AISD's (and other districts) Plans for Schools Starting August 18

[atomheartbevo 89735]

If people would just get/keep their shit together through Labor Day (and beyond), and if the young folks at the universities here in Austin would' t fuck around and spread it, we could get it back under the <10 level.

But it's Austin/Texas.  Once the numbers decline, everybody says "see it's not a problem" and they ditch their masks/covid habits.

[BrazilHorn 6619]

The rolling 7 day hospitalization average is 18.42. Needs to be <10 to move to Stage 2 and allow sports to be played in AISD Middle/High Schools.

Had 12 hospital admits yesterday. Has been since 6/21 (10) where there was a single day lower than that.

I am putting this in AISD thread as it pertains to opening up fall sports.

 

[atomheartbevo 89735]

5 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

The rolling 7 day hospitalization average is 18.42. Needs to be <10 to move to Stage 2 and allow sports to be played in AISD Middle/High Schools.

Had 12 hospital admits yesterday. Has been since 6/21 (10) where there was a single day lower than that.

I am putting this in AISD thread as it pertains to opening up fall sports.

Yeah, looking at the hospitalization rate coming down, as long as nobody fucks up during Labor Day, there's actually a chance we could have sports when in-person classes resume.

I still put it at 50/50, because we have too many people who think "hey, things are improving, I can take my mask off!", but I'm slightly more confident.

Shame we don't have various government entities with massive advertising along the lines of "wear your mask, wash your hands, and our kids can go to school and play sports again!"

If "keep your parents/grandparents out of the hospital" isn't enough of a pitch, maybe appealing to sports fans would do it.

Edited September 1, 2020 by atomheartbevo

[BrazilHorn 6619]

1 minute ago, atomheartbevo said:

Yeah, looking at the hospitalization rate coming down, as long as nobody fucks up during Labor Day, there's actually a chance we could have sports when in-person classes resume.

I still put it at 50/50, because we have too many people who think "hey, things are improving, I can take my mask off!", but I'm slightly more confident.

Shame we don't have various government entities with massive advertising along the lines of "wear your mask, wash your hands, and our kids can go to school and play sports again!"

The district just hasn't done a "Get out the Vote" type deal around how exactly sports can be brought back. The Q&A they sent us just said as one of the questions: "You know that sports cannot resume unless Austin moves to Stage 2" or something along those lines, but unless you go research exactly what Stage 2 is (and there are many sites that don't show the needed hospitalizations to progress through the various stages), you won't know how hard it will be to do so.

The schools should be more vocal around this as it is not just sports, but band, cheer etc etc

 

[Your Mom 4808]

Any reason we can’t just have a policy of not admitting people to the hospital and just have them stay home to die so we can bring down the rate and have sports?  I suppose that’s against the Hippocratic oath or some bullshit. 

Edited September 1, 2020 by Your Mom

[Chet Steadman 940]

I assumed I had been following this all very closely (been wearing a mask since March, holla!) but honest to goodness, I had no idea until right now HS football in AISD wouldn't be playing actual games until we hit Stage 2. 

 

[smoky 840]

We were under the hospitalization threshold for Stage 3 for weeks before it was official.

Even if we hit the under 10 hospitalizations metric, don't get too excited.

I wouldn't be surprised if the metric changed as Dr Escott recently cited positivity rates for some school metrics.

[rpspeed 1398]

27 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

Any reason we can’t just have a policy of not admitting people to the hospital and just have them stay home to die so we can bring down the rate and have sports?  I suppose that’s against the Hippocratic oath or some bullshit. 

plenty of sports to be found, just drive outside AISD.

[BrazilHorn 6619]

1 hour ago, smoky said:

We were under the hospitalization threshold for Stage 3 for weeks before it was official.

Even if we hit the under 10 hospitalizations metric, don't get too excited.

I wouldn't be surprised if the metric changed as Dr Escott recently cited positivity rates for some school metrics.

Positivity rate is the worst measure IMO. To easily manipulated. Tell just sick to get tested your PR is high, tell all to test it goes lower. Hospital admits are better more realistic measure I believe. 

[DalTxHornFan 3107]

1 hour ago, smoky said:

We were under the hospitalization threshold for Stage 3 for weeks before it was official.

Even if we hit the under 10 hospitalizations metric, don't get too excited.

I wouldn't be surprised if the metric changed as Dr Escott recently cited positivity rates for some school metrics.

220, 221, whatever it takes.

[atomheartbevo 89735]

One of the emails I got from AISD makes it sound like they will be providing meals to the kids for breakfast/lunch.  Wouldn't surprise me, since the cafeterias in some of the schools have been repurposed.

[Message Board User 12395]

On 8/9/2020 at 9:39 PM, atomheartbevo said:

That high school in Georgia, of the infamous hallway photos.  They learned their lesson after 9 tested positive and a bunch of kids/staff had to go into quarantine.

They are going online.

For two days.  Although more days could be coming.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/09/us/north-paulding-high-school-covid-19-cases/index.html

 

 

So Georgia schools like the one with the infamous photo have been open for about a month and...the numbers continue to improve across the state.

 

[mdmost 43004]

Dallas ISD starts tomorrow. Hoping for the best. The school seems to have a much better schedule and strategy that the terrible Spring give up session (which I get why it had to be that way). They sent out a survey that's due by Friday where you pick if you want to come back on the 28th of this month for some ages and October 6th for others. Otherwise, you wait for the next chance to go face to face in November. Not sure why they think 4 days is enough for parents to make a decision but well here we are. It was supposed to be due on the 21st. We'll opt for virtual until November. Both kids aren't in a hurry to return.

[swraith 347]

We have devices and schedules ready for both kids who are in elementary. AISD kicks off tomorrow. I figure the first week will just be getting acclimated to the schedule and getting users familiar with the technology. Hopefully the following week results in actually learning.

Or I could be completely delusional and this whole AISD remote learning for elementary kids is going to be a disaster.

Who knows.

[swraith 347]

Thanks tapa for the dp

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Having two young kids In different grades on Zoom at the same time......

[swraith 347]

Only 1 of my 2 have made it onto zoom so far this morning. The younger one just isn’t having it. Just 1 meltdown to the next.

 

Doesn’t help that wife had set screen time restrictions on the iPad till noon and was getting pissed that nothing was working. She thought she had set it for midnight.

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Pro tip to teachers in the lower grades:   Don’t have all 60-80 kids in the grade on at the same time.   

[South Austin 52521]

Things went relatively smoothly with the Highland Park pod this morning. There were four boys – two fourth-graders and two third-graders – on four different homeroom Zoom calls, but no connection problems. The school seems to have done a good job setting up the class schedules with links on Blend. Not sure how good the content will be, but so far I’ll give props for getting their shit together.

[rpspeed 1398]

Both kids have  been in school in person for 3 weeks now. No problems.

Edited September 8, 2020 by rpspeed

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Our school has done relatively well, but the hang ups seem to be parents who had not looked at anything or opened any emails until 5 minutes before the official start of school this morning.    

[hayden_horn 11362]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Having two young kids In different grades on Zoom at the same time......

Mine are middle school. I gazed longingly at the bloody mary mix in the fridge once already. 

[BabaYaga 15301]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Having two young kids In different grades on Zoom at the same time......

Soccer tournament in Norman this weekend.  Behind enemy lines for sure.  Wife's sister just mover up there for work.  This is how fucked they are.

The lesson plans for the kids are pre-recorded.  The way she described it was it was like the recurring corporate compliance classes many have to take.  The entire session is pre-recorded.  Teachers are "on call" for questions, but as they had no input into the creation of the sessions, often they can offer only limited support during a defined window of time each day. 

These are 3rd and 4th graders.  She almost broke down crying at the table.  The kids are lost and despondent.  It's a shit show.  To make things worse, the courses assume the end of last year's material was facilitated (often it was not, as everyone locked down, etc.).  So to add insult to injury, you have kids trying to learn on some scripted nonsense that builds off material they haven't covered yet.  Feel so bad for these poor kids.  

Edited September 8, 2020 by BabaYaga

[atomheartbevo 89735]

That’s Oklahoma.   And here I am thinking our kids are on Zoom with the teachers almost too much.   Thanks TEA!
 

This is going to make a lot more parents want to send their kids to school next month.   

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Our school has much better Blend/Seesaw setup this time around.  And it’s easy to see what assignments are actually due - no ambiguity this time around.  Do the work, take a photo, upload into Seesaw, done.   

[Kringelbert Fishtybuns 944]

4 kinders and 4 second graders in our garage for the pod.

It’s going about as well as could be expected.  Some video slow downs until we got people on the right network.  The second graders seem to have their shit down.  Kinders are kinder.  They are having some free time between assignments and my wife is trying to tune the audio for the young ones, so it now sounds like a huge ass party at the house.  Not sure how sustainable this will be, but damn the torpedoes for now.

[SquishMitten 10417]

Oof. Kinder and 1st. Their schedules have been almost exactly the opposite of each other. One will get a 30 minute break while the other one was logging back in, then vice-versa. Real PITA. Hired a full-time nanny to help with this, but we wanted to spend the first couple days acclimating to the process ourselves. I think I'm retiring that idea now. 

On the plus side, first grade teacher looks pretty hot.

[InkaUtexas 26003]

5 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

Oof. Kinder and 1st. Their schedules have been almost exactly the opposite of each other. One will get a 30 minute break while the other one was logging back in, then vice-versa. Real PITA. Hired a full-time nanny to help with this, but we wanted to spend the first couple days acclimating to the process ourselves. I think I'm retiring that idea now. 

On the plus side, first grade teacher looks pretty hot.

Rules...... 

[hookemATL 11782]

Seesaw works fine for my kindergartner, and she is getting better and better each school day.  Leander ISD has been in for virtual for several weeks now, and all in all the material is substantial and keeping my kiddo engaged. 

Facilitating the zoom lessons, seesaw lessons, other apps requires an adult.  Ive basically told my work to kiss my ass for a bit while I try and figure my typical workflow for a day.  Happy she is able to learn while staying home, but I wish she could have the normal experience.  We are just taking things day by day and celebrating her achievements as we go along.  

[Hefeweizen 5328]

Jesus that sounds terrible.  So far for our high schoolers remote is going pretty well.  I think elementary kids need to be back ASAP.  I’m good with my kids being remote but they are self motivated with no issues learning, so they don’t need special help.  This is a tough thing to watch.  There is about half of their classes that the kids turn off the video and just sit on their phone.  

[capnamerca 571]

Kinder and 4th here. I've been REALLY impressed with the teachers - it's clear they've put in tons of hours to least have something that's engaging, makes use of Blend/Seesaw, and is age-appropriate. Zoom has worked fine, the Kinder class actually had 100% attendance this morning.

We got incredibly lucky to have an au pair be able to join us for the school year. She's flat-out amazing, and is my eyes and ears in the learning room. We converted a play room, put in two desks, and hung a sound-deadening curtain between the kids. Seems to be working ok. 

We're on the "do your best for a few weeks, and we'll learn all the things we don't know yet" plan. Hoping for low-stress. Our kids are in a good spot - the 4th grader is TAG, so he's ahead of the "normal" curriculum; any review/backwork they have to do he should already have down. Kinder is kinder :). 

Sending strength and patience to all the parents, and all the kids. Just keep doing the best you can.

[Horn_Spanker 524]

I've been auditing classes this morning.  Teachers are trying their best, but JFC, the parents are rude and clueless.  i.e., chiming in mid lesson to ask some procedural questions.  A dad walking through asking "what's this shit show?".  Kids eating breakfast, dogs barking in the house. 

[atomheartbevo 89735]

On 9/8/2020 at 12:35 PM, Horn_Spanker said:

I've been auditing classes this morning.  Teachers are trying their best, but JFC, the parents are rude and clueless.  i.e., chiming in mid lesson to ask some procedural questions.  A dad walking through asking "what's this shit show?".  Kids eating breakfast, dogs barking in the house. 

Haven't heard any parents swearing, but one of the kids in my son's class kept unmuting so we could hear his dad getting pissed that his older brother was fucking around on his iPad instead of doing his work.

Also, one of the kids has a Karen for a mom, who was asking my son's teacher if they could get the kids together at lunch on Zoom just to chit-chat  among themselves.  I get the sentiment - our son got together with some of his friends over the summer on Zoom at lunch, and his teacher did it last spring a few times, but the teacher pointed out that anything done through school infrastructure would have to be approved and monitored by the teachers, and she uses that time to eat her own lunch, to do planning, and to catch up on emails and voicemails from other parents.  

Teacher mentioned that the homeroom parents have the contact information of everybody and could arrange it for later in the day, outside of school.  Karen responded "well, I'm busy then, and it would be easier to do it when the kids are scheduled for lunch together."  Thankfully, other parents jumped in and deflected.  Karen was looking for an easy way to not have to pay attention to her kid for half-an-hour or something, and she's also been one to question when the teacher didn't respond to an email right away.

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Since you're reading this thread and AISD, if your kid is using Seesaw, hopefully you know by now to make sure there is a capital "S" at the beginning of their student number when you log them in.

Also, pro tip (if using an iPad): Take photos/videos of your kids and their work with the iPad's built-in camera, and then upload through Seesaw.  Trying to take the photo or video through Seesaw is an exercise in frustration.  I get the impression that maybe the photos/videos are being uploaded/compressed through Seesaw's servers, and then pushed back into the kids accounts or something (I haven't tried to look into it much, just my observation as an end user), but when you take photos/videos outside of Seesaw and just use the file upload, they go straight into the kid's online account.

[mdmost 43004]

Dallas ISD has pushed up the decision time on if you're returning for face to face or staying virtual to late September or early October based on grade levels. You have to decide by Friday. The school had a discussion about what will be happening if you stay at home or if you go to school. You have to stay with your selection, barring the school shutting down, till November.

It's actually a best of both worlds for the teachers, minus them having to ensure kids at school follow the correct protocols. The learning will be synchronise. The school has purchased 72 inch touchscreen viewboards for the teachers. This way the kids at home can be on the teacher's screen and they can share lessons with the face to face kids over Zoom. The best part is regardless of if your kid is in school or at home, they'll keep their same teacher. There was some thought early on in the summer that online kids would get different teachers, some not even from their school. So far, online learning has been good minus a few issues. The classes are a lot more robust than the Spring semester. Kids log in at 7:45 and go for a time with some breaks, take lunch and recess for the younger one, and finish up at 3:15. Both seem happy with being at home so we're going to opt for home till November. We're in a position where the kids being at home works for everyone. No need to rush back. It's good that DISD is offering it for people who want or need to go back. I just hope our teachers and staff stay safe. 

[Updawg 2271]

Kinder and 4th here. I've been REALLY impressed with the teachers - it's clear they've put in tons of hours to least have something that's engaging, makes use of Blend/Seesaw, and is age-appropriate. Zoom has worked fine, the Kinder class actually had 100% attendance this morning.
We got incredibly lucky to have an au pair be able to join us for the school year. She's flat-out amazing, and is my eyes and ears in the learning room. We converted a play room, put in two desks, and hung a sound-deadening curtain between the kids. Seems to be working ok. 
We're on the "do your best for a few weeks, and we'll learn all the things we don't know yet" plan. Hoping for low-stress. Our kids are in a good spot - the 4th grader is TAG, so he's ahead of the "normal" curriculum; any review/backwork they have to do he should already have down. Kinder is kinder . 
Sending strength and patience to all the parents, and all the kids. Just keep doing the best you can.

Pics of Au pair asshole

[Your Mom 4808]

AISD dad here, what the fuck is seesaw?  I know BLEND and TEAMS but I’ve never heard of Seeesaw until this thread. Maybe some thing only certain schools or grades are using?

In any case, things are going pretty smooth in my house. Eighth grader and sophomore. An instance or two of a link not working and not being able to log into zoom but they move on, do their work anyway, and email the teacher about it and then it’s resolved by the next class.

Our deal is always that the better their grades are, the less I get involved.  So right now I ask them if they got all their shit done, they say yes, that’s that.  
I had to unfollow a couple of school Facebook groups because the Karen moms are insufferable with the freaking out over every little glitch or process they don’t agree with  

 

[Armybrat 40851]

Grandson whois a senior at Austin High said it went ok.

[capnamerca 571]

20 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

AISD dad here, what the fuck is seesaw?  I know BLEND and TEAMS but I’ve never heard of Seeesaw until this thread. Maybe some thing only certain schools or grades are using?

In any case, things are going pretty smooth in my house. Eighth grader and sophomore. An instance or two of a link not working and not being able to log into zoom but they move on, do their work anyway, and email the teacher about it and then it’s resolved by the next class.

Our deal is always that the better their grades are, the less I get involved.  So right now I ask them if they got all their shit done, they say yes, that’s that.  
I had to unfollow a couple of school Facebook groups because the Karen moms are insufferable with the freaking out over every little glitch or process they don’t agree with  

 

Seesaw is the LMS for K-2nd grade. Easier to use for the little ones. Each class still has a Blend "class", but their work is all in Seesaw. With an 8th and 10th grader, you don't have to worry about it :).

 

Agree on the general mindset of "just let this shit play out." By no means have things been perfect, but the teachers have been so awesome. They're always available, they're working their ASSES off to make quality content available with technology that wasn't even around nine months ago, and a teaching/delivery method that no one has been trained for. I've been very, very impressed with everyone, tbh. 

[capnamerca 571]

10 hours ago, Updawg said:

Pics of Au pair asshole

Photo album here!

[CooterBrown 18015]

Our principal had to send out an email telling parents that teachers would not coordinate with their hired gun pod teachers on their kids' school work and that it was the parents' responsibility to deal with teachers. Talk about lazy fucking entitled people.

 

[Horn_Spanker 524]

Looks like Google Fiber went down in some areas.  SNOW DAY!!

[mdmost 43004]

And now Dallas ISD is saying you have until September 18th to make the virtual/face to face decision. Ha, after I returned our survey this morning. I mean, it doesn't really change our choice but they were really pushing people to complete the survey today and then oh, just kidding, next Friday. 

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Google Fiber down, causing a lot of problems for districts and students

https://downdetector.com/status/google-fiber/map/

[Guest Lobo]

Holy shit, that massive red rash is right over South Austin's Mom.  Oh My Gash!  

Jokes aside, that is fucked up.  I wonder if it's all the residential lines which weren't intended to handle this much streaming at this time of day.  

[PantsTent 2002]

I don't think it's that wide spread of an outage but definitely SW Austin.  No school for kids today.  I had to go to the office. 

[CooterBrown 18015]

59 minutes ago, Lobo said:

Holy shit, that massive red rash is right over South Austin's Mom.  Oh My Gash!  

She did go down earlier. Repeatedly.

 

[atomheartbevo 89735]

Me, Tuesday morning, start of school for two little kids

Me, Friday afternoon. 

[4th&Five 41563]

1 hour ago, PantsTent said:

I don't think it's that wide spread of an outage but definitely SW Austin.  No school for kids today.  I had to go to the office. 

hmmm...no issues for me in 78735

[Larry T. Spider 1746]

Survived week 1. No major meltdowns. Parents needed a decent bit of tech help on day 1 but it was almost nothing by Thursday. Slow roll out of hotspots from the district is my only complaint. We got this.

We start letting some classes in the building early next month if we can keep the Covid numbers down. Don’t fuck this up!