Schools mull outdoor classes amid virus, ventilation worries

[SheltieLover]

https://www.localmemphis.com/mobile/article/news/health/coronavirus/schools-mull-outdoor-classes-amid-virus-ventilation-worries/507-d9f1d0e8-eaef-4932-a87b-c25c6025ba94

due to tight budgets.

Author: TERRY SPENCER (Associated Press)
Published: 7:46 AM CDT August 10, 2020
Updated: 7:46 AM CDT August 10, 2020

It has been seven years since the central air conditioning system worked at the New York City middle school where Lisa Fitzgerald O’Connor teaches. As a new school year approaches amid the coronavirus pandemic, she and her colleagues are threatening not to return unless it's repaired.

Her classroom has a window air conditioning unit, but she fears the stagnant air will increase the chances that an infected student could spread the virus.

Window units just aren’t going to cut it. We don’t want to stay cool, we just want the air to flow properly,” said O’Connor, a science teacher who has worked at the Patria Mirabal School in Manhattan since 2009. “We are really super stressed out about it.”

Schools around the country are facing similar problems as they plan or contemplate reopening this fall, dealing with aging air conditioning, heating and circulation systems that don’t work well or at all because maintenance and replacement were deferred due to tight budgets. Concerns about school infrastructure are adding momentum to plans in some districts, even in colder climates, to take classes outdoors for the sake of student and teacher health.

More at link.

[BusyBeingBest]

1. Outdoor covered tents with patio heaters?

I don't know how any state north of Tennessee is going to pull this off, but they might as well try.

[Lochloosa]

3. Try this in Florida. There's not a tent big enough to stop this heat.

[lark]

7. Totally unworkable in FL.

Can you imagine how many would get heat sickness? So fucking glad my kids are in their 30's now. I feel so damn bad for working parents of young children, what a shitshow.

[BusyBeingBest]

14. Yeah, I lived in Tampa for a time. Aside from the heat, the

afternoon rainforest downpours would be something to consider.

[Merlot]

2. All that lack of infrastructure support is really coming back to bite everyone

[lark]

4. Impossible in FL until Nov.

Kids can't be outside all day here where it's often in the 90;s with 70% & up humidity and rain almost every afternoon during Aug. and Sept. Kids in northern climates can't be outside in the snow all day. Outside would work sometimes if you had a small classes, but classes here average over 30, and that's just one class when there are many dozens going on at the same time. This school opening will be a total shit show - there is no way to bus that many people socially distanced & schools can't buy enough buses or hire enough bus drivers to do this safely. Repugs want to be sure working class families will die or be badly impacted so are providing no help. If you aren't rich enough for private schools (which will NOT be open in person for the main part) and online learning and don't have to work, they don't care about you.

[Sherman A1]

5. Certainly worth consideration

and Yeah, weather will be a factor, but why not think outside the classroom.

[33taw]

6. Outside certainly seems safer than a shared ventilation system.

The whole thing is nuts.

[world wide wally]

8. I worked as a middle school science teacher for 21 years, in 3 different classrooms

Not one of the rooms had a window.

[Jirel]

9. Won't work in some areas.

Where the climate is favorable for it, it’s not a bad idea. Here in TX, we’re having daytime heat indices of 110 and over. That’s a nonstarter. I suspect LA and some other southern areas where it’s even more humid will be worse.

[Newest Reality]

10. Priorities...

Corporations have a functioning "infrastructure". The finest. Extravagantly modern and luxurious.

We do have to make great sacrifices, including our children, their education and safety, in order to hold those behemoths up in their most wonderful, high-tech Elysium. It's our duty and they will find away around everything they use that we provide as far as the cracking, crumbling overall infrastructure of the country that we initially paid the tab for without even dinner and a kiss before they, well, consummated their sweet deal with America's commons.

Oh, be careful crossing the hundreds of rusted, dilapidated bridges that could collapse anytime without warning. We have to take those risks for the corporate good. The Army Corps of Engineers gave us a D or D- concerning the state of our infrastructure, but the CEOs, et al, work, live and play in opulence. Ingrates!

Public education is just not a good profit model in the Neoliberal paradigm, nor will it ever be as our schools slowly dissolve.

[roamer65]

11. That what they did during the 1918-1920 flu pandemic.

In Michigan though, that would only last to somewhere in October.

[LeftInTX]

12. It won't work, even where the climate is favorable

We had "outdoor school" as an experiment from time to time in the 70's. (My school district was very progressive)
It was a joke. So many freaking distractions.

[MissB]

13. There are office buildings

that are going unused right now. Some of them even have state of the art hvac systems.

Maybe we can repurpose those for some classes.

But really we are going to have to face the fact that kids are going to lose a lot this year in terms of education because the folks in this needy admin can’t get their shit together.