Comments/Concerns about Safe Start Schools

[Stephanie Hailey]

As the school year is quickly approaching, I am feeling quite anxious about going back to school. I know that the school board, administrators, and committee members have been working tirelessly to create a Safe Start Plan for the upcoming school year. I cannot thank you all enough for the sacrifices you have made to ensure that the hundreds of different questions and concerns have been identified and addressed. 

As you know, the coronavirus situation has been rapidly changing, and what you have previously addressed is now being contradicted by new evidential information. Even as the issue of returning to schools has become a political one, I strongly urge you to reconsider using the hybrid model and moving to an all-remote learning environment. Below, I have listed my concerns for returning to school buildings.

• As a teacher, I am quite alarmed at the rapidly increasing rate of  COVID-19 positive people in the U.S. Just recently, our governor enacted more restrictions in an attempt to flatten the curve. For example, now restaurant patrons are not allowed to eat indoors. If people aren't allowed to eat indoors, why will we still be meeting indoors? Will students be eating indoors?
• Now that there is increasing evidence of asymptomatic COVID-19 positive people, how will can our schools realistically prevent exposure to the virus if there aren't signs and symptoms of certain people?
• I am quite concerned about substitute teachers. Before the pandemic, there weren't enough subs to regularly cover classes. This resulted in teachers being cajoled into giving up their prep periods to cover other teachers' classes. For minimizing my daily exposure risks, I will not be willing to substitute for other teachers. 
• There are many high-risk teachers at the high school. How will we be protecting them?
• Because the issue of mask wearing is becoming more and more divisive, what steps are in place for making sure students wear them? I am at the high school, so I have students show up late and just walk in the classroom. If a student comes in without wearing a mask, now teachers and students have additional exposure risks.
• How will we enforce students to maintain a 6-foot distance amongst each other? I don't see students socially distancing, especially during lunch.
• I work on the third floor of LAHS's A-wing. I have no windows that open, so the ability to help with air circulation will be difficult to do.
• I am a part-time teacher, and I share a class with another teacher. If I teach on Mondays and Thursdays (A days) and she teaches on Tuesdays and Fridays (B days), our classroom will not be thoroughly sanitized the other teacher and her students use it. This puts us at a higher risk of exposure.
• What is the procedure for when a student or staff member has come in contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19? The standard protocol is to quarantine for 14 days. What is expected of teachers when this happens? Do they then just teach remotely?
• There are teachers that are sacrificing their summers to frantically learn and prep for this coming school year, but this is off-contract. As the world is having a complete paradigm shift in terms of education, teachers need much more time to learn how to navigate the new way of teaching. This does not mean giving teachers a bunch of PD sessions and then starting school. We must have time to review the information presented to us and begin to create lesson plans in a new way. We cannot be inundated with an enormous amount of information without time to process it and begin to utilize it.
• According to the Stanford model for online teaching (the online course that is happening this week), teachers need to plan for 3-4 hours of prep for every one hour of teaching.

Stephanie Hailey

Los Alamos High School

English 10

Creative Writing

ACT/SAT Intensive Preparation

"Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world."  -Nelson Mandela

"Real teaching is messy. It involves an authentic meeting, an engagement between teacher and learners. Teachers must know their students, reach out to them with care and understanding in order to create a bridge from the known to the not-yet-known." -William Ayers

Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including all attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipients and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited unless specifically provided under the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and destroy all copies of this message.

 This email has been sent from a verified laschools.net user.