As schools start making some plans for doing in-person education, there are a lot of considerations. While schools were able to close down their in-person work pretty rapidly, reopening is going to be a bigger process. We are sharing an excerpt from this article, and you can read the entire thing right here.
“Public schools play a range of roles in society beyond education. As child care for millions of working parents, they are a cornerstone of any attempt to reopen the economy. They are hubs for community relationships and distribution points for essential social services.
But, before any of that, they must be safe places for children. With those various functions in mind, education leaders are putting out plans that forecast some very big changes to what public school might look like in the coming months and even years.
The complications are leading to a patchwork effect and a disconnect between levels of government in many places.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, talked about trying to open up for summer school as soon as July. But school leaders in Palo Alto and Sacramento countered that it would be more likely that they’d have to push the start of the school year later by a few weeks because of all the planning necessary to open up safely.
In Georgia, even as Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, has been out ahead of the rest of the country on opening up some businesses, there are a few districts that chose to end the school year early, putting an end to their efforts with remote learning.
And Washington, D.C., public schools have also decided to end the school year early, pledging to tack those weeks back on by starting earlier in August. In Washington state and in Chicago, leaders have acknowledged that some form of remote learning might continue off and on through the 2020-2021 school year or even beyond.
In the past few days, the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, put out a detailed blueprint for reopening. And so did the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank, which asked retired state superintendents, city chancellors and other school leaders to weigh in.
These two plans have a lot in common as far as basic medical recommendations: the need for rapid and repeated coronavirus testing of students and staff, contact tracing, stepped-up hygiene and cleaning, and reducing class sizes to allow for social distancing.
Here are four tough problems that are on experts’ minds:
- Running remote and in-person learning in parallel
- Serving the neediest and traumatized kids
- Privacy
- Transportation
The more you dig into the details, the more you realize how staggering of an effort this will be.
“It’s going to be a scheduling nightmare, a logistical nightmare,” Weingarten sums up. “And God forbid a kid or a teacher gets sick. The knives are going to come out that the school is responsible for it.””
Minnesota’s #OwnVoices Registration is now open for the 2020 Libraries Serving Youth Meetup and we are shifting the event online! We have an amazing line up! Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen, associate professor in the Library and Information Science program at St. Catherine University, will be our emcee.
To start off the series, meet Edith, who is currently teleworking with Ashley Bieber of State Library Services. Edith is employed as a librarian therapy animal, and works hard to soothe her supervisor after long days squinting at screens, promoting literacy, and connecting communities. Edith’s favorite books are anything by her favorite author, Edith Wharton, especially Ethan Frome. Her black-tighted style icon is Edie Sedgwick; Edith recommends Edie: An American Biography, by Jean Stein, if you’re interested in learning more about a 1960’s New York City scenester and one of Andy Warhol’s muses. Edith loves to meow and purr along with Edith Piaf on a rainy day and generally enjoys being beautiful and admired. 
Meet the Minnesota Book Awards Finalists This year, instead of an in-person event, The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library held online video discussions with the 2020 Minnesota Book Awards finalists. 
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