The issue that is being overlooked by a lot of reopening plans is that there is a lack of substitutes if teachers and staff are quarantined. It's hard enough for a lot of districts when times are good to get substitutes and pre-COVID most substitutes tended to be older or retired teachers. And since this virus affects older people more, it's no surprise that there are sub shortages or a simple lack of substitutes everywhere. So when schools are having teachers ordered into quarantine for exposure (or have this happen to pivot workers like bus drivers of which there is already a shortage of) they can't operate.
And one other thing that gets lost with parental choice is that districts are making teachers do TWO jobs this year because they won't hire staff to only work with virtual kids. So as a teacher, one has to teach in-person AND virtual kids at the same time under a "hybrid" setup. This means that teachers are in front of the classroom but have to have a camera/laptop up so virtual kids can tune in, but then virtual kids can't see the board as well, hear classmates, etc. And good luck policing two sets of students with one set of eyes. I'm guessing that we are going to see a LOT of resignations from teachers roll in around the end of the semester or after this year because there's a lot of discontent.
Schools dropped the ball going into this year because all summer they were planning to come back in person and created all of these policies for that instead of looking at some of the more practical issues that would force a virtual setup at some point anyway. So instead of having good virtual education or systems in place for distance learning they just wasted time.
My guess is that schools won't get back up and going until a vaccine is out there and that might put things at March at the earliest. The winter is going to be bad.
. This one will be coming from schools since district has already embarrassed themselves over and over again.
