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.
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“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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