Ours closed the day the white house said gyms should close - I can't remember which day - in March. They started Zoom workouts that night. They have bent over backward to try to keep the girls engaged and involved. The did charge for April, and are offering that value back in various ways of your choosing after they can reopen, but they did not charge for May. They were devastated by the Governer's plan, because he had hinted that groups of 10 or less might be able to gather come May, but the eventual plan mandated gyms remain shut. Now they're clinging to the hope that the May 18th update will include them in any capacity and in lieu of tuition, the gym kids are all doing a cartwheelathon to raise money for the gym, with some pretty motivating prizes attached. They sent them home with a daily conditioning plan, and they do zoom conditioning 4 evenings a week. They've had all kinds of challenges online. They applied for the small business loans the morning they were available, but still haven't see a dime. Still in line. They are paying their adult coaches and working with their landlord. They are really hurting and I hope they can open soon. I know the second they're allowed to open, they plan for 8 kids at a time, masks for coaches, no sharing of chalk, straps, gloves, or wristbands, and they have gotten aerosolizers (?) for some of the CDC approved disinfectants. They're planning to run practices from 7:30 in the morning to 10pm, with 15 minutes in between each set to clean surfaces and let the disinfectant sit the approved amount of time, then deeper cleaning every night. What's crazy to me is Flipfest in Tennessee is planning to start running camp June 1 and we don't even know if our gym will be open! Our girls and coaches are signed up for the week of June 14th.

There is outrage at the judge making our county orders, for telling people they have to wear masks. Honestly you would have thought she asked them to sleep on a bed of nails every night. And then the police publicly declared that they wouldn't enforce anything she said. So the result is that everyone is out and about now, and maybe half are wearing masks, and maybe half of *those* are wearing them correctly. And I swear to Maud, if all these 🤬 spike our cases and ruin everything, I hope karma deals with them. It's not just the masks - the same people who refuse to wear masks also seem to be engaging in every type of risky virus-spreading behavior they can. It's so frustrating. I feel like we have a good deal here - whether it's our weather or something else and I fear dumb people are going to ruin it. I don't think you can walk it back though. Even if serious cases rise, city wide or state wide, I don't think it's actually possible to walk the state back to lockdown unless the majority of people are scared for their lives - and since the death rate of this virus was never the main issue, I don't think it can happen. And I don't necessarily think it should happen. I just think we could all show care for our fellow humans and at least be a little careful. Ugh.

Mine was registered for two camps. One is a traditional summer camp, but it's offered for free for children who have a parent with cancer or have lost a parent to cancer. It's run by students at universities and has chapters all over the US. It's pretty amazing. They canceled pretty shortly after universities closed. With the students scattered to the winds (and even overseas), and their main fundraising galas canceled, there was no way. They're attempting to go online? But I really don't think that's going to work out very well. Her other camp is a gymnastics camp in Tennessee that draws people from all over the country. They have announced they're canceling week one, but proceeding as normal starting June 1. It makes me a little nervous. I'll be keeping an eye on how things are going as everything opens up. I have like 5 weeks to decide.

We're in Houston. We went to the beach on Bolivar peninsula last week and it was amazing. With Galveston beaches opening back up, I anticipate some more beach days. If state parks open up for camping any time soon, we'll head camping. There was a week at the beginning of April, where it came up in my Facebook memories - we had been camping that week every year for five years. It was hard to be stuck at home! I already don't shop much in stores, or eat in restaurants or go to movies very often. We're hoping the zoo opens soon. A lot of our life revolves around my daughter's gymnastics - she's there 4-5 days a week, I work the front desk, many of DS's friends are there...if they don't get to reopen in some capacity in the next round on May 18th (assuming we get to have the next round), I am not sure they'll make it. 😪

I find this hard to answer because my feet haven't grown really since 9th grade. I probably have 15 pairs of shoes, because there are old favorites that I won't let go of even if I only wear them once every few years. But how many shoes do I have that I've bought in the last 10 years? 4 pairs - which comprise 99.9% of my shoe-wearing time. Wedge sandals I wear 300 days a year, some sketchers I probably wear the other 65, flip flops and knee high boots. Oh, 5 pairs, because I bought a pair of Keens for our national parks road trip.

Some don't because they don't want to, but a majority do. Prom may look different different places (school gym vs. event venue, seated dinner vs. you go eat first with your friends), but it's a pretty big deal and has been for several generations. There are even charities that collect donated formal dresses and offer them free to girls who could not otherwise afford them because prom is seen as such a big rite of passage. (Here we mostly only have senior prom, so it's a bigger deal than those that can go for multiple years.) But the Title I schools downtown are just as big on prom as the ones in wealthy neighborhoods. I HOPE I am wrong and am happy to be wrong, but I don't think an *effective* vaccine is coming down the pipe anytime soon (by soon I mean next 2 years). And even if it did, what percentage of the population will be comfortable getting it when animal testing was skipped and human testing was rushed? I think we're far more likely to open up everything once we find a good antiviral or other treatment that makes this less deadly for the majority of the population. And I don't think that's going to take as long as a vaccine. Editing this to add: Obviously prom won't happen if it's unsafe. Lots of things get canceled or missed in a crisis. But an above poster said that if kids were AP they should just have to leave school since they'd learned enough to constitute a basic education. Since prom and graduation and senior year are considered a pretty huge deal to most people, forcing kids out of school for being too advanced is basically a penalty for achieving. Especially since by the time they were seniors in 2 years, those big events would almost certainly be back on.

Apparently she didn't say to send them all to college, just that they could. The rest of them should take (multiple) gap years.

I think things could absolutely change! As you said, they already have. But where I sit, almost no one is panicked about this, so you're not going to convince them to sacrifice things they consider a big deal for much longer. During wartime, people had to sacrifice lots of things they previously didn't think they could live without, but do you think they could have been convinced to do without them without a war? If slowly loosening restrictions this summer result in a huge spike in deaths and New York-like situations all over the US, then yes, I think you have a case for the idea that school will look radically different next year and people will just have to deal (though I'm still pretty sure no one will be investing billions per district in temporary infrastructure.) But if those restrictions start to lift and don't result in a massive crisis, I bet school just gets some adjusting. I would bet $$$ most school districts will have plans A, B, and C depending on the state of the country come the end of summer. And like wartime rationing - once the crisis passes, I'd expect schooling and the school experience to snap back like a rubberband, with rare exceptions. Sports (and the arts) are organized through schools because we've seen they're very beneficial to children, and if they're not organized through schools, generally only well-off kids get access. Do I wish that was different? Sure. But it's also something that's not going to change this year.

THAT claim I 100% agree with and actually agree with in practice too. Anyone at my high school who was interested in getting an education could get an education at their appropriate level. We offered almost every AP, every core subject could be offered at every level, and there were thriving and competititve autoshop and cosmetology programs. Future business leaders of america was a large and successful program too. We weren't good at football, so our points of school pride were basketball, theatre, art, and our drumline - which always won their UIL seasons. The claim I quoted was that schools only cared about sports and educations were being sacrificed for them. I am sure that happens somewhere, but it is not something I have any familiarity with.

I don't even have words to answer this. What? I live in Texas - youth sports central and I can't make heads or tails of this claim? Like I don't understand it. I went to a giant public texas high school and had an excellent education. We had all the sports. I didn't play them.

My parents definitely had 4 years of high school. Though a lot of places had 6th grade in with elementary, or 9th grade in its own building, so that would influence things. I don't buy that about high schools being large to support sports - at least *here* with how big *ours* are. The high schools are placed where they make sense for the geographic area - most high schools are within 15 minutes of at least 2 others, and it's just because of population density. Having even more, smaller high schools would raise so many costs. Smaller schools just offer less sports than big ones. 🤷‍♀️ I really bet the real answer is cost, almost across the board. I dunno. I think people's idea of the high school experience will vary wildly. I know that seniors here almost across the board are devastated at the loss of their last year of school and the rites of passage that go with it. Our school didn't seem to have much of a heirarchy - I think it was just TOO big and TOO diverse for pecking order to work. I had a friend from a very small town and being kind of "alternative" she viewed high school as a toxic cesspit and she was bullied. Her senior class was less than 100 and mine was almost 1000. If she'd gone to my school there would have been a large group of alternative kids to fit in with. My high school experience was pretty decent. I had many amazing teachers, and our large school had thriving arts programs so I found a lot of positive things through involvement with our yearbook and newspaper and our National Art Honor Society. Our AP classes were excellent and prepared me well for college. I agree with you last sentence, but I think it is far more true of junior high than high school. Ugh. Junior high kids in groups are just trouble.

Well to be fair, the alternatives offered have been school districts renting 10s of thousands of outside buildings to put tiny cottage schools together, and dropping appropriate education for everyone in favor of average education for the average student, smart kids can just go to college, never mind if that's actually possible (and special ed kids do what?) I don't think in the current climate that any parents are going to be willing to sacrifice their kids' education more than it currently is for this term - and that is what is being asked. I think if, come next August, the United States looked like China or Italy at the height of the pandemic, or like New York looks, parents would still want their kids home, period. If it continues to look like most of the US looks now? They're going to be fine with a modified status quo. Parents here are already planning alterna-proms for July, so I guess that's what I'm looking at and wondering where on earth people think they're going to get support for some of these plans.

So 16 year olds across the country should head off to college this fall, without ever having taken the SAT, looked at colleges, applied to them, gotten a high school diploma? They should all miss out on the rest of their high school experiences (including graduation, homecomings and prom - and these things will certainly be happening two years from now) because they are more academically advanced than their peers? They will be mature enough to handle a college environment (and their parents are ready to pay for it?) There were 40-60 kids in my class of roughly 1000 who would have fit this demographic. And please don't say community college. The freshman-level community college classes here are mostly equivalent to 8th or 9th grade public school classes (I've taken several) and not all colleges accept them. They are a waste of time and money *for the type of student we are talking about.* What about those who are in remedial or special education classes? They are not served by the mainstream classes either. Should we drop their education as well? Thankfully I know no school boards will actually entertain ideas like this.

Exactly. In our schools, AP takes the place of GT and Honors classes after 10th grade. Nothing they were offering in regulars classes would have been any kind of education for my classmates and me. Might as well have stayed home.

I feel like this would vary wildly. Leave and go home when you sneeze or cough? We live in allergy country and the schools and streets would be empty. Maybe a better way would be a fever check if someone sneezes or coughs. I think 100% attendance also needs to stop being something people are given awards for. It basically means you are getting a prize for 1) having a better immune system than everyone else or 2) coming to school sick. It's crap. I agree on the attendance/finals policy too.

The problem is I don't think any of the ideas proposed would improve the current situation, even if they were workable. I think they would make it worse in every way. To me, saying "Cut AP classes for a year or two" means you don't care that anyone is actually getting a real education, just that they're back in a daycare situation? It doesn't matter what they're learning or who is teaching them as long as they're in a classroom? You say people here would try to stand in the way of public schoolers looking for a better solution, but no public school parent I know would ever be down with the things you listed for the situation we're in. There would be riots. I think that there's a very real chance that there will be viable treatments for this by September and there will be no need to alter school at all. If there was still high concern, I could see every district working with the online public school options so that families who had high risk members or were just very concerned had the ability to get a full public education at home. (For example, my district does not currently have any recognized online options.) I am sure there will be out of work people (or heck, my daughter's gymnastics gym has toyed with it before) willing to be the overseeing adults for a number of children doing online education, but whose parents need to work. Perhaps there could even be a temporary stipend for families that need to pay for care for their online-schooling child. Maybe even a request to parents to use online public schooling next year if their family was able to, to reduce numbers in schools. If it were still more serious, I could see block scheduling for sure with the kids only in 2-3 days per week. I definitely see them canceling specials and eating lunch in their rooms. I could see them adding even more temporary buildings for class size reduction (though how they would get more teachers, I really don't know.) I am sure the school board members have their heads together, working on the best solutions they can within reasonable, workable and legal frameworks. I don't think anything I can throw out off the cuff is going to trump what they come up with. I am sure they're going to make a plan and then decide, probably in July, whether they have to put it into action. But they're not going to drop literal billions of dollars they don't have on a poor solution to a temporary problem.

Yeah, that really won't work. I mean, if we 100% de-funded military spending and spent every penny of that on a temporary coronavirus school situation, then maybe you could do something. I think those ideas contain an extreme minimizing of the cost and effort required - for something that isn't actually effecting many children and may not even be a threat in a year. My school district has 10 high schools with an average of 3,300 kids in each, almost 120,000 kids in the entire district - which is just a large sliver of the city, geographically. There is one large and two tiny community centers in this sliver. Only old or rich neighborhoods have clubhouses and most of them are not large at all (they might fit one or two small classrooms). Any large church already has its own private school using those classrooms. There are not many buildings standing empty, and can you imagine the cost to inspect (for mold and other safety issues), cool, and provide power and water to hundreds (it would actually take thousands or tens of thousands of locations to bring class sizes down given the size of the buildings available and the size of the school district) of locations across town? You are talking about neighborhoods going to school in clubhouses in their own neighborhoods instead of bussing somewhere - but there are TWO elementary schools in my neighborhood, less than a mile away that serve just my little subdivision, and that is not unusual. How exactly would we double our population of teachers across the entire united states overnight? Many areas already have teacher shortages. Not to mention that by junior high, and high school, one teacher teaches one or two related subjects. How does that work with tiny sequestered classes all over town? My history teachers at that level could not have taught AP math or vice versa. The teachers were specialized. I would see half days, block scheduling, or year round school looooong before people start shaking trees that will never yield fruit. Just throwing out random ideas and saying they would work if people just tried hard enough doesn't really make it true. And our district is not unusual. Every district in the city is in a similar situation. The biggest district in the city has double our numbers and extreme poverty.

No idea, but opening up slowly and then walking it back if cases pick up is the dance part of the hammer and dance, right? As long as they actually do it, it doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

Well, less political, the governer was supposed to announce his plan for opening up today, but really he mostly just promised that he'd give us more information in the future. 🙄 He said retail could open for curbside pickup only (it seems like most of our retail is already kind of open anyway), and state parks could reopen (they have been open this whole time and only closed before the Easter holiday, likely to thwart a holiday crush.) And a few medical things like cancer diagnostic tests can start going forward again. And they're announcing their phased plan in 10 days and it will be incremental and rely on fairly flat or downward trending cases. And the headlines everywhere are "Texas is the first state to reopen" and I can't handle the idiotic comments based off the headline. Almost nothing is changing. Our hospitals are half empty and he claimed we have a decent supply of PPE. He said if things keep trending down we might get back to allowing gatherings on 10 or less in May. We are hardly reopening. I hate people who think they're experts based off reading headlines. 😡

I'm sorry, that's just patently false. You can see what HE said in HIS press conferences and on HIS twitter. No media, no spin, no out of context. You can't blame the media when his words stand for themselves. I even cut and pasted directly from the transcript so there could be no accusations of bias. My IQ went down 40 points reading it. The transcript is from the press conference on the 13th. Honestly I am much more concerned that people can "hear" him say these things over and over and pretend he's not saying them and it's media spin.

You can put your powerpoint or notes up on Zoom if you are the meeting host. I'm on a board of directors that uses Zoom to meet frequently and our president does it all the time. If you ever use Outschool (which uses Zoom), the teachers use screen sharing intensively to teach.

Annnd summer swim league was just canceled. This summer is going to suck so hard.

DD is registered for a camp in June and they just sent an email with their revised refund policies. Basically it sounds like they're not going to cancel unless they have to, either by law, or because it's just too unsafe. I really do not expect her June camp to happen, but I am cautiously optimistic (in denial?) that her group could move to one of the August dates and be able to. We'll see.

So our local district is sandwich central. There are these packaged ham and chese croissant sandwiches, and that is lunch. So for each child, for each day you get: A croissant sandwich (occasionally it's a peanut free, packaged PBJ instead), baby carrots and/or cut celery, a bag of chips or popcorn or goldfish, an orange or an apple, sometimes a cheese stick an individual cereal or Danimals yogurt+granola another orange or apple, usually the same as before, so 2x green apples. 2 milks, your preference of chocolate or white The neighboring district does hot lunches and you will get: A fried chicken drumstick, corn dog, swiss steak burger? regular burger, baby corn dogs?, or bean burrito baby carrots or cherry tomatoes chips cereal or a pop tart sometimes also a Danimals yogurt 2 milks, white only Right now I have a dozen green apples no one eats, so I need to make an apple pie, I think.

Today is the first day since March 3rd that my lungs have felt all the way normal. An entire freaking month y'all. I have been so low-key scared for the last week and a half. I look forward to the time when we can get quick and easy antibody tests. I hope it happens sooner than later - our city is using blood from recovered people to try and help those in ICU and I would donate for sure if what I had was CV.