My State of NY isn't looking good and the online or "distance learning" at the end of the school year was both good and bad. My school and the teachers did an awesome job with the transition from classroom to online with such short notice. I have no complaints with my daughters school and how well they did, but the actual education was terrible. The kids were graded on a 0-4 grading system, a 0 meant they didn't do anything and didn't hand anything in. A 4 meant they did what they were asked and handed it in. None of the grading accounted for grammer errors or math checked, if they did the math problem completely wrong they get a 4 :/ My daughter got her best grades to date! lol BUT she didn't learn much of the actual curriculum. Again not the teachers fault or the school for that matter, this grading system was handed down from (I think the State to the County but not sure there) the County for all to use. I am not sure how other areas of NY adjusted to be fair. The biggest problem for me was keeping my daughter on schedule to login when classes begin and not just playing Playstation all day while I am at work.
This year, Cuomo keeps the knife ready to cut everyone back to 100% online if cases spike. Our school put out a survey to all parents to feel out what we wanted which I found comforting. Regardless of what the school wants, it has to follow State Guidelines and that is where things get messy. In our county we have had 56 positive cases, 12 hospitalizations and 0 deaths from Covid but over 11,000 tests submitted in total. The math supports fully opening every school in our county with 100% in person learning. Especially when combined with the data from other countries that have opened schools and it hasn't been a problem. Anyway, our school had to submit 3 reopening plans to the state, this is where it gets messy.
1) One for 100% in person with mandated masks when they leave their desk, and desks 6 feet apart, but the desks are currently three feet apart so they included renting tents and tables for outdoor classes (not sure how that works out when winter settles in?). The kids on buses have to be one child per seat which more than doubles the amount of buses needed to get every child to school in the morning and again in the afternoon... that we don't have. The school is unwittingly leaning more towards the next option because of classroom space and busing problems.
2) One for a hybrid in-person/online program. This gives each kid a half day of in school and half day online but alleviates the spacing requirements from the State but doubles the busing (not the actual buses) because they will have to run the routes twice as many times per day to bring half the kids (group 1) in the morning while they other half (group 2) do classes online, then take them (group 1) home while somehow picking up the other half (group 2) that are going in to school for their half day of in class learning.
3) And one for a 100% online program.
It is all doomed to fail and be very expensive on us taxpayers. If they just go with the cheapest option of 100% online, the kids get a crappy education and us working parents have extra work to make sure our kids are doing what they are supposed to do. If they go with option 1 or 2 either way its going to jump the costs significantly but the education given is much better. Bear in mind that NY is only 2nd to California as the most taxed State in the Country already. Nothing good comes out of this for us common folk, forseeing this is exactly what drove me to research Covid numbers for over a month now.
