Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups. For data on comorbidities,
According to The New York Times, potentially 90 percent of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 have such insignificant amounts of the virus present in their bodies that such individuals do not need to isolate nor are they candidates for contact tracing. Leading public health experts are now concerned that overtesting is responsible for misdiagnosing a huge number of people with harmless amounts of the virus in their systems
Also, our district is supplying all the kids with basic school supplies this year. Apparently they spent less last spring due to everyone being home and are basically giving the money back in the form of paper and pencils etc.
Curious… Are teachers teaching remotely from home or in school? I thought I heard the Buffalo teachers union wants to sue the district because they want to have the teachers teach remotely from in the school. Complaining it’s not safe (Even though kids won’t be there). These same people more than likely going around to supermarkets and stores along with restaurants complaining it’s not safe at the school to be alone in a classroom. If true, I think they got too big of a taste working from home and being paid and no longer wanting to go back to school while the rest of us have to work in “Unsafe conditions” with people all around us. Hell, what are they doing for daycare’s and daycare workers… they don’t get the option.
It’s not safe to stand in a classroom, by yourself, with other teachers in their own rooms doing remote lessons.
Right… but it’s safe for me to be in a building with 100 employees. Teachers 100% should be in their classrooms teaching remotely. It’s the proper atmosphere for teaching and you have a harder time BSing your way through the semester.
I can’t speak for BTF, but we are allowing teachers to opt out of in-building remote instruction for the first 10 weeks as part of our agreement of memorandum to offset cost of childcare, but after that, they are required to be in the building, without students.
Those teachers working from home have a laundry list of items that need to be submitted each day to allow them to continue working from home for those 10 weeks.
I personally find it easier to be in my classroom since it’s nice and quiet and I can record and post videos/lessons without distractions. I do see the other side of the argument though, especially for those two teacher households with kids.
The argument that it’s just simply not safe? That’s just union BS in my opinion. Welcome to public schooling though, learn the rules and play the game.
What I don’t like is seeing people bitch and complain about teachers. We are quite literally re-inventing public schooling here, what we plan may not work, what we plan may not be state ed approved, or may violate ed law, or is too expensive, or technology doesn’t work, or students get confused, or parents get confused, or we find a better way part way through this year.
Give us the benefit of the doubt that we are trained professionals with years of collective experience doing one thing: teaching children. We’re actually really good at it. We ARE better at it than parents, politicians, angry people on FB.
That’s just crap. We’re having the same issue here where I work… People saying they need to work from home because they’re taking care of their kids. If you’re taking care of your kids YOU’RE NOT WORKING FROM HOME. We have one manager that every time he’s “working from home” he goes so far as to set an auto-responder on his email saying “I’m working from home so there may be a delay in responding to your email”. Might as well be 100% honest and have your auto-responder say, “I’m not really working, just checking my email a few times a day to see if anything critical came in, but this way I can still collect my full paycheck and not use vacation time”.
I won’t fault the teachers for the mess they’re having to deal with with every changing requirements from the state, county and school managers. And yes, I know they’re far better at teaching my child than I would be which is why I want kids back in school as much as possible. Finally, I know a lot of them are professionals who are busting their ass to do as best as they can for the kids. That said, I will vocally call out some of the teachers when their work ethic is terrible, like several of the ones my daughter had during the spring shutdown who basically started their summer vacation in early March when they were supposed to be remote teaching. Barely any assignments, no learning packets, no video presentations, no zoom classes and on the rare cases when an assignment was given out it would be 2-3 weeks to get a grade back. I’m sorry, but unlike most of the private sector that got put on unemployment when their place of work shut down these teachers were still collecting full salary and benefits which means they should have been putting in a full day’s work. Twice my wife ran into one of these problem teachers at the grocery store in the middle of the day (while my wife was being forced to take vacation time to keep the density of their essential office down). I guess it would be hard to do a Zoom class from Aldi. Then to hear this union BS of, “We’re not safe in the school, even without kids there” and it certainly doesn’t help their cause. Thankfully none of the burbs teachers have tried that yet.
My oldest is a Jr this year and my youngest a freshman,
They are going to try a hybrid schedule with 2 days in the classroom.
I don’t really expect it to happen.
The end of last year was not great. It was fine in that the kids could easily finish their work a lot faster than their normal homework. Meaning, they had less classwork than they used to have homework.
Also, the college board blows. They changed the test to some online thing where students had 30 minutes or something to read an article and write a greater than college level paper.
(My daughter is a better writer than I am and I have been through a lot of graduate courses)
I have no major issues with teachers. During my PTA board days we actually tried to help them out. Unions though… I am very bitter about ken-ton buses claiming “union free school district” my whole life. But there is a union and has been forever.
Yeah as far as I know, we’re still starting the 8th. Here’s the amazing part though, I’ve got colleagues who are just finding out today that they are teaching different courses than what they had planned for and/or were scheduled for back in Spring. Talk about being blindsided! So they’ll have 5 days to prepare for this year now, incredible.
Our CEO just sent this out regarding adjusting schedules if you have kids at home. Im pretty shocked. I dont think our old CEO would have entertained this at all.
The key points of this policy that I would like to highlight are:
Effective September 1, 2020, will work with parents with children of all ages to try and develop a flexible work option to meet childcare needs during the remainder of the pandemic. This schedule must be approved by your manager and documented with human resources.
We will be offering emergency paid time off, which includes up to 5 days to adjust to one’s home situation due to school/daycare closure. This is intended to assist parents with making the transition to remote learning for their children or moving college-aged children back home in the event of a university closure due to COVID-19.
In locations that are in post-phase 3, we will make exceptions to the Telecommuting Policy to allow parents who are able to work remotely to do so for childcare reasons during the pandemic.
We want to encourage 45-minute meetings instead of one-hour meetings. This allows parents to check in on their children between meetings.
Parents—take the time to have lunch with your children each day. Simply block this time off on your calendar.
Those who are unable to work remotely due to the nature of their role may still be able to take advantage of the flexible work hours; options should be discussed with your manager and HR. Flexible work hours could include changing shifts, adjusting start and end times or weekend hours. Flexible work schedules will need to be discussed and approved by management.
Nice. Meanwhile my company is mandating we all be back in the office full time starting Tuesday, the first day of school, even though the software developers have shown increased productivity working from home.
