Well an Assistant Principal yes, look through my posting history if you want, it has been mentioned before. We will be implementing social distancing practices so kids will come into contact with kids in their class only. Things like a cancelation of assemblies, school excursions, conferences, rolling lunch breaks will be implemented, you are getting hooked up on just one aspect of social distancing. If someone in a classroom is diagnosed with Covid 19 then that entire class goes into self isolation, the school closes and a deep clean is completed before it reopens.
With kids at school it actually prevents them from circulating through the wider community, it keeps them out of shopping centres parks etc where they would come into contact with far more people then their classroom.
Mind if I ask if any of this has been communicated to staff and students yet? Is it a plan from a central authority, or from the school? Because planning at my school is non existent. No excursions cancelled (they will be, no doubt), no assemblies cancelled (again, I'm sure that will happen, though how that will all be communicated without assembly of some sort seems tricky). (No discussion of what will happen if/when school closes, no mention of teacher roles in such a case, no talk about how student learning will continue, especially for our Yr 12 students).
I can't imagine how rolling lunch breaks can be implemented without some significant planning, at least at my school.
I'm getting caught up on the one aspect as it was what the prime minister said. It was a nonsense statement. Kids won't be kept apart from each other and they can't be.
At my school at least, 30 kids will sit in one room for an hour. Plenty of time for one kid to infect every other person in the room, and spread it on every surface. Then those 30 kids will go to 10 other classrooms for another hour, while another 30 come into the room with coronavirus all through it.
Then after doing that for 2 hours, all those kids will mix with nearly 1000 others in the playground. Then squashed back into classrooms for 2 hours, then playground, then another 1 hour lesson. All 1000 people at the school could easily be exposed to one person within 5 hours. If someone at the school is found positive, they could have been infecting every one else in this sort of squashed together environment, for a week.
Viruses aren't super precise, so one person could breathe in another's coughing for a week and not be infected, so I don't expect all exposed people would be infected. There is also some discussion that kids don't get infected or carry it, but I've seen doctors talking about kids killed by it, so I'm not sure it is true.
But the dream of social distancing in a school is a farce. One person in a school could easily be a super spreader. And well over half the teaching staff in my school, and I'm sure in plenty of others, are in their 50s and 60s. Not to mention those going through chemo, or with partners going through such things, and those with elderly parents that rely on them heavily.
An Italy style disaster could kill one or two of the staff, on probabilities, and several more of our elderly relatives.
The prevention of circulating through the wider community is just not true. It is not true from the best epidemiological models, and it has not been true in the 60 countries that have closed schools already.
Even if every kid congregated at the mall, which is unlikely, they wouldn't be forced to sit 50 cm from each other for hours. But most of them would be supervised by parents at home, doing studies, hopefully (I know it won't happen for plenty as well).
I agree that closing schools will place a fair strain on the community, and of most concern, on essential services workers. I also don't think schools can be closed tomorrow, as a matter of practicality (as I said, my school is not at all prepared for that).
But the PM was talking out his arse about social distancing at schools, and about closing them increasing infections. And he will have to eat his words too, in a week or two (not that any politician would outright say they are wrong, he'll say something like "It is a fluid situation, and now the best advice is to close schools" without at all acknowledging that he said it would not help, and without admitting that it has to be done because you can't do social distancing at schools and so closing schools will lower the rate of infection. But that is why he will be offering a different view, because the one he offered today is stupid).
