason why the calculated rate is below 100/100K is because the Department of Health is *NOT* counting the results of Rapid Antigen Tests. See the Fox-5 article from Friday October 2,2020, “Health experts concerned results from new COVID-19 test aren’t included in Georgia case tally”:
    https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/health-experts-concerned-results-from-new-covid-19-test-arent-included-in-georgia-case-tally

    6
  62. Hello Stan,

    I am a teacher in the county, with a young daughter who is a scholar at my school of employment. I feel that there has been a major oversight with these reopening plans, which I would like for the board to address in the upcoming meeting. Some staff members have been informed by their administrators that their children (who attend the same school at which they teach) will not be able to attend daily. I was lucky enough to find an opening at an 8:30-1 pm daycare that covers the time during which I teach synchronously. I was able to find this part-time daycare spot in Dunwoody, and I live in Brookhaven. The daycares in my area were full.

    With the hybrid plan presented, I will have no choice but to take leave to care for my child. I am scrambling to get on wait lists for full-time daycares/preschools, but a leave of absence will be my only option until I secure a spot elsewhere. I know there are many educators in my position, and the reality is that many private schools and daycare centers have no availability. Has the county considered sending out a survey to teachers to gauge how this will impact them? It seems short sighted to create a comprehensive plan with no real idea of whether or not they will have the available staff needed to carry out the plan.

    Additionally, it would be great to know whether or not teachers in this position will be able to take extended leave without forfeiting their jobs. I believe Gwinnett is allowing this option.

    15
  63. Whine with that Cheese?

    Wow, look at this, actual teachers are in need of the “day care” system aka public school they were up in arms about just a few weeks ago. Go figure that the realities of the real world would eventually become a reality for the teachers who have been complaining about how parents just want kids back in school so they can go to work! Who saw that coming?!?!

    I guess it’s ok for day care workers to put their lives at risk so you can go to work?

    I guess it’s ok for teachers to complain they can’t go to work with schools not fully open in person but no other parents are allowed?

    Amazing.

    It’s very apparent that teachers live on a different planet!

    5
  64. Change in plans?

    The verbiage in the newsletter from the Superintendent seems to communicate a different plan from what was presented at the board meeting. @Stan can you get clarification on the tentative timeline?

    1
  65. The current timeline hasn’t changed. There are no dates. It’s based on the formula. If that changes, it’ll be announced at a board meeting.

    1
  66. I have concerns about the accuracy of the state’s COVID-19 reporting. They have admitted that they are not publishing all of the testing data. I am concerned about putting teachers and students at risk by relying on flawed data.

    https://www.wabe.org/kemp-extends-virus-rules-as-georgia-deaths-pass-7000/

    One complicating factor is the increasing usage of rapid antigen tests, which aren’t yet recorded in state figures. Department of Public Health spokesperson Nancy Nydam said the state has recorded more than 28,000 positives from those tests, but they are not yet routinely published.

    “Discussions are ongoing about when they will be included on the website,” Nydam wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

    Please reconsider moving forward with this plan before all data is presented, especially if the numbers are borderline.

    6
  67. SK if you’re concerned you don’t have to go into school, if your a teacher, quit, if you’re a parent of a student, home school. Tin foil hats are being worn by too many people these days.

    5
  68. DSW2Contributor

    ^^^^^ Happy World Teachers’ Day to you too, Whine with that Cheese.

    https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldteachersday

    1
  69. Common Sense Isn't

    Re: Rapid Antigen Tests, most times positive rapid tests are followed up by PCR tests, so I understand the debate on including the results as positive cases. Someone who takes a rapid test that’s positive and then a PCR to confirm is 1 positive case, not two. That said, even adding 28k positive rapid tests is less than 9% of total cases in aggregate so likely not really going to move the needle on a daily basis.

    The next lines in the article are more significant in community spread/resource analysis:

    “The share of positives on nasal swab PCR tests has fallen to a rolling seven-day average of 6.4%, getting close to the 5% level that experts say indicates a state is doing enough testing to catch outbreaks. The number of people hospitalized also continues to creep down, now at the same level as in late June.”

    Meanwhile as Dekalb is waiting for Godot, Cobb elementary and special education students are back in their classrooms this morning.

  70. We’re being told that we should be back into the classroom on the week of 10/19 after the board meeting. It was communicated the superintendent doesn’t need board approval for face to face instruction.

  71. Dekalb teacher

    Who said that/where did you read that @Done?

    3
  72. Hello,
    I have two questions.

    1. Are schools being cleaned and prepared for the possible return of staff and students. Our principal said that the DCSS does not want all of the custodians working in the building. If it it not safe for our custodians to clean the building, how are staff, teachers and eventually students suppose to return?

    2. Is the BOE still meeting virtually? If the BOE is not meeting in person, it seems hard for them to ask teachers and staff to return to the schools.

    8
  73. @DeKalb Teacher,
    We had a staff meeting last week and was given this information. We’re also told no options will be given for teachers with compromise immune systems but we can take FMLA under the CARES Act. It’s supposed to be a hybrid A/B model. Everyone supposed to wear masks but no plans was shared how it would be enforced. We will have to simultaneously do f2f and virtual, and eat with our kids during lunch. We’re also going to be sent an intent to return letter by HR but have not received anything . Apparently the county did major work on the ventilation system but I don’t believe it.

    4
  74. Dekalb Teacher

    @Done – thanks, we’ve not been given any updates at my school.

    3
  75. Dunwoody Dad

    Can anyone link to the multitude of stories that must be out there of massive, devastating outbreaks in the school districts & private schools that have already started back face-to-face in Georgia & elsewhere? I would think those would be all over the news, especially an outlet like the AJC that seems to revel in reporting on Covid “outbreaks”, but I can’t seem to find any from the past few weeks. There were a few isolated pockets of increased cases/contact tracing in Cherokee County, and maybe another district, but I may have missed the follow-up story that included all the hospitalized and/or deceased teachers & students that we have all been assured will inevitably follow the reopening of schools. You know, the blood that’s supposed to be on everyone’s hands. I’m just looking for actual facts & evidence here, as opposed to guesses & fears of what MIGHT or COULD happen. Thanks in advance.

    By the way, @tongue in cheek, I’m not planning to give up my current job to go teach- that would be an odd choice for me- but my wife is a pre-K teacher who went back face-to-face after Labor Day. Some might even consider her high-risk, as she has asthma, though it’s well under control. She wears a mask in the classroom, but the kids only have to wear them when they’re walking outside the classroom (they don’t need them on the playground, obviously). Four weeks in and somehow all of the teachers & students in the preschool are still alive & healthy. Just like virtually every other school that has opened in America. Funny how that works.

    6
  76. Ben Greenwald

    The BOE should start meeting on a hybrid model. 3 Members plus the Superintendent in a room together. Everyone else can dial in on a Zoom call. If that is seen as being unacceptable for the BOE then it should be unacceptable for the children.

    11
  77. Hello “Whine with that Cheese,”

    My intent was not to come off as throwing a pity party. If we were to have a hardship competition, I surely would lose. This has been devastating for a lot of families, and I am very blessed that mine is not among them. I was not trying to suggest otherwise or trying to complain, but was simply bringing up something the school system needs to consider. Goodness gracious.

    It would be foolish for the county to not try to project expected staffing for each of the various options.

    8
  78. DeKalb Teacher 2020

    Hi Stan, are schools allowed to tell teachers to help proctor the PSAT (with hundreds of students entering the building) before the district has switched to Phase 2?

  79. Alison Mercer

    @Teacher
    You are right.

  80. Dunwoody Dad

    @Common Sense Isn’t & Concerned Citizen

    THANK YOU for posting the link to that article above (was the same joint article by the New Yorker & ProPublica- like you said, not exactly bastions of conservative thought). If anyone takes the time to read that- and I’ll link it again below- and comes away thinking this is anything other than a political game by people that simply hate Trump, Kemp, etc., I don’t know what to tell you. ALL of the evidence points to reopening schools having no significant negative effect in terms of Covid outbreaks. And keeping them closed has MAJOR negative impact on students, especially those that already are in disadvantaged situations- you know, the ones who need the help & structure & interaction that schools provide more than anyone else. I’m sorry this will be long, but PLEASE if nothing else just read these passages from the article- paints a pretty clear picture of exactly what’s going on here. And it has nothing to do with actual science:

    *****
    The Baltimore schools are perpetually strapped for resources: among other deficits, sixty buildings lack air-conditioning, which forces frequent closures in hot weather. But administrators were getting advice from experts at the local college, Johns Hopkins University, which is home to one of the country’s largest schools of public health and which had created a leading coronavirus database. Among Hopkins’s experts is Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist whose work focusses on outbreak detection and response. Nuzzo had supported lockdowns to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the spring, but by the summer she was arguing that schools should plan to reopen in much of the country. In an Op-Ed in the Times on July 1st, Nuzzo and Joshua Sharfstein, a pediatrician who has served as Baltimore’s health commissioner and Maryland’s health secretary, wrote that the coronavirus had mostly spared young people: children made up nearly a quarter of the American population but accounted for just two per cent of known covid-19 cases; they had been hospitalized at a rate of 0.1 per hundred thousand, compared with 7.4 per hundred thousand in adults between the ages of fifty and sixty-four. The authors mentioned studies from France and Australia suggesting that children were not major transmitters of the virus. And they noted that the American Academy of Pediatrics favored school reopening. “The disruption of learning can have lifetime effects on students’ income and health,” they wrote.

    A number of experts were beginning to agree with Nuzzo and Sharfstein. According to reports, the rate of infection among teachers in Sweden, which as part of its less restrictive response to the virus had left most of its schools open, was no greater than it was in neighboring Finland, which had closed all its schools. “They found that teachers had the same risk of covid as the average of other professions,” said Martin Kulldorff, a professor at Harvard Medical School who develops statistical and epidemiological methods for disease surveillance.
    *****
    Joseph Allen, the director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard’s school of public health, wrote a sixty-two-page plan with a dozen colleagues listing steps that schools could take to reduce transmission risk. To improve ventilation and air quality, schools with air-conditioning could upgrade their air filters, while schools without it could make sure that their windows opened and set up fans to circulate fresh air from outdoors; when it got too cold for that, they could install portable air purifiers. Notably, the recommendations did not include a hybrid model, with students in school a limited number of days per week to allow for social distancing—students did not need to be spaced out much more than usual, Allen said, as long as they wore masks. “There’s certainly no such thing as zero risk in anything we do, and that is certainly the case during a pandemic,” he said in a conference call to present the plan. But, he added, “there are devastating costs of keeping kids out of school. When we have this discussion about sending kids back to school, we have to have it in the context of the massive individual and societal costs of keeping kids at home.”
    *****
    On July 7th, President Trump held a series of events at the White House with Betsy DeVos, his Secretary of Education, to demand that schools open. “We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools,” he said. “It’s very important for our country. It’s very important for the well-being of the student and the parents. So we’re going to be putting a lot of pressure on: open your schools in the fall.”

    The effect of Trump’s declaration was instantaneous. Teachers who had been responsive to the idea of returning to the classroom suddenly regarded the prospect much more warily. “Our teachers were ready to go back as long as it was safe,” Randi Weingarten, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, told me. “Then Trump and DeVos played their political bullshit.” Ryan Hooper, the former soldier, saw the effect on his colleagues. “It was really unhelpful,” he said.

    A week later, the Baltimore Teachers Union and the Maryland State Education Association sent a four-page letter to the Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, a Republican, and the state superintendent of schools, Karen Salmon, calling on them to bar any in-person instruction for the first semester. They noted that, by one count, nearly a quarter of teachers nationwide were considered especially susceptible to the virus, and cited the lack of funding for personal protective equipment and testing. They questioned whether students could be counted on to wear masks, wash their hands, and maintain social distancing.

    Most strikingly, they argued that reopening schools would be riskiest for the families of precisely those disadvantaged students whom proponents of reopening said they were most concerned about: “the significant numbers of Black and Brown students . . . and their families who unjustly face healthcare disparities that have made them more likely to be infected and killed by the coronavirus.” In Detroit, where protesters tried to halt summer school by blocking school buses and filing a lawsuit, a white progressive activist compared requiring Black children’s attendance at school to the Tuskegee Study, in the nineteen-thirties, in which hundreds of Black men with syphilis went deliberately untreated.
    *****
    The direct risks to children were, in fact, blessedly limited. By mid-July, of the roughly thirty-two hundred people known to have died of covid-19 in Maryland, only one was under the age of nineteen. Nationwide, fewer than a hundred children had died of the virus, roughly comparable to the number of those who die of the flu, which children are also far more likely to transmit than they are covid.

    But it was not hard to see how parents could have got the impression that children were at great risk. Towns and cities had closed playgrounds, wrapping police tape around them. People in heavily Democratic areas were wearing masks even on empty streets. There may have been an implicitly political dynamic at work: the greater the threat posed by covid-19, the greater Trump’s failure in not containing it. (Joe Biden’s campaign aired an ad in early September that read “Our Kids Not Safe in School.”) In early July, Anthony Fauci, a trusted guide on coronavirus prevention, told the Washington Post that he still left his mail to sit for up to two days before opening it.

    Public-health officials who had spent months scaring people into taking proper precautions were now struggling to un-scare them enough to contemplate a return to school. “The messaging never evolved,” Jennifer Nuzzo, the Hopkins epidemiologist, told me.
    *****
    By late August, every single county in Maryland had chosen full remote learning, even though the state’s test-positivity rate had fallen to near three per cent, two per cent below the World Health Organization’s and the Centers for Disease Control’s recommended threshold for reopening schools. Across the country, some thirty-five of the fifty largest districts opted for a fully remote opening, as did most large cities, with the notable exception of New York, which announced a hybrid approach and a delayed start. A study by the Brookings Institution found that districts’ school-opening decisions correlated much more strongly with levels of support for Trump in the 2016 election than with local coronavirus case levels. “It almost feels like folly now to speak about data,” Nuzzo told me. “The decision was going to be made not on data but on politics.”
    *****
    yan Hooper, the former soldier, saw it differently. On July 29th, he had published an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun saying, “I’m distraught at the thought of our kids in the city missing more school.” He told me that he didn’t understand why schools couldn’t open at least for younger students, who were assumed to pose less of a risk of contagion and who were especially unsuited to online learning, or for high-needs students, like the ones he worked with, who were in small classes that would be easy to space out. “My biggest concern is that we’re going to lose these kids,” he said. “They might never come back.”

    Christopher Morphew, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Education, which operates a public school in the city, told me, “The costs of this are going to be huge.” In many homes, children as young as ten were going to be trying to do their online classes while babysitting younger siblings. “The failure to plan now, to spend the money now, is going to cost us in human resources, in violence, in other ways, for a long time,” he said. He estimated that the closure could result in eighteen months of “summer melt,” the term for the educational regression caused by long breaks in schooling. “Eighteen months of summer melt when you’re already three grades behind is virtually impossible to come back from.”
    *****
    Yet many places had made a different choice. Schools were opening all across Europe, including in towns and cities whose test-positivity rates were well above those in Maryland and many other parts of the U.S. that were keeping schools closed. “Not everything should be destroyed by the health situation,” Jean-Michel Blanquer, France’s education minister, said. “We must be vigilant, but not forget the educational and social imperatives, nor deviate from our two objectives: improving the educational level of each child and reducing inequalities.”

    Schools were also opening in roughly half of all districts in the U.S., and so far there was little evidence of the virus spreading inside school buildings. In Connecticut, many small towns and suburbs were offering in-person instruction—but not New Haven, which is heavily Black and Hispanic. In Texas, Florida, and Georgia, where many schools had been open since mid-August, covid-19 case numbers and hospitalization rates generally continued to decline from their summer highs, despite reported outbreaks at some schools. In Wisconsin, where teachers’ unions had been hollowed out by Governor Scott Walker, schools were opening in much of the state (though not in Milwaukee). A middle-school teacher in Sheboygan told me that kids were spending the whole day in the same classroom, and the smell of sanitizer was overpowering. But so far there had been no confirmed cases at the school.
    *****
    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/10/05/the-students-left-behind-by-remote-learning

    3
  81. Dacosta has posted that staff were given notice today that we will be in the school buildings beginning October 19. No one I know of has been given this information formally or informally.

    2
  82. Parent and teacher

    Dacosta had a lot of info with dates on his fb page, but he has deleted it.
    As a teacher, I understand that I will be back in the building soon. I plan to wear a mask and teach my students how to wash their hands properly, give elbow bumps instead of hugs, and sanitize as much as I can. I’ll ask my admin about propping my back door open for fresh air because my hvac unit wasn’t properly when we left.
    The best thing we can do is teach our students to be safe and make sure we’re doing our part as well. Going back is inevitable so let’s make the rest of the school year as wonderful and safe as we can.

    10
  83. My understanding is that communications will go out to teachers and parents this week about the plan to go to hybrid.

    1
  84. Parents and teachers need information. Why are board members sharing info on FB, but not sharing information with principals? My principal has no clue what is going on. Meanwhile, our classrooms aren’t ready for us to return. We haven’t been in the building since March 13. When and how are teacher going to prepare their classrooms all while teaching virtually? Lastly, what about the teachers with children? With no information, how do we plan accordingly?

    Stan, I’m sure communication will go out at 5pm on Friday of the a 3-day weekend. Dekalb is timely like that.

    9
  85. “What about the teachers with children”

    I cannot stop laughing. Really. Hilarious.

    95/100k. Buckle up, the clock has started. Been under 100 for days now.

    2
  86. @Demographics

    You are so insensitive. If you are a parent or in this case, likely a mother with children, you CAN’T FOCUS on anything else other than the safety and security of your own children FIRST, let alone someone else’s children.

    11
  87. F2F Option Now

    Stan, do you think there is any chance that the plan will be revised, like APS did? Based on what we are seeing from other districts and then data from across the country – this hybrid approach may not be the best way forward. I am happy that we are moving forward (seemingly) but worry about our approach.

  88. Tongue in cheek

    Dunwoody Dad
    I have a better name for you
    Venal Verbosity.

    6
  89. Demographics

    93/100k today.

    2
  90. DSW2Contributor

    ^ Again, the only reason why the calculated rate is below 100/100K is because the Department of Health is *NOT* counting the results of Rapid Antigen Tests. See the Fox-5 article from Friday October 2,2020, “Health experts concerned results from new COVID-19 test aren’t included in Georgia case tally”:
    https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/health-experts-concerned-results-from-new-covid-19-test-arent-included-in-georgia-case-tally

    1
  91. New Normal Won't Be Normal at All

    Can anyone answer this question, since I have not seen it discussed anywhere, ever: If it is so safe for us to re-open schools for f2f learning and people feel that teachers should “go back or find another job,” then WHY are parents being given a choice as to whether or not to send their kids back? If it is safe for teachers/staff, then shouldn’t it be safe for ALL? Why is there no mandate for students to return to school or be considered truant?

    As I said, I haven’t seen anyone talk about this. Maybe it’s because it’s really NOT safe for everyone?

    So, I guess folks like Demographics and Dunwoody Dad and others are about to get their way. Just don’t come back to this site crying about your kids’ teachers “not really teaching.” We’ve already told you to expect that if teachers are made to teach in person AND virtual students at the same time, things will NOT be normal and most teachers will continue to implement virtual plans for all (only your kids will be sitting at their 6 ft. apart desks, wearing their masks). But hey, at least they won’t be at your house.

    23
  92. DSW2Contributor

    ^ Short answer: parents consider you, a teacher, to be disposable. Their children are not.
    —————–

    Also, FYI teachers and staff, the “return to your school building” emails are supposed to be sent out to you this week and next.

    4
  93. Staffing Question

    Disclaimer: I am not making an argument about F2F vs. Digital. I just have a question.

    Does anyone know what happens to students or how class reassignments will work when teachers take leave? I’m assuming teachers on leave won’t be teaching at all, even digitally. I’m also assuming there isn’t a load of long term subs waiting to teach when schools open. So if a grade level or department loses faculty, do students move to a new class, making the class sizes larger? What happens if that is the only teacher of the subject in the school (AP, specials, etc.)?

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  94. Alison Mercer

    I have attempted, in writing, to convince the Board and others, that Dekalb should have been training “non-teacher certified” (long-term) Subs on the virtual learning software programs. We all have Bachelor’s degrees as required for ALL Subs, but the majority of Subs’ degrees are not specifically in “Education”. We have no work, we are smart, and we were ready to assist this whole time, but we received NO communication since the day school started 8/17. The County, as a result, has lost many Subs. There aren’t enough “long-term certified” Subs now to provide coverage for all of the coming F2F Teacher “Leaves”, current openings (over 100 now), and retirements that will surely occur. It will be a disaster.

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  95. Why not use WED?

    Didn’t know that we had next Monday off. Someone mentioned this before. Why aren’t we using Wednesdays when teachers and students are off for education on those weeks when we have a holiday? Sorry, when teachers have all day meetings, I’m sure they are working hard from 8:30-2:30…

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  96. never 100% safe

    @ New Normal and others trying to gum up the works.

    You can ask a thousand questions, throw a million roadblocks in the way, but the FACT is that other schools are opening and opening safely. Yes there are cases but that’s going to happen at ANY point when you reopen. Now or in six months.

    Educated parents realize that there is a tiny risk – so no, it’s not SAFE. Your argument like so many others is based on half-truths. SCHOOL HAS NEVER BEEN 100% SAFE. More kids have died from idiots shooting up schools than from COVID.

    Did you refuse to teach every time there was a shooting?

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  97. Whine with that Cheese?

    Never 100%,
    The answer is simple, Dekalb runs a work program, there’s plenty of great teachers in the county and around the country but it’s clear as the day is long that teachers in our county and countrywide have been spoiled and come off as entitled. They cry about pay… if you take their 3+ months off a year and average their hourly rate they make off great compared to most working individuals. They cry about safety in the classroom, shootings, viruses go around offices just as quickly as schools, there’s tons of people that don’t wash their hands in the office. Now they’re crying about childcare, guess what… welcome to the real world. Teachers want to be martyrs but it’s getting old, I have yet to hear about a grocery employees complaining in large groups, the same with delivery drivers, hospital workers, etc all of whom are just as exposed if not more so than teachers with children who carry low loads contagious of Covid if infected and are not transmitting it easily.

    Buckle up, the complaining is just starting, it’ll be a long month until Dekalb reopens… when teacher will go back and see it’s not actually that bad. Plenty of counties are opening just fine as are private schools. They’re scared of creatures under their beds that aren’t really there.

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