How will schools reopen safely this fall?

Prince George’s County is the second in Maryland to commit to starting the school year online. Distance learning will continue until at least Jan. 29, the school system says.
Prince George’s County is the second in Maryland to commit to starting the school year online. Distance learning will continue until at least Jan. 29, the school system says. The School system will assure that every student has a laptop or iPad and wifi hotspots, the CEO says. All 206 schools will continue their free meal service two days per week, he says. Prince George’s has the most coronavirus cases in the state, surpassing 20,000 infections on Wednesday. The school system will remain closed until state officials indicate otherwise, school officials say. The board of education will hear a report on how to support families later this month.
While clubs are allowed to continue virtually, sports cannot. Athletic programs will only resume when students are allowed back in school buildings.
PGCPS will follow “strict preventative measures” when the school system reopens. Teachers can stream lessons from their classrooms if they choose. PGCPS will not return to a fully in-person model at any point during this school year. The school system sent out a survey to parents, teachers, administration, and community members. (CHFHSnews team did a simpler survey, the results are summarized below.)
 

Between July 2-16, CHFHSnews parents and students were asked to share their opinions about what they would like to see happen at the start of the 2020-21 school year. Overall, we received nearly 400 responses. The results are summarized below.

Survey Results

Question Title: Do you think MD schools can safely reopen this fall?
39.5% responded Yes
39.8% responded No
20.8% is Not sure

Question Title: How do you think Maryland schools should reopen?
44.3% responded Combination of in-person and distant
learning
29.8% responded Continue learning at home full-time
25.9% responded Returning to school full-time

Question Title: In your opinion, is it realistic to expect students to wear masks in a school setting?
47% responded Yes
39.5% responded No
13.6% is Not sure

Question Title: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest, how much do you fear going back to school?
19.6% responded with 1 (the lowest fear)
22.9% responded with 2
23.8% responded with 3
17.2% responded with 4
16.6% responded with 5 (the highest fear)

Question Title: If schools do resume in-class learning in the fall, will you go back?
51.5% responded Yes
18.4% responded No
30.1% responded Not sure

We also asked if they had more to say about schools reopening, here are some of the responses with mixed thought on how schools should reopen…

“I don’t want to go back to school because it’s a task that would be risking the lives of thousands. It important to keep or children and educators safe at all costs.”
“going back to school helps not just the students but teachers as well on how to do work with ease following up their schedule and i personally realized that, staying home and doing the work online is not too favorable because some of us students keep pilling up our work and at the end of the day we find our selves not in the mood to do them and which in addition seems like a lot of work. so i just think going back to school will helps teachers and students do their work and assignments on time.”
“the safest thing to do is online school unless a vaccine is being made before then, even at that some parents may fear giving their children the vaccine for some odd reason. If school was to open, the cases would rise drastically, even now that schools are closed and everything was to open like corona is not here, it would be 10x worse and we haven’t hit the second wave yet. We would just have to adjust to having school online full time until the solution is solved.”
“I would love to go back to school, because I hate distance learning. It’s a lot harder for me when I’m not in a work setting all the time. But with the way that people are opening back up even though we’ve had no good progress with the spread of the virus; there will be either another spike, or it will never get better. If we keep this up, I dont see us ever going back to school without furthering the spread.”
“Each grade should have a day where they go into the building but it should mostly be online learning for safety reasons”
“If schools go back full time i think it should be required that students sanitize their hands going into every classroom and before they leave to wipe down their desk and chairs with disinfectant. Teachers should be in charge of disinfection their own desks and door knobs.”
“I think it should be a hybrid of the distance learning and returning to school. If that’s too much, I say, continue with Distance Learning. It’ll be safer on the community plus there’s always the year after when a vaccine and/or cure can be made to withdraw the severity of the virus.”
“PLEASE REOPEN”
“Its unsafe and I feel like if we go back we go back your gonna be putting everyone in danger so 2023 or 2022 would be a good year to open”
“There is no telling who has this virus along with the other teen virus that has spread around. Telling students to wear a mask in school is like telling a dog not to bark. Meaning the students are not going to stick to that rule and mask will be off within 15 minutes of them being in the building. Same thing with teachers. I think it is best if we continue to do online learning until this virus is completely cleared. It’s going to be very hard to adjust and to keep up with assignments but students, teachers and parents will start to adjust. But I do think u should have A day classes one week then B day classes the next or do things exactly how it’s done in school to make thing easier.”
“I will not be returning back to school during this pandemic, COVID-19 is real. I’ve recently lost my father due to COVID-19. Its not a joke and if you guys do decide to return i will not be attending. I’ll distant learn from home, that’ll be best for me and others.”
“It’s too dangerous. At the rate of more people catching corona, its too risky.”

Do you think this was a good call by state and conty officails? Tweet your viwes and options @CHFHSnews on Twitter!