oh yikes

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/31J9OVX

so Farmkid has been on full remote this whole school year. They decided right at the beginning of lockdown to co-isolate with the family of Farmkid’s BFF, so the two of them are in a mini-collective, in the same class, and it’s worked out great, and my mom’s additionally teaching them Spanish since she was a Spanish teacher and they asked, and they’re really getting their social needs met and it’s unusually working out really well for them. So many people are not nearly so fortunate, and part of it for my sister was, “well, I have this level of support, so I’ll keep my kid out to leave room for the essential workers without childcare etc.”. Plus, the lady four doors down the street whose daughter is in Farmkid’s class is a vocal anti-masker on Facebook and was having parties all summer so like, yeah. No.

(She’s a transplant survivor on immunosuppressants so like. She’s gonna die. The PR machine convincing her she’s immortal should be shot by a fucking firing squad, this mother of a 6-year-old is going to die. It’s so upsetting. But she’s got a Trump sign on her lawn and seems determined to be first against the wall, the poor idiot.)

ANYHOW

The school sent out a thing, like, hey, remote kids, anyone want to reconsider? now’s the like re-enrollment chance, please let us know. Farmkid and BFF’s Mom talked it over and were like “no, this is mostly working and we’re both too scared.” So they mutually agreed: no, they’re gonna stay in their isolation pod doing remote work through at least the end of the semester.

So. Sister and I were out on a walk in the woods just now; Farmkid and her dad had gone to ride bikes around the school parking lot since it’s a sunny Sunday afternoon. There amid the golden leaves and oblique sunlight, Sister was picking up leaves and explaining how you identify the species, as that’s like, her favorite hobby (witch hazel has an asymmetric leaf base. aspens and poplars have funny flattened leaf stems as they go into the base of the leaf, instead of round, and that’s why they flutter back and forth in the wind so distinctively– you can ID a stand of aspens from a distance in a light breeze because of this feature. tulip trees have cat ears at the top of the leaf and you can make a cute mask out of the big ones). It was super idyllic.

Her phone started going off and she pulled it out, cursing at it, and then said, “oh fuck it’s the school” and then proceeded to accidentally hang up the call, “ah fuck every time!” but she got the simultaneous text.

“Oh fuck it’s the school,” she said. “ALL STUDENTS are 100% remote as of October 26th. What day is it?”

“It’s the 25th,” I said.

“Oh fuck,” she said. “Oh fuck. I am so glad I kept [Farmkid] remote.”

There’d been a confirmed case in the high school, but the school had said they were keeping classes open.

We found out from our mom, expert gossip, that it was A BUS DRIVER.

Oh Christ. Oh Christ.

Well, we’re isolated from all that, by design, but it’s bad news for the community. Time to hunker down.

Comments

[heartofoshun]

Yep! Strangely parallel story to ours here in Brooklyn. We were hand-wringing about keeping Alex home this semester and finally decided we could not stand the thought of sending him back so soon. Sure enough school had not been in session a full month before this area closed down tight again. It does not feel good to be right under the circumstances but at least we do not have to feel guilty or torn any longer.

[sugarandlime]

Lololol in the school district where I live, (suburban Missouri) their carefully constructed plan is to only quarantine kids seated near any positive cases. Classes keep going, teacher keeps teaching, just the positive case plus their seating chart neighbors go home. They have had cases. They made the teachers sign gag orders to not talk about any of it, and the superintendent is individually going after random moms on Facebook when they express any concerns. If killer clowns were running the show we might have better odds.

It's a fucking nightmare. I'm so glad your family kiddos are home safe and that their school is rapid responding to the case!

[krait]

As someone who doesn't deal with children much, I am sometimes really grateful for that because otherwise I might have to yell at a lot of people in child-related professions; why are they often so STUPID? What kind of school authority thinks classrooms and a pandemic are a great combo?!

I'm sure it's mostly not the teachers - who are in close contact with the kids and who know very well how a classroom full of kids interacts,and what that means for their own risk as well as their students' - but the principals/board members/ministers who come up with these stupid policies, but that only makes the question more pointed.

Thank goodness Farmkid wasn't exposed, but boy do I feel sorry for the families of the kids who were. Nobody needs that in their lives right now, and it could so easily have been avoided if certain people weren't utterly stupid. (Or there was some way to overrule them because of the sheer stupidity.)