Virginia Paul looks over the homework from her son Archer, 10, a student at Montessori PreK-5. (Photo by Lucas Zheng/PublicSource)
by Oliver Morrison, PublicSource
Virginia Paul, a biology teacher at CAPA 6-12, thought she was prepared for this latest wave of the pandemic.
She took on a student teacher at the beginning of the school year to help in tough spots. And expecting an increase of COVID cases over the holiday, Paul adjusted her January lessons, so her students could do all of their work on their phones from anywhere.
But she didn’t anticipate what actually happened the last two weeks: CAPA has had enough staff to stay open, but Montesorri PreK-5, where two of her three children attend, did not.
Her husband took a week of vacation to take care of the kids, but he couldn’t take more. So Paul called into CAPA and said she couldn’t come in.
“Me calling off makes another school short-staffed, which makes it more likely that CAPA will go remote,” she said. “Which means more kids will go home. It’s like one thing triggers another thing.”
Paul’s dilemma highlights the many criss-crossing decisions faced by parents, teachers and schools as the omicron variant of the coronavirus surges. After the first day back to school from the holiday, between 17 to 27 of the 54 district schools have had to close or operate remotely each day. At the same time, about a third of the childcare centers in the area have also closed at least partially.
The district dealt with closed school buildings last year. The start of this school year was delayed with 15 days’ notice. And now the decision of whether to open up schools to in-person learning is happening at the last minute. So Paul has to plan two to three versions of her lessons, depending on whether her classes will be in person or remote and whether she will be there to teach it or not.
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