Hey welcome to the stream im josh rushing sitting in for me ok today from my home here in Fairfax Virginia think you for joining me now right off the bat if youre watching on you tube you see that chad over there the box those are those are live get your questions in there will try to get him to me and well try to get him in the show as were going i want to be a part of this with me now today were talking about. A chick kids return to school in the u. S. Now on committee from Fairfax Virginia this is one of the 10 Largest School districts in the country all around 190000 students here and i had to make a decision as a parent this week do i want my children for the entire school year either to return to school in person or to do it online and what you made that choice you were pretty much committed to it i have 4 kids in School System here that meant it so were going to kindergarten so were going to high school so were going to miss school on one going into 5th grade and we had to make the choice for all of them remind me of them to show someone and ill tell you what choice we made but it was not an easy choice to make as a parent because the virus in the u. S. Unlike most parts of the world is actually searching for over 3000000 cases over 138000 dead in the present in the United States has come out last week and said he wants schools to fully reopen and what he means by full reopen he means students present in the classroom ill show you a tweet here will quick this is a tweet from the national in the white house statement on this their statement was the science should not get in the way of this. They want kids back in the classroom now that is as all decisions all the white house out of any white house are that is a political decision a Political Choice but as a pair we want to we want the science so we know whats happening with the kids now join with me today i have an exciting panel have to educators from across the country and i have a education reporter from National Public radio and ask them to introduce themselves somebody again with anya i q tell us who you are today good morning many of us on your cabinets im an education correspondent for National Public radio and i cover every opening schools across the country. Thank you julia i am actually a tourist and im a librarian and Language Arts educator in Denver Public schools and i know very well you know money is meant well rustin im a High School History teacher out here in the Los Angeles Area and i also cohost a show about education called all of the above. All of the very cool at the park ass right now working people find that yes its a podcast were going to find out what in its own way as as a you tube channel a o t a show dot com will take into whatever platform they want to get a nice night ok on it so we have a Large International audience can you explain to them how the School System is set up a little differently here i think if youre outside the u. S. And you see trump you know tweeting and going on about schools need to go back fully reopen they may not understand the term doesnt actually control schools in the u. S. Whats it like the situation. Thats a very good point so we have almost 14000. 00 separate School Districts here in the United States and each one of them has some level of local governance and thats why the decision is really devolving to a very large distributed network of authorities when the president eases treys use the bully pulpit to say school should open we should keep in mind he only controls less than 10 percent of the budget for Public Schools in america and most of that money is already allocated to low income schools so you know the only way that the federal government could have really important influence on reopening schools is something they have not done and that is to pass significant. Funding to make up for budget shortfalls that have already happened because of co the 1000. 00 plus all the extra costs to reopen which has been estimated at upwards of 2020250 1000000000 dollars none of that has been allocated so far so i want to bring in. A sound bite from someone in our community this is dr Nicole Turner levy and she just referred to what happened here in the us just could stop go to school in about march and only school year in 0 may or june so they all stayed home because of the lockdown and they went to Online Learning and i dont know anyone in the u. S. That says that that experiment went very well heres what dr turner elise says about moving forward here. Weve found 12 to 15000000 School Age Children out of 53000000 that were without Broadband Access and about 9000000 of them did not even have Home Broadband nor a device according to some recent research by Common Sense Media so what does that mean Going Forward as schools try to consider the best ways to mitigate the spread of the virus while ensuring that theres no disconnect when it comes to learning they need to reevaluate what went wrong in the last few months when it came to Distance Learning im advocating that schools need a 21st century Remote Access plan if theyre going to safely reopen it and ensure there are no disconnects Going Forward as we try to figure out how to slow down the spread of this deadly disease. So may well whats it like at your School District what was it like for the Online Learning that happened in the spring and then what decision have they made moving forward. Sure so the Online Learning that happened in the spring obviously everyone was caught off guard so we were all scrambling to try to make the best city make the best of the situations possible and what we found was even though our students in our district i teach and passed in a unified School District every student has had a school issue chromebook for quite a while but what we found was that in households where there were multiple districts students living in that household in a kind of connectivity was a rule challenge and were here in los angeles so if the los angeles metropolitan area has any kind of corner where wife eye is a very strong where multiple people in one household where that becomes a challenge for y. 5 then you can imagine what its like in communities and in other cities out there so that was really the biggest challenge that even with the technology in their hands soon as had it really hard time connecting in then of course you had the challenge of students having to also watch their younger siblings because i teach mostly High School Students and many of them became sudden babysitters and many of them were essential workers too so in some cases even with the Technology Strong and intact there was still the challenge of getting students to engage in the learning because the reality of trying to survive in a pandemic so was a plan for the fall so for the fall we initially had a hybrid plan that was proposed and then we heard back from a lot of teachers and parents saying that they want an online only option and then as cases began to rise across california the decision was made to go fully on line in fact our governor declared that any county that doesnt have a decrease in case this is going to have to start off the school year fully online so were starting off fully online august 17th and havent you do it what do you whats your School District in the fall. So we were told that we needed to come back in person on august 10th and at the 1st day for students was going to be late so i think its going to be august 24th. My understanding and i also have children in the School District and theyre in a different School District still in colorado and what we see is that the School Districts tend to band together and do the same thing when theyre centered around the same metropolitan area even though the circumstances that students are facing can be drastically different for example i live in the suburbs and life in the suburbs is very different from play for people in denver proper so what it looks like right now for my own children at hole is that we have the option to do completely online or we can come back in person and theres a date by which you have to notify the district which you would like to do for your students similar to what similarly to what we experienced in the spring if its changing weekly if not david so i know that theyre sending out notifications saying that they want to keep up with the science and that theyd like to keep up with recommendations from state Health Officials and government Health Officials and just let us know kind of what the research is saying but before we had anything set in stone so right now it seems like enormous to have an online only track and person track and thats what im noticing in my own district as well lets go to ruth bader shes a p. H. D. With an m p a which is a masters in Public Health and she said johns hopkins. Children who are already disadvantaged prior to the pandemic have separate the most and these kids living in poverty and children in remote rural areas children of color and children with differential learning styles Homeless Children these children. Desperately need allocation of resources to them to meet show or at least to try to keep the cattle existed before that risk widened by the pandemic not widening further. Sonia President Trump is tweeted about cutting the funding to schools if students dont return in full you mentioned before that thats not a time we talk about like 9 percent of funding comes from the federal government but theyre putting tools to go to the poorer schools right so schools that are ready would be the most economically challenged dear in these times might be looking at less funds coming from the federal government want to just go to widen the gap that was talked about enough by 30. You know i do think that that particular threat is probably going to turn out to be empty but what we are seeing right now is that states because of their balanced budget amendments are being forced to cut education budgets and thats happening all across the country and so even as districts are heading into these unprecedented semesters where they have to both plan and execute remote teaching as well as hybrid teaching and do all this overhaul their infrastructure teachers are getting laid off at the same time and schools are having to be asked to do basically twice as much with fewer resources because of the hurt in revenue at the state level and i just have to mention once again that the house passed a bill with billions of dollars in additional funding for schools that bill was passed in may and the senate has yet to act so theres a very very large gulf here between the kinds of statements that are coming from leaders in government about what they would like to see happen versus the money to pay for it. I want to get some you tube comments here we got one from it looks like its this ray ray this is a this is what happens when you elect a Game Show Host as president were now living on survivor island from bluejay Quebec Canada tried and after 23. 00 students the staff got the virus they shut the stupid idea down. And name marina a question for the panel as the u. S. Government laid down a plan to prevent a coronavirus surge in schools they if they reopen controlling children is pretty difficult thats a good question for the pain almost set that up here with what the c. D. C. Is saying so we can go to my computer im going to show you this kind of chart that the c. D. C. Has it says should you consider opening and it says you know will it be consistent with state and local waters is a school ready to protect the children in them ploys i want to talk about that a lot here in a 2nd are you able to screen students and employees if any of these are now do not open you move to the next set are there recommended health or safety actions in place were talking about the hand washing the wearing the p. P. E intensify cleanings are you able to keep social distancing with the kids if any of those are nodes you need to meet those safeguards 1st of all those are yes then you go on to is their ongoing monitoring place now how schools are going to do that it all comes down to money at the end of the day. And here is what is what will it cost to reopen schools when you look at how much were talking and p. P. And Hand Sanitizer in the the cleaning and the additional staff were looking at a bounty on this 1800000. 00 per School District this is at a time when School Districts are facing cuts this is a time where teachers spend their own money on their pockets bringing in the pencils for the classroom and some School Districts and now are saying that you need 1800000. 00 per average School District i know my School District that number will be much much higher because of the size so it will do you feel like your school is doing enough to keep well your going online let me switch this to julian because theyre asking you guys to come back into the buildings do you feel like theyre doing enough to keep you safe. Well i will say that i dont have all of the information that id like to have before i go back in person id mention to you that im a Language Arts teacher and a librarian my responsibility my primary responsibilities for the library and i dont have any kind of chair educator as distance i dont have any other librarians working with me the population the student population in the building is to around 2000 students so even if half of them came back that would be a 1000 students in the building my library is right in the middle. I am not really sure what circulation would look like ive been encouraged to circulate the books circulation of titles which have over 18000 titles so we have a gigantic ebook circulation. Process and whats wonderful is that our students do feel comfortable checking books out audio books and ebooks but as far as Classroom Teachers go i dont have a classroom a classroom is the library so typically at any point during the day there are lots of people in there either Holding Classes meeting with students one hour winds i dont know that that is possible or even a good idea i dont think its a good idea even if just half the student population up to come back i also are very concerned about the student population that is in holmes where the primary languages are not english and im not just talking about spanish and english we have many students who are from the Marshall Islands we have many students who are from west african nations and the predominant language spoken at home is branch weve got some who speak im hard and arabic at home so communicating it in english with me rapid changes has been a challenge i cannot imagine communicating rapid changes in other languages with families in a timely efficient manner thats going to make conditions equitable for all so my concerns right now are about just the. Just sticks of how we are going to make school work and it so its very straight feel safe no absolutely not but i also dont feel safe way to the Grocery Store even though they tell folks that they need to wear masks because theres so many people still Milling Around and many people still choose not to wear masks and then just deal with the consequences somebody tells them that they need to and then as a black woman im aware that Health Care Disparities would make it so that if i were to contract the virus im not even guaranteed that i would achieve health care that would seek me away and i know that there are some places where people are all of floor unable to get hospital beds so all of these things are kind of Milling Around in my mind and the general attitude toward teachers is that we need to make sure that we put students 1st and any people if think about what that really needs what does it really mean to put students 1st because i think if some shit is that that means that only down my life or that i have serious concerns i would soon be asymptomatic at school as a librarian pass it to somebody adults come to the school all the time give it to somebody whos then going to take it home i mean just because children as far as some people say are not the primary contractors or disseminators of the barrister which we dont even know for a fact we dont even know that for a fact its did you know you bring up a good point they just did a study in florida that said one in 3 children tested here i had this headline pulled up if we want to go to my computer in a 2nd one in 3 tested in florida the children came back positive with