The school district my children go to school at here in Colorado just came out with their plan for this year. If you want your children to stay home and take classes like the end if last year that's fine. If you want them to go to school they can. It's up to the parents.

I have no idea what to do. If I let them go back it surely increases the chances of everybody in the house getting Covid. The mortality rate seems to be dropping. If I make them stay home they will be upset as well as other people in my family and the kids will fall behind a bit more.

My grandson (2yo) has been in daycare just outside of Baltimore throughout the whole pandemic. They take temperature of kids and parents when the kids are dropped off. If either have a fever or any cough, etc., then the kid is not allowed to enter. The daycare is at about half capacity right now. If they get sick while there, they are sent home and must be 3 days without symptons before going back.

My grandson has been healthier now than before the pandemic since sick kids are not allowed in to transmit things to others.

I have a 5 year old and the Houston school district is going to do virtual only. My kid is currently in France with my in-laws. I don’t think me or my kid can do another semester of home schooling. We’ve decided to keep him in France and enroll him in school there. It sucks to be away from our kid for so long but it’s way safer there with my in laws who live in a rural part of France. He’s already in a bilingual program in Houston. Plan is to keep do some English tutoring and do English related homework from his Houston school.

Man hope things improve by year end.

Brutal. Good luck to all of you.

Pretty funny seeing parents so sick of their kids, yet no unified push to improve the lot of school teachers. Beyond educating your children, these people take a huge daily burden off of many parents.

Important jobs need to be desirable.

Re: the school "debate":

Everyone wishes schools could open safely.

From the beginning, epidemiologists said that if we got Covid under control to where there was no longer widespread community transmission - if we could get from mitigation to containment - it would be safe to open schools. This is what's happening in other parts of the world. But as a country, we failed. We didn't mask, we didn't aggressively distance, and we prioritized opening bars and indoor dining. In many areas, community spread is worse than ever. It's a horrible situation.

People should be angry! But they should blame politicians and people who did not (and some still don't!) do what they're supposed to do. Nobody should be angry at school districts - they are facing a no-win decision, and are truly trying to put safety first. Lots of misplaced anger out there at districts that are going virtual-only.

I think considering everything this is a pretty good outcome as long as France holds up its end of the covid containment bargain. I think being able to send your kid to France to go to school at almost anytime or age would be a positive. Being in the care of close relative pretty much seals it. At that point you are just being a good parent by giving him a great learning opportunity and protecting him further from Covid. Especially if you are in a USA hotspot. He is young though so it's a tough one for the parents no doubt and you wouldn't want the separation lasting to much more than 6 months. With today's tech helping it's not as if you are out of sight or mind like you would have been throughout the history of man prior to this. You could easily see and talk to him 3x a day if you wanted. He'll figure it out.

IF I had kids there is almost no way I would let them go back unless I was in a near virus free area. People are being way way to flippant in regards to the long term effects. So much stuff out there in regards to the pure havoc this virus causes our organs. Lungs, heart, toes nothing is out of bounds. (yes you read it right "Covid toe" is real thing and certainly not a pretty one). When considering herd immunity everyone sees antibody prevalence as being the deciding factor on whether to go for herd of not and ignores the fact that we will have to accept any long term effects that occur in order to achieve herd. I don't think anyone should be willing to take that gamble. Making some sacrifices to stay out the line of fire for the next couple of years or until some more definitive information surfaces seems like the optimal plan. In other words remember your thread title.

100% true about improving the lot of teachers. They truly do take a huge burden off parents. Most couples have both parents working and home schooling isn’t really feasible. Even worst for single parents.

I almost constantly think about my kid who’s thousands of miles away. It sucks but he’s better thee than home with me.

Everlastrr thanks for the kind words. Yeah we obviously are doing FaceTime daily calls and I do intend to to visit for a month in mid-August. Most of the folks I work with are in France anyway so it’s not all that bad to be working on the same timezone for a couple of weeks.

Totally agree. To be clear, I meant that it was a brutal situation for the family--not a brutal decision that was made.

I couldn’t imagine ever sending my kid away for months, especially a 5 year old but to each their own I guess

If I had a school-age child, I would almost certainly send them back to school.

My own daughter is still too young for school or day care. But but I will be teaching an in-person college class in the fall myself. (I can't remember whether I mentioned this in this thread or a different one.)

It really annoys me how many arguments about school reopening go something like this:

A: We should reopen the schools.

B: You're trying to kill children!

A: No, the medical evidence overwhelmingly shows that children are at virtually no risk of dying from coronavirus.

B: Fine, but what about the teachers and the staff?!

A: OK, that's a perfectly legitimate discussion to have. But if you want to have it, don't accuse me first of trying to kill children.

If people opposed to school reopening believe the science is on their side, they should make arguments that are actually based in that science, and not open with ad hominem attacks that have no evidentiary basis.

Sounds like you're more hung up on how the argument is framed, rather than the argument itself.

Which is fine, but does it really matter?

It sucks but honestly more for us than him. He’s in a better situation there in a safer place than Houston. He’s surrounded by family that love and care for him. Never thought I’d be put in a spot like this.

Da_Nit,
That really sucks, I'm sorry.

Why don't ya just move to France?

Why don't you just move out of bum**** Texas?

*east

I think mostly because my company figures it’s cheaper and easier to fire me if needed if I’m in Texas vs. France.

i agree, but a number of people argue that asymptomatic children can't pass it on to adults - hence the entire reason why schools are opening in the first place

i'm not going to spend the bandwidth arguing that - i even specifically stated I believe the risk in sending your kids to school is not your kid getting sick but rather getting sick and passing it to you

Let me guess - it’s the same group of people arguing that the long term damage of breathing in your own air outweighs the possible damage caused by spreading Covid 19?

lol da nit really must get annoyed by his kid. i couldnt imagaine sending my son to a different country because of covid wayyy overreaction by you bro

Not at all. I myself wear a mask inside any building not my home 100 per cent of the time. As for the schools point, some data: the number of people 15 and under who have died from Covid-19 in USA#9 is about thirty. It is very clear that the disease is not a particularly serious concern for patients in that age group taken as an overall set. More children die from flu, drownings, car accidents, etc.

Studies preliminarily show that child-to-adult transmission is relatively uncommon, so there appears to be some scientific basis for the schools-open position:

"In the Netherlands, separate data from primary care and household studies suggests SARS-CoV-2 is mainly spread between adults and from adult family members to children.14

An epidemiological study where 1155 contacts of six COVID-19 positive cases in an Irish school were screened, there was no evidence of secondary transmission of COVID-19 from children to other children or adults.42

This is a rapidly developing area and current published findings may be out of date. We will update this as soon as further information becomes available."

https://www.rcpch.ac.uk/resources/co...ence-summaries

Has anyone heard of any confirmed cases that were contracted outdoors yet? Was there a surge as expected due to the Black Lives Matter protests? I can't remember hearing about any cases contracted at outdoor events or activities offhand. I've only heard of confirmed cases contracted indoors so far, at places like a church, workplace, school, bar, nursing home, etc.

With the very definite caveats that this is a National Review piece citing a Chinese study, one look at this issue showed a single outdoor oubreak involving two cases out of a total of over 7,000 cases. So that data point FWIW suggests "possible but very rare."

https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...pread-indoors/

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronav...are-discovered
https://www.thedailybeast.com/israel...lockdown-gains