Back to school! We had an 8th grader and a 6th grader. They are at 2 different middle schools. When Nathan was starting 6th grade, out local middle school was doing an all online curriculum that was created by the owners of Facebook. I wasn't too thrilled with that so we had him go to the OTHER middle school that is still pretty close. However, this year, our local middle school got a new principal and they are doing away with the online program. Therefore, Elizabeth is now going to our local middle school. Her best friend was going there and it's closer than the other school. Both schools are close enough that the district will not give us a bus. Nathan's school is 1.25 miles away and Elizabeth's school is 1 mile away.
It will be the third school year in a row that will be disrupted and hard. This year, all kids go back to school normally with no real social distancing. They are supposed to be sitting 3 feet apart, but that is not really likely to be happening since the classes are huge. The only abnormal thing is wearing a mask but they are used to that by now and it's not a big deal. We are all happy the kids are wearing masks for a little more prevention and less sickness in general! Elizabeth did not catch ONE sickness at school last year for the 6 months she was at school! Go masks!
However, as I type this, we are 3 weeks into school. Elizabeth just had to miss 4/5 of the last week of school on quarantine. She's missed 1/3 of the school year! She had an exposure at school the previous week and they told me on Monday when she got home from school. We had to go take a covid test for her. It was negative and I brought it to the school Wednesday afternoon and they said they could come back to school Thursday. An hour later, they called back and said they were terribly sorry but she had had another close contact and would have to stay home Thursday and Friday as well. Sigh. I had to take time off work to stay with her on Tues/Wed and luckily Jeremy had time off on Thurs/Friday to stay with her. She can go back to school Monday. It's frustrating they have to quarantine, but unfortunately the rule is if they are closer than 3 feet, they have to quarantine if they've been sitting next to a kid with covid. It's impossible to social distance with the amount of kids they have. The principal told us that the masks must be working great because so far since last spring, NONE of the "exposed" kids have come down with covid after their tests. She hopes eventually they will drop the quarantining rule because the masks are working to prevent the kids from contracting the virus.
We wonder how much of school she will have to miss due to this quarantining? Luckily, this will not happen to Nathan. He is fully vaccinated and (as of right now) they don't make you quarantine if you've had your shots. It looks like the shot might be available for Elizabeth by Halloween. She can't wait and neither can we!
Our big 8th grader!
Our big 6th grader
Elizabeth and C are heading off to middle school!
No comments:
Post a Comment