Saturday, October 31, 2020

Time to Go Outside

I thought I had seen it all when they said the schools were going to open the windows and crank the heat this winter, but I was wrong:

"Songbirds replace school bells as classrooms move outdoors for a fortunate few" by Zoe Greenberg Globe Staff, October 1, 2020

HADLEY — As elected officials, teachers, and parents grapple with how to educate children in the middle of a pandemic, some schools are turning to the great outdoors: pitching tents, buying rain boots, and roughing it with their students in the elements. The catalyst for the move is that the risk of coronavirus transmission is much lower outside, though students at The Hartsbrook School, a K-12 private school in Western Massachusetts, as at other outdoor schools, still wear masks and stay socially distant. 

Then why can we not attend sporting events like football and baseball games?

This crock of $hit scam and hoax is so self-evident given all the contradictions, and yet on the lie goes.

Also, a growing body of evidence suggests that outdoor learning has myriad educational and mental health benefits, from boosting academic performance to reducing stress in kids. What was once a fringe education movement suddenly seems not just plausible, but increasingly desirable.

Until the kids start coming down with colds, 'er, COVID.

So the "fringe" is now desirable, huh?

It is time to go outside and get the f**k away from the Bo$ton Globe!

At the same time, most large city schools — with many students and limited campus space to spread out — haven’t been able to pivot quickly to outdoor learning, leaving poorer kids online while wealthier kids roam the woods.

“This is the first time really that outdoor learning has hit mainstream education as a possibility," said Sharon Danks, CEO of Green Schoolyards America, an advocacy group that is helping schools transition outside. 

UNREAL!

In countries such as Denmark and Italy, many schools are experimenting with outdoor classes; so are the Portland Public Schools in Maine, the ConVal school district in New Hampshire, and the White River Valley Middle School in Vermont, among others. For outdoor education advocates, it’s been a long time coming.

It snowed overnight and we are not even into November yet.

The Globe should be ashamed of themselves for shoveling this $hit.

There is precedent for the success of such “fresh air schools” during a contagion. In the early 1900s, two doctors in Rhode Island started an open-air school for children who had been exposed to tuberculosis, hoping that the fresh air would lower transmission rates. When temperatures dropped, children sat in blanket bundles with heated soapstones at their feet; the teacher prepared hot soup and stoked a fire. The fresh air worked — none of the children got sick. Two years later, there were 65 similar schools across the country, even in such dense cities as New York, according to The New York Times. 

Then why have we been kept indoors under lockdowns?

Is it just me, or the idea that would put us all in the cold to die is offensively insulting. 

I hope you kids can understand why reading this $hit has become intolerable and unbearable.

Massachusetts issued guidance this summer allowing teachers to “hold classes outdoors when feasible,” and some districts, including Amherstand Newton, have erected tents, but for reasons both logistical and financial, most public schools in the state haven’t moved outside, advocates said.

“What we’re seeing is the private schools are doing it first, because they don’t have teachers unions and thousands of parents,” Danks said. “The smaller the institution, the easier it is to turn on a dime and try something new.”

OMFG!

Yeah, the teachers might have a problem teaching outside in the rain and freezing cold (will laptops work in extreme cold?) as well as the parents hitting the roof over the child abusr by official monsters.

The National Covid-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative, which Danks’s organization helped found, suggests even schools without many resources can conduct outdoor learning, turning to streets or local parks if school grounds are limited, and purchasing inexpensive outdoor seating such as straw bales. Danks also urges schools to think of outdoor gear, including rain jackets and long underwear, as part of school infrastructure, not a separate amenity that parents must buy.

Another AGENDA-PUSHING PIECE of $HIT promoted by the Globe!

I gue$$ COVID is NEVER REALLY GOING AWAY even after a VACCINE and all the rest of the crap, huh?

Still, some advocates say, outdoor education risks becoming another unequal educational resource, with students in the state’s large city districts missing out.

XXXXX

“It creates a stark contrast when you see it with young people outside and free, versus young people sitting at home in front of a computer,” said John Diamond, a professor of urban education at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “It’s representative of a pattern that existed even prior to the pandemic.”

Yeah, the plannedemic is a cover for the advancement of all this Great Re$et $hit.

In Boston, teachers have asked the district to look into outdoor education, said Jessica Tang, the president of the Boston Teachers Union, partly out of concern that old school buildings are not well-ventilated.

“What about outdoor spaces? Can we set up tents?” Tang asked. “We want our students to have all those experiences, too.”

It was at that point that I decided to say to hell with goddamn lawsuit. They have failed the grade and are worthy of the criticism they receive because it all adds up and you can forget about a normal school year.

Thus, as schools reopen students struggling with COVID trauma are better off being homeschooled as a judge denied the Boston Teachers Union request to allow educators to work remotely when city’s virus rate is above 4 percent, causing a growing crisis in special ed that caused a death and delay in returning to school for grades pre-kindergarten to 3 and forced independent study for 6-year-olds that are breaking the mold.

The Boston Public Schools already have 88 recently renovated schoolyards and 32 outdoor classrooms — plant-filled spaces where students can learn outside, said Katherine Walsh, the sustainability and environmental resources manager for BPS. The district’s reopening plan encourages schools “to utilize their available outdoor space for educational purposes,” but those classrooms are supplemental spaces; they can’t accommodate full-time learning for 54,000 BPS students. 

They spent money on that when the buildings themselves are falling apart due to decades of neglect?

“I don’t think that 100 percent outside was ever a conversation,” Walsh said. 

Then why is this front-page article promoting it?

Some organizations are trying to find ways to create outdoor lessons for BPS kids who are learning remotely. Boston After School & Beyond, for example, is working with the Franklin Park Zoo and Hale Reservation to create free outdoor learning pods, where some students will participate in outdoor enrichment activities interspersed with online learning.

WARPED, So far, the students have reveled in the outdoor experience, 

Learning in nature does, of course, have its distractions. Among them: planes droning overhead, chilly mornings, how “all the boys keep chucking wood chips at the chipmunks,” as a seventh-grader explained. One blackboard had a large hole in it, the result of crashing down during a fierce wind, but it also has its incontrovertible delights. Jan Baudendistel, who has taught at the school since 1987, said her class paused briefly that morning when two pileated woodpeckers began noisily pecking at a nearby tree.

“They were having this incredible conversation,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a distraction; I’d say it’s an enhancement.”

Cough!

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The enhancement comes with the marathon walks through the woods despite the rain, and although solar geoengineering is a misguided bid for a quick-fix to the climate crisis that might hold off the symptoms of global warming without confronting the necessary task of kicking the world’s fossil fuel habit, the formerly fringe theory is now desirable because the world needs to explore solar geoengineering as a tool to fight climate change as the risks of solar geoengineering cannot be sensibly evaluated without a scenario for goals and governance

Turns out a one symptom is DROUGHT, so they have been DOING THIS FOR A LONG TIME NOW as the idiot activists march to Globe offices to demand changes in climate crisis coverage (if they were really serious and not a bunch of cattle they would call for the tree-murdering Globe to cease all print).

Think of that as you walk along the river and through the field and forest to the community center where  paramedics make house calls to test resident for coronavirus and idle parking lots are turned into Wi-Fi hot spots where vocational schools are crafting creative ways to keep students engaged during pandemic that is no more and never was.

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

"In Mass. schools, 63 students and 34 staff members have tested positive for coronavirus, state reports" by Felicia Gans Globe Staff, October 2, 2020

As coronavirus cases climb, at least 63 students and 34 staff members who have been inside public school buildings in Massachusetts have tested positive for COVID-19, state education officials said Friday.

The data is the first statewide look at the virus’s prevalence in public schools. A weekly summary on positive cases reported at schools will be published each Thursday.

Many studies have been done showing virtually zero transmissions in schools, but they have been ignored by the agenda-pushing pre$$.

Cases in school districts so far have been isolated and have not led to clusters, state Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley said in an interview Friday. Most districts that have reported cases have seen only one or two, although some have seen more. Among the highest numbers: Four students in Plymouth and four staff members in Worcester have tested positive.

If a cluster does occur inside a school, the state plans to deploy a rapid-testing mobile unit to help test students and staff and determine a course of action. Those mobile units have not been deployed so far, Riley said.

“That’s not to say it won’t happen, right?” Riley said, referring to clusters of coronavirus cases being found in schools. “I mean, the reason why we put this in place is because it could happen during the year, and we want to be ready.”

I would plan on it happening as they advance their nefarious agenda with their bogus tests.

Declare a hot spot and send in the medical tyrants.

Friday’s figures include any cases reported to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education between Sept. 24 and 30. State education officials are not tracking when the cases occur, only when local school officials report them to the state.

The state is only tracking cases involving students and staff members who have been inside school buildings, unless the staff member was not inside a school building for seven days before the case was reported. Coronavirus cases among those who are learning or teaching remotely — including out-of-school gatherings that have infected students or teachers — are not included in the data.

The state tally is based entirely on cases reported by school districts; there may be additional cases that have not been reported to the state.

The figures were released amid concerns that Massachusetts could be heading toward a second wave of the coronavirus as hospitalizations rise statewide and 29 communities halt their reopening plans.

That is what the Rockefeller/WHO/WEF/Great Re$et script calls for.

For now, transmission rates remain low enough that most students can return to the classroom, at least part time, Riley said, but state officials this summer planned for a potential rise in cases by asking each school district to create three learning models — full-time in-person, full-time remote, and a hybrid approach — in case the virus transmission rates forced them to adjust, he added.

“We’re always going to be monitoring the trajectory of the virus and the data, and while we’re still low now, even with a recent uptick, we’ll be monitoring the data throughout the year to see where we are and what next steps [are],” Riley said, but “erratic openings and closings” of school buildings based on changing coronavirus data can be “destabilizing for children,” Massachusetts Teachers Association President Merrie Najimy said in a statement.

“It is both troubling and frustrating to see that nearly 100 students and school staff members participating in hybrid and in-person models of learning across the state have tested positive for COVID-19 in a single week of reporting," she wrote. “The Massachusetts Teachers Association has been warning about a rise in cases as a result of Governor Charlie Baker’s and state Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley’s reckless drive to push people back into school buildings too soon. With this new data, we worry that these concerns are being realized.”

The teachers helping push the false narrative for their own goals doesn't help, and they will soon be replaced by Alexa.

Over the past few months, Baker and Riley have pushed school districts to bring as many students as possible back to classrooms, particularly in areas where coronavirus rates have been low.

They’ve asked districts to use the state’s color-coded coronavirus risk map, which puts communities in one of four risk categories based on its average daily infection rate per 100,000 residents. Only communities in the state’s red zone, the highest-risk designation, for three consecutive weeks should move to a remote-only learning model, Baker and Riley have said. 

Bill Gates just smiled.

On Friday, Riley reiterated that guideline, saying the weekly summary on coronavirus cases should not be used to decide whether to close or reopen schools.

“I don’t think this data is used for decision-making purposes,” he said. “This is really used for just transparency purposes, so families know where cases are occurring.”

The state hasn't been transparent at all as they throw number at us with no context.

In September, Riley wrote to officials in 16 school districts that were starting the academic year remotely, despite low coronavirus transmission rates in their communities. He asked them to submit more comprehensive reopening plans with a timeline for bringing students back, and said he may audit districts depending on their responses.

The state is still reviewing those plans, Riley said Friday.

“We think that we’ve been able to strengthen remote learning so that it’s better than it was last spring, but we don’t think that anything can replace in-person instruction,” Riley said, “and with our transmission rates being low, we strongly recommended the districts try to get their kids in, to the greatest extent possible. Will there be a second spike in the winter or later? We don’t know, and we’re going to monitor that.”

Yeah they do, and if that is the case why are they harping on gatherings and the rest?

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"Milton officials ‘disappointed’ that large gathering of teenagers broke COVID guidelines" by Matt Berg Globe Correspondent, September 27, 2020

Milton school officials were “saddened and disappointed” after a large group of teenagers gathered near a golf course Friday night and did not adhere to COVID-19 health guidelines, school officials said in a statement Sunday.

The teenagers were reported to have gathered near the Presidents Golf Course, close to the Milton and Quincy town line, according to a joint statement from James Jette, high school principal and interim superintendent, and Sheila Egan Varela, School Committee chairwoman.

“This news is upsetting to us,” the officials said. Stopping the spread of COVID-19 is “a multi-community effort that requires all of us to continue stepping up, making sacrifices and staying safe.” 

These local tyrants are sickening!

There is no evidence the gathering was initiated or attended by Milton High School students, but “we are asking all parents, guardians, and teens in Milton and our bordering communities to take this pandemic seriously,” school officials said.

WTF? 

They just MAKE UP REASONS NOW?

The Milton public schools have about 4,430 students and 310 teachers.

In an interview with WCVB-TV on Saturday, Jette said he heard that students and parents affiliated with the school were involved with the gathering.

“To hear that parents and guardians are dropping their children off at this place to party or, you know, convene in large gatherings is very disappointing,” Jette said in the interview. 

F**k you and your guilt trips, liar!

Students in the district returned to school Sept. 16 with a hybrid learning model, alternating between lessons in the classroom and online. School officials said Sunday that the behavior seen at the gathering “will only jeopardize Milton’s … protocol, as well as other public school districts’ and private schools’ plans.”

“We saw it in Dedham; we saw it in Sudbury,” Jette told WCVB, referring to recent gatherings with high school students in the towns. “We were trying to be proactive and get ahead of the curve, so it’s very disappointing because this jeopardizes our opportunity to remain in hybrid, and ultimately trying to be optimistic to move for full in-person learning.”

They have been telling us that for nine f**king months now!

A Milton Police Department spokesman could not be reached for comment.

In recent weeks, numerous large gatherings involving teenagers who broke COVID-19 health guidelines have thrown school districts into disarray, forcing high schools to quickly reevaluate their in-person learning models. 

They are doing it to themselves by supporting the fraudulent narrative.

The Milton party comes less than a week after a student from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School and the parents of that student, whose identities were not released because the student is a juvenile, faced charges stemming from a gathering of 50 to 60 students. As a result of the large gathering, the high school pushed back in-person classes.

Dover-Sherborn Regional High School temporarily shifted to a fully remote learning model after a party on Sept. 11 attracted as many as 150 high school-aged students from public and private schools in the region.

Earlier in the month, town health officials in Dedham blamed a rise in coronavirus cases on two social gatherings hosted by young people in town, one of which was attended by local high school students.

I'm sure I could have went and found past posts and links to those parties, but I've already left.

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Did you know the cop who showed up to break up the party went on a racist rant against some teenage boys?

"Marshfield school moves to remote learning after 6 people there test positive for COVID-19 in 5 days" by Andrew Stanton Globe Correspondent, October 11, 2020

Daniel Webster Elementary School in Marshfield is moving to remote learning for at least two weeks after six members of the school community tested positive for COVID-19 in a five-day period, officials said.

The school could reopen as soon as Oct. 26, and a final decision will be made the week of Oct. 19, Marshfield Superintendent Jeffrey Granatino said in a letter to families Saturday.

Granatino said six people connected to the school tested positive between Monday and Friday but did not say whether those infected were students, parents, teachers, or other staff members.

Officials do not believe the cases originated at the school, but through contact tracing they identified several people who were in close proximity with those who tested positive and must quarantine for 14 days, the letter said. 

Even if you are not sick!

After those close contacts were forced to quarantine, the school did not have enough staff to safely stay open and educate all students in the hybrid model, he said.

The school joins multiple others in Massachusetts that have moved to remote learning or delayed reopening plans as their communities experience spikes in the virus.....

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Related:

"Braintree residents took to the polls Saturday and voted to build a new middle school, officials said. Voters overwhelmingly supported the proposal to build a new South Middle School, with 74.61 percent of ballots cast in favor of the project, according to the town’s unofficial special election results. Braintree Mayor Charles C. Kokoros, called the vote “a historic victory” for the town in a statement Saturday. “Our residents have rallied together over the past eight months and with this vote have shown a commitment in the future of our children and community as a whole,” Kokoros said. Officials are hoping to open the new school, which will be the first in town in 50 years, in 2023. The town will have to borrow $86.5 million for the project. Voters also approved measures to spend $5 million to replace the roofs at its elementary schools, $1.5 million to conduct a feasibility study on the redevelopment of Braintree High School, and $1 million for safety improvements in the schools."

Also see:

"Teenagers are about twice as likely to become infected with the coronavirus as younger children, according to an analysis released Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report is based on a review of 277,285 cases among children aged 5 to 17 whose illness was diagnosed from March to September. The findings come as 56 million children in the country resume schooling amid contentious debates about their safety. Scientists are scrambling to understand how often children are infected and how often they transmit the virus, but the findings have been inconsistent. Much of the national debate has centered on children in primary schools, but the new study adds to a body of evidence suggesting that older teenagers, in high school and college, are more likely to be infected and more likely to transmit the coronavirus than are children under age 10, said Dr. Muge Cevik, an infectious disease expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Children often have mild symptoms, if any, so researchers have suggested that the low reported numbers of confirmed cases in children may result from a lack of access to testing. The number of children tested increased to 322,227 on July 12 from 100,081 on May 31; the incidence of children found to be infected rose to 37.9 per 100,000 children from 13.8 per 100,000. “It’s not necessarily that the incidence in children has gone up,” said Helen Jenkins, an expert in infectious diseases and statistics at Boston University. “It’s just that our testing has improved,” yet the dissimilar rates of infection between younger children and adolescents may partly be explained by testing. “If adolescents are more likely to have symptomatic disease, then they will be more likely to get tested,” Dr. Jenkins said. That may have led to greater numbers of confirmed cases among adolescents. These data suggest that “young persons might be playing an increasingly important role in community transmission,” the C.D.C. researchers wrote....."

With all due respect, the CDC is a band of liars except for when they are covering their asses, and now that Idaho is entering its 3rd coronavirus wave, you should keep the kids home:

"TECH LAB: With remote schooling comes a steep learning curve; I’m wondering who’s the student here, my kids, or me" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff, September 27, 2020

School’s in, and for more than a week the children in the Bray household have been hunched over laptops, dialed into their digital classrooms. While it is too early to say whether they’re learning anything, it’s been quite an education for me.

I’ve learned that our teachers and school administrators in Brockton are a lot better prepared for online learning than they were back in March, when the COVID-19 pandemic drove our children out of their classrooms. I’ve also learned that for all of their efforts, they’re not quite ready for the challenges of remote schooling. And neither am I.

I’m still sorting through the glitches and limitations of remote-schooling software. Flaky video conferencing, for instance, or the need to master four or five separate programs just to make sure my children are doing their homework, but I’m finally figuring it out. Perhaps you can learn from my experience.

Of course, local school districts can run whatever ed-tech programs they choose, and there are plenty to choose from: Google Classroom, Canvas, Moodle, and Blackboard, to mention a few. So there’s a good chance your children are using different software than mine. But all these programs are designed to do the same things, and often in very similar ways. So the lessons I’ve learned are bound to come in handy.

Get started by logging in. Boston, Brockton and many other public schools use a service called Clever, which offers “single sign-on.” Enter a password just once, and you or your child have quick access to all the other software in the digital classroom. One nice feature lets your child log in by waving a printed barcode in front of the computer’s camera. Now your younger children, and you, won’t have to memorize a password.

Long before the COVID shutdown, Brockton schools used a system called Infinite Campus. It’s where parents go to find essential information: grades, class schedules, attendance records. But with classes moved online, the schools needed something a lot more sophisticated, where teachers can post study materials like text files and photos, create quizzes, and send and receive messages to individual students.

Infinite Campus offers such a program, but Brockton’s teachers preferred a competing product called Schoology. So Brockton uses both programs, making my life a little more complicated. Worse yet, Brockton High School couldn’t deploy Schoology in time for opening day. So while my fourth-grader uses Schoology, my two high schoolers mostly rely on yet another program, Microsoft Teams.

I almost forgot Zoom, the popular video conferencing software. It’s less popular in Brockton these days, after a raft of technical problems during the opening days of the term. For instance, my fourth-grader’s school-issued laptop just wouldn’t connect, though one of our own aging laptops worked just fine. I finally got it sorted out, with help from the school’s tech support hot line, but the first time I dialed in, I got a busy signal, proof that many other parents were as confused as I was. Brockton is calling in reinforcements by setting up a “super user” group run by tech-savvy parents. I might even volunteer myself. Ask your school district if it’s planning something similar.

Remote learning programs usually offer a way for parents to set up accounts of their own, and get instant access to information about all their children. The Brockton schools just launched such a “parent portal” for logging into Infinite Campus and will soon add it to the other programs. Parents can then keep tabs on all their children, without having to log on to each account separately. Perhaps your school already offers this feature; be sure to ask..

The individual apps are fairly easy to use, but why so many? For instance, while my high schoolers use Microsoft Teams' video-conferencing feature most of the time, my daughter’s science teacher insists on Zoom, and while her other class materials are stored in Teams, my daughter’s Spanish teacher has already migrated the class to Schoology.

Boston Public Schools gets it. Chief information officer Mark Racine said city schools last year used “an alphabet soup of applications," but this school year, it’s Seesaw for younger children and Google Classroom for the upper grades. “That was really intentional, to make sure that our students or parents did not get confused.”

Teresa Pregizer, the parent of a Boston school child, told me about a Seesaw feature I’d love to have. This program automatically notifies her whenever her sixth-grade son completes an assignment. "I get an e-mail whenever he turns something in,” said Pregizer, who can check his arithmetic or admire his latest work of art on her iPhone.

It turns out Schoology has a similar feature; I’m hoping it’ll become available once the Brockton schools have completed the rollout, but you might not have to wait; ask your school if it already offers something like this.

Another reader, Cheryl Pickering of New Bedford, clued me into ClassDojo, an app that that makes it easy for schools to send vital information to parents. The Brockton school system doesn’t use ClassDojo, which is too bad. It might make a good substitute for those 5 o’clock robocalls they blast out several times a week; however, ClassDojo is available through many school systems, including Boston’s.

None of this is new technology, by the way. These tools were built years ago, for a future in which lots more learning would happen online, but the goal was to supplement the traditional classroom, not replace it.

One of Pickering’s daughters is autistic; the other has a learning disorder. Both are used to receiving individualized classroom assistance. That’s gone now. Her school system plans to switch to a hybrid model in October, with the children returning to the classroom just two days a week, but Pickering fears that the constant shifting between two different ways of learning will only make it harder for her children and herself.

“It hasn’t been an easy experience,” Pickering said, "not knowing what to do, feeling like my kids aren’t getting an adequate education this way.”

My own children have so far been diligent and dedicated. After some early hardware and software fumbles, there are no more cries for help. Everything works so well that I can almost convince myself they’re getting an education.

He needs to get outside more!

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UPDATES:


"Families respond with anguish after Boston public schools cancel in-person learning" by Felicia Gans Globe Staff, October 21, 2020

After another jump in Boston’s coronavirus positivity rate, the city’s public school district said it has canceled in-person instruction for thousands of high-needs students — the only group to return to school buildings so far this fall — starting Thursday.

The cancellation affects about 2,600 students, including those with disabilities, students still learning English, and children living in foster care, who had resumed in-person instruction part time at the start of October. It will also likely further delay the return of many other students, who have been learning remotely since the academic year began Sept. 21.

Across the city, several families responded with anguish.

Boston’s positivity rate rose to 5.7 percent for the week ending Oct. 17, jumping up from 4.4 percent the week prior and 4.1 percent the week before that. It was the largest one-week increase city officials had seen in a while and the highest positivity rate in Boston since late May, Mayor Martin J. Walsh said.....

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Harvard is Broke

"Harvard reports $10 million deficit as costs of COVID-19 add up" by Deirdre Fernandes Globe Staff, October 22, 2020

Harvard University has reported its first operating deficit since 2013, a sign of how much economic havoc the pandemic has caused in higher education.

In its latest financial report released on Thursday, Harvard said it closed the fiscal year, which ended in June, with a $10 million budget deficit, compared with a $308 million surplus the previous year and a $196 million surplus in 2018. Harvard also warned that it expects revenues to be down for a second straight year, a problem the world’s wealthiest university last encountered in the 1930s.

“Even at a place like Harvard, it is feeling what feels like pain,” said Rick Staisloff, a senior partner and founder of RPK Group, an Annapolis-based financial consulting company that works with colleges and universities. The pandemic is likely to hit less wealthy institutions even harder.

Most colleges have money squirreled away in reserves and got federal aid to help weather the early months of the pandemic, but this current fiscal year will be difficult and the next one even harder, Staisloff said.

“Higher education held its breath going into the fall semester and was hoping beyond reasonable hope that it wouldn’t be bad," he said. "They’re waking up to the fact that spring isn’t going to look better. They’re starting that next budget cycle and going ‘uh, oh.’”

Harvard blamed most of last fiscal year’s deficit on lost revenue after the university refunded room and board charges when it sent students home in March, closed research labs, canceled executive education programs, and shut down most events and reunions due to the pandemic. It also absorbed the cost of the early retirement program.

A $10 million deficit in Harvard’s $5.4 billion operating budget may seem small, but it represents a sharp reversal for a university and comes primarily from a decline in revenue. Harvard in recent years has reported 3 percent to 4 percent in revenue growth, and the last time the university reported a decline was during the 2008-2009 economic crisis.

“The financial effects on Harvard from the onset of the pandemic in March of this year were significant and sudden,” Thomas J. Hollister, Harvard’s vice president for finance, cowrote in a message Thursday that accompanied the university’s annual financial report. “Sound financial management allowed the university to be in a position to cover sudden losses from operations, while also investing in the mission.”

The value of Harvard’s endowment increased to $42 billion and offered a bright spot by providing 7.3 percent in returns and helping increase the university’s net assets by 2 percent to $50 billion, but Harvard officials said that this current fiscal year also could end with operating deficits. The university is offering only online classes this fall and only first-year students and those facing hardships are staying in dormitories this semester, meaning that Harvard is forgoing significant room and board revenue. The university also is spending money to test students for coronavirus and reconfiguring labs to ensure social-distancing rules and safety.

“How we manage declining revenue and rising need for investment in excellence amid new and necessary health protocols will, in part, determine our successors' ability to endure and thrive,” Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in a message to the university community.

Universities across the country faced significant losses last fiscal year when they had to suddenly move to remote learning to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus. Many have continued to teach online and reduced the number of students in their dormitories to meet social distancing rules. Student enrollment has also dropped at many campuses, as entering first-year students opted to defer college for a year instead of paying for a mostly-online experience.

According to the New England Commission of Higher Education, the regional accrediting agency, many New England colleges experienced unprecedented enrollment declines this fall as students opted out of remote learning or job losses pushed tuition out of reach, putting further pressure on financially struggling institutions.

Institutions, even wealthy ones, are going to have to start looking at making cuts to faculty, staff and programs, Staisloff said.

In the past, many colleges have contained their cuts to low-wage workers, by outsourcing food services or cleaning or cutting back on contracted employees, but they will likely have to make more significant reductions that could hit faculty due to the pandemic, Staisloff said.

“For the first time, you’re going to see widespread impact,” he said.

Some of the financial challenges to higher education predate the pandemic, as families have balked at high tuition costs and questioned whether degrees always led to better paying jobs. The number of college-age students has also been declining, Staisloff said.

“Covid has turned the dial up to 11,” he said. “Higher education’s business model is not sustainable in the long term.”

No more cushy administration jobs doing nothing!

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Related:

"As it resurges across the country, the coronavirus is forcing universities large and small to make deep and possibly lasting cuts to close widening budget shortfalls. By one estimate, the pandemic has cost colleges at least $120 billion, with even Harvard University, despite its $41.9 billion endowment, reporting a $10 million deficit that has prompted belt tightening. Though many colleges imposed stopgap measures such as hiring freezes and early retirements to save money in the spring, the persistence of the economic downturn is taking a devastating financial toll, pushing many to lay off or furlough employees, delay graduate admissions and even cut or consolidate core programs like liberal arts departments. Most of the suspensions are in social sciences and humanities programs where the universities — rather than outside funders such as corporations, foundations and the federal government — typically underwrite the multiyear financial aid packages offered to doctoral students. University officials say the suspensions are necessary to ensure their strapped budgets can continue supporting students already in Ph.D. pipelines, but Suzanne T. Ortega, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, noted that interrupting that pipeline could also have a lingering impact on the higher education work force....."

Yup, nothing is off limits despite them sitting on nearly $42 billion dollars! 

It's not really $urpri$ing. Harvard would be all in on the Great Re$et.


It's due to a $25m gift from ex-Tiger Cub Chris Shumway and the joint life-sciences MS/MBA program at Harvard Business School took its first 11 students in August, with three-quarters of the class are women.

Two local scholars are among 21 recipients of this year’s MacArthur fellowships

They are Isaiah Andrews, a Harvard University economics professor, and Mary L. Gray, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, along with 19 other recipients “have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction,” the foundation said on its website.

The coming New World Order has me praying for an asteroid to hit the planet.

Also see:

"Smith College announced Wednesday that it has received a $50 million donation, the largest in the school’s nearly 150-year history. The gift comes from a Smith graduate who asked to remain anonymous, the college’s president, Kathleen McCartney, said in a campus letter. The gift includes $40 million for student financial aid and $10 million for career development programs. “Her investment in the college will allow us to make a giant stride in equalizing the Smith experience for students from low- and middle-income backgrounds,” McCartney wrote. McCartney said it brings the school one step closer to implementing “need-blind” admissions, a relatively rare practice in which colleges do not consider applicants’ family wealth when selecting students. In a statement released by the college, the alumna said Smith had a meaningful impact on her life, and she felt obligated to pay it back....."

The Globe doesn't even know where that is, and could not care less

"Apparently, there’s an entire region of Massachusetts between Worcester and the Berkshires, three whole counties stacked on top of each other along the Connecticut River that I’m told is called the Pioneer Valley. If I knew this I forgot it, probably because Pioneer Valley sounds like a made-up marketing name to avoid saying Connecticut. Watch as I forget it again. Boom. Forgotten. Western Massachusetts is a perfectly fine name for everything west of Worcester. The name is not Westernmost Massachusetts. If UMass isn’t in Western Mass., then I quit. I’m not driving any further....." 

The idiot doesn't even know his geography, so why should we apply any validity to the rest of his insultingly eliti$t screened?

Maybe it is time for me to forget the Bo$ton Globe, boom!

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

Of course, if you can't get into Harvard you can try the crappy local university:

"The University of Massachusetts Amherst on Friday became the latest area institution to report a coronavirus outbreak, announcing that 13 students tested positive for the illness last week. The students, who live off campus, are known to have socialized together, and several attended a party with one another, according to the statement. A letter sent to UMass Amherst students said additional positive cases could be reported in the coming days as health officials work to identify close contacts. University officials said in an e-mail to the Globe Sunday that they were unable to provide further details on the party that the students attended. Students who live on campus or who attend campus for in-person classes are required to be tested for the coronavirus twice a week, according to university policy. Undergraduates in the area who do not attend classes on campus are encouraged, but not required, to be tested twice a week as well, and graduate students attending online classes are asked to seek weekly tests. Health officials are notifying those who came in close contact with the students so they can perform COVID-19 tests and place them in quarantine, officials said. Several colleges and universities in New England have reported coronavirus outbreaks in recent weeks, including Boston College, the University of Rhode Island, and Merrimack College."


"Amid an unprecedented financial crisis, the university has hired at least seven people with connections to state government and politics as administrators with salaries between $81,000 and $222,000 in the past year and a half, records show. The hires include the former head of the state Democratic Party, a former legislative aide, and a former state commissioner of environmental protection. Together, the seven people earn nearly $1 million. A UMass campus spokesman said in a statement that hiring is based on merit, and the hires underscore UMass’s reputation as a place where the politically connected of Beacon Hill can land a job with a single phone call. It’s an attractive place to work in part because the UMass system is part of the state retirement systemso state employees can continue to earn toward their pensions, which are based on their three highest years of pay and their number of years of service, and the campus’s location is for many more appealing than traveling to the other campuses in Lowell, Dartmouth, Worcester, or Amherst."

That must be why one online class cost $1,425 extra (should have read the fine print).

"Salem State University students to face discipline for violating public health guidelines with large gathering" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff, September 28, 2020

Several Salem State University students will face discipline for attending off-campus gatherings in violation of public health guidelines, authorities said.

Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll and Salem State University President John Keenan released a joint statement that said the two incidents occurred Friday night.

“In addition to violating rules regarding large gatherings, there was also conduct involved in both incidents that led to arrests," the statement said. “In each case, the Salem Police Department and City officials are working closely with Salem State Police and university officials to identify as many responsible parties as possible and ensure they face the appropriate consequences, both on- and off-campus.”

What you are looking at is the WITCHCRAFT of TYRANNY!

Driscoll and Keenan said in the first incident, police broke up a gathering of more than 50 people at an apartment on Becket Street and arrested one individual, who is not a Salem State student, on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. The property owner also is going to be cited by Salem police for keeping a disorderly house and those who attended the gathering will be issued citations from Salem public health officials, the statement said.

It's a MEDICAL TYRANNY!

“Any current Salem State students who are identified as having attended the gathering will also face additional disciplinary consequences from the university,” the statement said. “All individuals who attended this gathering, whether identified or not, are strongly encouraged to get a free COVID-19 test, either through SSU if they are a university student or through the City’s free “Stop the Spread” testing at Salem High School.”

So they can declare you positive based on one of their flawed and faulty PCR tests.

This is f**king insidious, folks!

Driscoll and Keenan said the second incident involved vandalism to the playground equipment at Pickman Park. A Salem State student was arrested and charged with burning personal property, vandalism, and destruction of property over $1,200. “The investigation and identification of other people present, as well as their involvement, is ongoing,” the statement said.

Should have burned the city instead, kid.

“Those responsible in both instances will be held accountable to the greatest extent possible under the law and under the university’s disciplinary policies,” the statement said. “We believe it is important that City and university officials work together to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in our community.”

It's an evil city, all right.

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Related:

Berklee College of Music appoints first female president

Also see:

"Gina Chaput, a molecular microbiologist and postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University, was scrolling through Twitter in late September when she liked an innocuous tweet by another young female scientist, Sabah Ul-Hasan, a bioinformatics researcher in California. A notoriously antagonistic account, posting under the name “The Science Femme, Woman in STEM,” had been trolling Ul-Hasan in the replies of a Tweet she wrote about the struggles of being a “ ‘nice’ minority scientist.”

{@@##$$%%^^&&}


"College campuses have been eerily subdued this fall with students stuck in dorms and social gatherings limited to small groups, but what happens on the night of a deeply polarizing presidential election and the ensuing days if the results are unknown or hotly contested? With the election just days away, colleges across the country and in the Boston area are preparing for potential turbulence — celebratory parties, angry protests and counterprotests, and bursts of violence, all in the midst of a global pandemic. College campuses have long been hot beds of activism and action over issues such as war, racial justice, police reform, and immigration, but this year university leaders are facing heightened anxiety brought on by both COVID-19 and heated political rhetoric. In many parts of the country, where colleges serve as liberal bubbles in conservative communities, university officials fear their campuses could be a draw to right-wing and militia groups, spurring many leaders to plan for additional police presence...."


UPDATE:


The Globe eulogizes her as a pioneering woman in leadership roles in Greater Boston's mental health field who went on to define approaches to counseling survivors of disasters.

BU's Student Badges

Welcome to the Great Re$et, kids:

Starting Thursday, BU students are required to show a green badge – that can be downloaded on a school website using their name and student ID – that they have tested negative for COVID-19 before they can enter certain public spaces on campus like the dining hall.
Starting Thursday, BU students are required to show a green badge – that can be downloaded on a school website using their name and student ID – that they have tested negative for COVID-19 before they can enter certain public spaces on campus like the dining hall (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff).

"Boston University students must show digital COVID-19 badges on campus" by Emily Sweeney Globe Staff, October 22, 2020

Boston University has begun requiring students to show a digital badge indicating they’re up to date with COVID-19 testing and symptom screening to gain entry to campus dining halls, libraries, and other facilities, school officials said.

BU officials said the policy, which went into effect Thursday, was necessary due to “declining compliance” and a “worrisome increase in the daily numbers of cases of the virus among our student body, as well as our staff, over the last week.”

In a letter posted Tuesday on the university’s website, Boston University president Robert A. Brown and Kenneth Elmore, associate provost and dean of students, reminded students they must also continue to follow protocols for testing, screening, and social distancing, as well as be ready to show the badges on their phones.

“We hope this will be a reminder to everyone of the importance of daily symptom attestation and testing for keeping our campus safe,” they wrote.

All this based on a virus that they have a 99.99% chance of surviving, if they even knew they had it.

This COVID fraud has become criminal now, and how sad is it that education has thrown in with it or allowed itself to be bribed?

Of course, why wouldn't they given the Marxi$t indoctrination they have spewing all these years?

According to a report in BU Today, a dozen students were suspended after they participated in at least one of three parties held Oct. 3 at off-campus residences in Allston. Five others who attended the parties were placed on deferred suspension for the rest of the academic year, according to the report.

Just like at Northeastern.

University officials told BU Today that mask-wearing and social distancing were disregarded at the parties, and that a physical assault occurred at one when one student threw a beer can that ricocheted off a building and into another student. Officials said there was no evidence any of the students involved had COVID-19 or that the coronavirus was spread at any of the three parties. 

You kids should have gotten out in the street and wrecked a city instead, a contrast the agenda-pushing pre$$ studiously ignores as it would expose their own butts in pushing this criminal fraud.

The digital badges are not new; students and employees at BU have been using them since the start of the semester, but they will now need to be shown to access the dining halls, libraries, the George Sherman Union, and other spaces on campus, officials said in the letter.

According to the COVID-19 policies posted on Boston University’s website, students who are up to date with testing and daily screening receive a green-colored badge that appears on their mobile device. Students who test positive for COVID-19 receive a red “isolation” badge; those who who have been in close contact with someone who is positive or if they answered yes to their daily symptom screening receive an orange “quarantine” badge. Students who need to get tested or have not completed their daily symptom screenings get a yellow “overdue” badge.

Just wondering how often you are around someone for a 54 hours, kids.

This whole agenda is evil and based on lies, and it hurts me to blog now.

Faculty can ask students to show their badges prior to starting class. Students who are unable to produce a green badge may be asked to leave class.

It's everything the "conspiracy theorists" said and are saying it would be and is, and the Globe is helping to give it all a great big shove.

“You should not return to that class session, and must resolve any issues you have with testing or attestation before attending the next in-person class,” the website states. “If you refuse to leave the class, the faculty member will inform the class that they will not proceed with instruction until you leave the room. If you still refuse to leave the room, the faculty member will dismiss the class and contact your academic Dean’s office for follow up.” 

That will help turn other students against them until the ravenous mob falls upon them, great.

In their Tuesday letter, Brown and Elmore wrote that over the previous seven days the university had seen the largest number of new cases since the final week of move-in back in August. As of Wednesday, 34 BU students who tested positive were in isolation, and 108 had recovered from the virus.

“From our analysis of our cases, we know that a critically important driver for our increasing infection rate is the number of social gatherings (on and off campus), as well as personal travel and off-campus visits with family and friends where participants do not adhere to physical distancing and mask-wearing," the letter states.

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My advice to all is get the f**k off campus as quick as you can, but if you are stuck there at least you can still make new friends:

"Isolated college first-years look to Instagram to make friends" by Laura Krantz Globe Staff, October 4, 2020

On campuses, friendships are still forming the old-fashioned way, but even this generation of digitally savvy teenagers say social media have taken on unprecedented importance this year because there are so few other ways to meet

Talking to someone in class now requires near shouting, students said in interviews, since everyone is muffled by masks and spaced far apart. Dining halls are largely takeout operations, and club meetings happen over Zoom. A student at Wellesley described taking a modern dance class virtually, lunging across her dorm room alone, but everybody’s got Instagram on their phones. 

Each day, collegesboston2024 features about seven first-year students who attend colleges around the region, each of whom stars in their own post that introduces them to the account’s followers. Students who want to be featured — some 700 have applied so far — can submit three photos of themselves as well as their hometown, major, and a short bio. An array of similar school-specific accounts have also proven popular.

18-year-old Lucy Garberg and her team — who choose who’s featured, and keep an eye out for the occasional scammer — also post infographics about businesses in Boston, suggesting the best spots for students to find boba tea, bookstores, manicures or tattoos, places of the sort that. Being featured on the page can be somewhat overwhelming, students said.

Lily Schutt, a first-year at Emerson College, checked her phone on July 30 and found more than 60 follow requests. She had submitted her information weeks before but was told there was a queue; now, apparently, it was her turn. Message after message dropped into her Instagram inbox, and comments popped up under her photos. Fellow Floridians said hello; one girl said she, too, loved discussing politics; a number of people said she was pretty. Small talk, for the most part, but it made her feel more comfortable coming to campus in the fall.

Some of Schutt’s collegiate Instagram connections have bloomed into real-life friendships. After she had moved into her dorm, Schutt, 18, sent another Emerson student a message to say she liked her dorm room decorations in the background of her Instagram photos. Later the pair met for coffee, and the next week they went thrift shopping, but the combination of social-media acquaintances plus mask-wearing makes for some unusual interactions. During a recent fire drill, Schutt saw a boy she follows online. She knew what his face looked like from Instagram, even though he was wearing a mask. “I have never seen some of the people that live in my hall’s faces,” she said.

:(

Janis Whitlock, a research scientist at Cornell University who studies young people and social media, said the ways young people are adapting to the crisis will shape the world that will emerge when the pandemic ends.

No they won't.

That will be done by the Great Re$et crowd from the World Economic Forum. The Globe is assisting them in that endeavor every day as the hornswoggle and bamboozle the kids.

“There are going to be a lot of really amazing things that come from this time, but it is asking us, and young people, to dig deep, and it’s scary because most of us haven’t been here before,” she said.

Rather than stunt students' social growth, she said, the obstacles they face this year may make them more resilient.

Never mind the mental health issues and suicides that are going through the roof.

Really, folks, this type of journali$m has reached such an offensive rank-rot it's impossible to read it anymore. They think they are part of the club, but they are not. When their owners and editors are done with them, they will be dispatched like us.

For one Wellesley first-year, Suzanna Schofield, the difficulty of making friends has made her more intentional about it, and she has pushed herself to strike up conversations before class, even through masks, or to ask a girl to breakfast, even though they have to sit six feet apart.

Schofield has made several good friends this way, but she has also pushed herself to broaden her circle by crafting a bio for collegesboston2024. She found being featured on the account a little exhausting. Sometimes she opens her phone to see double-digit notifications and just shuts it again.

“I’m an extrovert in the sense of being around other people, in person — not through technology,” she said, “and so it is tiring, because then you spend your time reaching out, but you don’t spend time with actual people,” and some students said friendships they’ve forged online don’t seem as profound as those that spring up in real life. Dylan Rottman, an Emerson first-year, counts himself lucky to have met his two closest friends so far in line at the dining hall.

Why is everyone the Globe talks to a Joo?

Other students said they couldn’t quite manage to come across as themselves in the bios they wrote, no matter how detailed they made them, and yet, several students remarked, the pandemic has made people open up quicker, and in a more genuine way than they might have otherwise, which helps bridge the gaps.

Foolish children.

“People want to know that there are other people who feel just like them," said Ananya Dutta, 18, of Fremont, Calif., one of the seven who run the collegesboston2024 account.

The students who run the page are, like their classmates, keenly aware they’ve come of age in a troubled world, and they try to use the account, in small ways, to shape a better one.

They feature a diverse array of students and have noticed that differences rather than similarities between students foster the most interaction.

The pandemic has forged bonds between those in the class of 2024, Dutta said; canceled graduations, summer jobs, and college plans have forced them to stop taking things for granted. Back in April, she and her classmates imagined the coffee shops and bookstores they would visit together. Now, they take things one day at a time.

“We don’t know when things are going to end; we don’t know when things are going to start to get better,” she said.....

Actually, we do. 

They were written down in documents from the Rockefeller Foundation, the WHO, and the WEF.

I guess they aren't teaching the kids about that stuff.

--more--"

Related:

"Some Phi Chi Theta members at Boston University have been suspended by their fraternity after an Instagram posting showed them attending a social gathering where COVID-19 guidelines were not followed, the fraternity said on its website. Phi Chi Theta is a co-ed fraternity associated with Boston University and its business education programming. The event was not sponsored by Phi Chi Theta, but several fraternity members attended, the fraternity said. “We have taken appropriate steps to ensure this situation does not ever happen again and have suspended these members from PCT activities,” the organization said in a statement posted on its webpage. “Please understand that these behaviors are not representative of our values or the majority sentiment of our members.” According to The Daily Free Press, the student-run independent newspaper, BU administrators have placed the fraternity on “probation” and that 15 students were shown on the video gathering with fraternity alumnae....."

Also see:

"Northeastern University will require most professors to return to campus for teaching and research during the spring semester, a school official said Friday. The move is considered safe because the university has contained the virus through frequent testing and strict adherence to safety protocols such as mask-wearing and social distancing, David Madigan, the university’s provost, said in an e-mail to faculty. For the fall semester, Northeastern is offering a mix of online and in-person learning, and the university has allowed wide latitude for both professors and students uncomfortable returning to campus, but in the spring, faculty requesting to work from home will be approved on a case-by-case basis, Madigan said. Those eligible include people with disabilities, those with pregnancy-related conditions, anyone with a medical condition that puts them at greater risk of becoming severely ill, and those living with someone who has such a condition. The university will no longer approve work accommodations based solely on a person’s age, but employees who are concerned that their age makes them more vulnerable to the coronavirus may fill out a form to notify human resources staff, Madigan said. He added that the new policy “may be subject to change, given the evolving nature of the current coronavirus crisis, as well as university operational needs.”

What the tyrants at Northeastern didn't expect was a backlash from faculty members, particularly women with family care responsibilities, so they announced they would be more flexible about in-person teaching requirements during the spring semester.

One might say they made the wrong Assumption:

"Students at Assumption University on Friday started a shelter-in-place order that will last until at least next Friday due to a rise in COVID-19 cases on campus, officials said. While in lockdown, students must stay in their dorm rooms, and only essential personnel will be allowed on campus, University President Francesco C. Cesareo said in a letter to the campus community. Commuter students will also switch to remote learning for the rest of the semester, the letter said. Eight students tested positive for the virus this week, and a total of 130 students are in quarantine or self-isolating on and off-campus, Michael K. Guilfoyle, executive director of communications for the university, said in an e-mail. The decision to lock down the campus was made in consultation with city public health officials, Cesareo wrote. Worcester is a high-risk community for COVID-19, and had 452 confirmed cases of the virus in the last 14 days according to public health data released Thursday." 

And WHERE WOULD THAT BE?

A COVID CAMP perhaps?

Parents, get your kids the hell home NOW!