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Boston to start the school year with remote learning only
By adamg on Fri, 08/21/2020 - 12:38pm
School Superintendent Brenda Cassellius announced the move in e-mail to parents today - and said that even when in-school education resumes, it will be phased in over a month starting on Oct. 19 - with high schoolers not scheduled to return to actual classrooms until Nov. 19.
I and Mayor Walsh have listened to and consulted with public health experts, teachers and staff, city officials, and gathered feedback from thousands of community members in dozens of virtual meetings. With this input, BPS has decided that all students will begin the school year learning remotely. We will responsibly and safely phase into the hybrid model of learning starting Thursday, October 1. The hybrid model allows students to learn in person two days a week and learn remotely three days a week. Families with students who have not opted in to the hybrid model, and plan to learn remotely five days a week, will not lose their spot.
Remote schooling begins Sept. 21. Then comes a plan for hybrid learning, in which students go to their actual schools only part-time, with remote learning the rest:
- Thursday, October 1: Students with the highest needs
- Thursday, October 15 (B) & Monday, October 19 (A): Grades K0, K1, K2
- Thursday, October 22 (B) & Monday, October 26 (A): Grades 1 - 3
- Thursday, November 5 (B) & Monday, November 9 (A): Grades 4 - 8 (secondary schools start grades 6 - 8)
- Monday, November 16 (A) & Thursday, November 19 (B): Grades 9 - 12
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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 Cassellius's e-mail | 67.46 KB |
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Comments
That's a good idea.
Starting off the school year with only remote learning is a wise idea. Hope they stick to it.
Converse
Bring the kids in for in small groups, 5 or so, for brief periods of time, 20 minutes or so for a day, so that the teacher gets to know them and they get to know the teachers a bit.
As the husband of a teacher, her kids are coming in like this to at least show the face and have some grounding with the kids. Social distancing will be practiced but you also need to show some social norms for kids if you expect to get anything done.
If you don't establish some sort of relationship in person, it could be like that episode of Seinfeld where George gets hired at a company and is handed a file and he has no idea what he is doing.
Nope.
Not a good idea, at this time, at all.
The curve has been flat since
mid-late June. It time to start bring thing back to normal, or something resembling normal.
We can't all hide forever!
Statistics, damn statistics ...
Statewide numbers have been flat or decreasing, yes. But even in a small state, there are significant differences from place to place. East Boston has one of the highest positivity rates in the state - way higher than the 5% the WHO and the state says are safe for school re-openings (last I checked, it was above 8%).
All the more reason
That's all the more reason to do in-person in places that aren't East Boston.
Damn statistics cut both ways.
Um ...
You're not familiar with how BPS works, I take it. All BPS high schools are open to kids citywide and elementary-school kids don't necessarily go to school in their own neighborhoods.
In his defense, Eastie is the
In his defense, Eastie is the exception to the rule and yes, most people send their kids to neighborhood schools (until Eastie High and the McKay/Umana filled up and they had to start sending kids to Edwards/Charlestown).
Or they just send them to Chelsea or Excel.
Im sure i'll be attacked for this
Maybe it's time to re-evaluate busing due to COVID. Send kids to schools in their neighborhood to avoid a potential city-wide spread.
Then push resources to schools/neighborhoods with higher positive rates.
West Roxbury won't go for that
Unless you have a plan to move Boston Latin 5 miles to the south west.
I think exam schools
Would be an outlier here.
Except,
Students are not bused to BLS (pretty much only the physically challenged). Students are provided a student T pass allowing them to use public transit. Sadly, there is not bike storage on site so riding is not a real option.
So, other than being completely wrong on this point, what is your next smarmy comment?
My next smarmy comment
Public transit includes buses and trains. So BLS kids do actually use a lot of buses to get to school because that school is not, in fact, in their neighborhood for most students.
I used some big words like 'transit' and 'neighborhood' so let me know if you need anything else explained. Happy to help.
Nice try
School busing is not about public transit. You know that. Busing was imposed on Boston by court order in the 70's. You know...yellow school buses taking kids all over the city to integrate the schools. Some people in Southie were a bit perturbed about it. Pretty good picture of a guy seeming to try to stab an African American gentleman with an American Flag Maybe you heard about it somewhere? Anyway, neighborhood schools have nothing to do with the exam schools and never did--even before busing.
Ultimately your last comment is more stupid than smarmy, but there are bits of both.
We can't afford to bring things back to normal too fast.
Otherwise, any progress that has been made here in the Bay State regarding flattening of the curve and controlling the spread of disease (i. e. the Covid-19 virus) will be all for naught.
Agree
I think bringing in small groups of masked kids for an outdoor meet and greet with the teachers would be beneficial.
Let's all meet at the playground!
I concur that some kind of in-person get together at the start of the year would be really beneficial. You could have 1/3 of the kids come in each day for 3 days and just meet up in the school yard or the gym or the library or all three. You can all stay socially distant and the teachers can get a kernel of knowledge about most of the kids and they can get a clue about their teachers. (Not to mention a bit of connection to their fellow students.) This is absolutely safe from a COVID standpoint and would add an immeasurable benefit to the start of the school year.
As they say, sometimes the
As they say, sometimes the remote gets lost between the cushions on your sofa!
"We will responsibly and
"We will responsibly and safely phase into the hybrid model."
Except the hybrid model is not safe or responsible.
Lots of colleges that tried to go in person are now fully online.
We need to decouple child care and learning. And more things need to be outside since schools are not properly ventilated.
Months into this and BPS is still playing it by ear.
Those
K2 keg parties are WILD. Great comparison, NOT!
Yes, because SMALL CHILDREN
Yes, because SMALL CHILDREN ARE KNOWN FOR BEING CLEAN AND HYGIENIC.
Whew, sorry I got carried away with caps lock. But let's be reasonable, anon. Kids are germ factories.
What happens to METCO students?
The program to increase diversity and reduce racial isolation will suffer under remote learning.
Probably depends on what their schools do
Not sure how BPS's decision has any impact on kids attending schools in Needham, Wellesley, etc.
This is the right and obvious
This is the right and obvious decision. They say they will transition to a hybrid but I'd put good money on no BPS kids doing any in-person learning this entire school year, except maybe small, specific populations that really need it.
I really like how our child's
I really like how our child's school is handling it. They are doing a hybrid for the first 3 weeks giving each student 4-5 school days total to get into the swing of things. Then they go all remote right before it's estimated that there will be increasing cases in the fall. My bet is BPS is remote through January. There is no way they are going to be able to stay open with the amount of kids experiencing seasonal colds, coughing, fevers, etc... that are not COVID but will require a quarantine or negative test to return to school.
MBTA needs to do a better job
MBTA needs to do a better job on enforcing maskless riders. It's always someone who is either fucked up on the substance du jour that they decide to spend their money on. Come on, make it safer for the rest of us who have no choice because we depend on the train or bus to get to work or class.
Your first sentence cuts to the quick, anon.
The MBTA really does need to get really tough on maskless riders, because they put everybody else, including the driver(s) and other MBTA workers at risk, as well as themselves.