By Ed Piper
My neighbor, who teaches in the San Diego Unified School District (see previous entry), said, "I will need more time between periods to wipe down the room."
That's assuming students will go to multiple classrooms when they return to school come August 18 or so for the fall semester. (One idea is to keep them in one "homeroom", with one teacher, to diminish mixing of kids and more exposure to the coronavirus.)
That's also assuming they go to classes in person, which is what teachers and staff are being told will likely happen when the 2020-2021 school year starts.
Another neighbor, who is a specialist working for City Schools, said yesterday (June 10) that she is being told that half an elementary class could attend in-room lessons in the morning, with the other half in "Prime Time" care. Then, the two halves will switch places.
I told her, as my wife and I talked with her over our patio wall late on a very hot (90 degrees) weekday, that I was seeing high school would probably employ a hybrid setup, with part-Zoom meeting, part-in school. She said, yeah, "But not in elementary school." That doesn't work for younger students like it does (sort of) for older students.
(Talking over the wall: how's that for a metaphor? Having to keep your distance from neighbors and others, masks in place if within six feet, in this age of the virus.)
Another late news flash is that San Diego City College's league just rescheduled the basketball season to next spring. Wow. At least they're making plans and adapting.
It's going to be better to adapt and go with the "whims" of the coronavirus situation, than to be left without any plan--or season--at all.
Look at Major League Baseball (MLB). The players and the owners are fighting over compensation. Finally, yesterday, Commissioner Rob Manfred asserted in comments before the annual amateur draft, "There will be a season in 2020." Fine for him to say. He hasn't been part of the solution so far.
It would be a shame if there isn't an MLB season at all this year. The owners floated the idea of a 50-game season. That's a joke. That's no season. Crown a championship after full (even expanded) postseason competition, with only 50 games in the season? Come on.
Other baseball fans and I hope the players union and owners (millionaires and billionaires) can get it together to work something out. (70 or 80 games sounds a lot more reasonable.)
How about this? And this idea is worth a column in itself. If high school football were to start in January, as has been floated, and basketball in February, how about a combined Homecoming in February, when the two seasons overlap for the first time ever?
Diego Solis could walk out and be crowned King of the Court, since he plays on both teams, Viking football and basketball. That would be a gas. A lot of fun.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
FB in January?
By Ed Piper
At this point in the COVID-19 situation (June 9), there are signs pointing to a January kickoff of high school football in San Diego and California in general.
Eric Sondheimer, who has covered high school sports for the Los Angeles Times for years and is quite knowledgeable, reported that the CIF Southern Section's Commissioner, way back in mid-May, saw no way to a timely August 21 start to the prep football season (as originally scheduled long before the coronavirus hit).
The word being bandied about was, and is, that Viking footballers and their opponents will hit the gridiron for games come the turn of the year, in January 2021.
Basketball would follow the next month, February, under this proposed calendar.
More recently, San Diego officials "have drawn up more than one calendar", which is how they are phrasing things right now, and one scenario places football in the January slot. This is according to local sources.
The thinking, as I understand it, goes like this: School campuses are not going to open fully for students on August 18 or so. (School officials are looking at a hybrid Zoom-with-in-person instruction to begin the fall semester.) With four to six weeks necessary for preseason practice, football could not start in August, or probably even September.
Non-contact sports, namely tennis and golf, by their nature afford more accommodation to the state's requirement for social distancing. "Different sports may start on different dates," we are being told.
So, early in the semester in Fall 2020 we could see those two individual (while played in teams) sports in CIF competition. Boy, what news for coaches Darice Carnaje and Aaron Quesnell (head coaches in Viking tennis and golf, respectively)--boy, oh, boy, they might be saying, because the opportunity may be there but the uncertainty of the COVID era will come with it.
Where does that leave other fall sports? Girls water polo and field hockey are both close-quarter, contact sports bringing competitors into guarding, checking, and non-social-distancing stances on defense and offense. When will we see them, if ever, this fall? Good question.
If the general student body is not going to be allowed on campus full-time, then how can student-athletes be put in a separate category, as if their safety is assured by compromising restrictions that are kept for non-athletes?
Here is the way I'm thinking about it: I'm going to be substitute-teaching in the fall, hopefully (though in San Dieguito and Poway districts, not San Diego City), and this entire approaching school year 2020-2021 is going to be different. It is going to be a mishmash.
Don't freak out, Ed, I'm counseling myself. We have to get through the transition period necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a once-in-102-years pandemic. The virus will dictate how fast things will continue to reopen. We don't control that. The bug does.
So, get through 2020-2021, then we'll see more normalcy, hopefully for the 2021-2022 school year.
Many of my family members are public school teachers, and they are only so happy to end the full-time Zoom instruction they've been limited to this spring as the City Schools end the year today, June 9.
It has been a grind I haven't had to participate it, given I retired from classroom teaching five years ago. (I taught in the county's Juvenile Court and Community Schools program.) I don't feel their pain, but I have heard plenty about it in family get-togethers (even my Zoom birthday party, when that was still a novelty, back on April 19).
No state playoffs; get a CIF champion in each sport and division; shorter season; limited travel. Those are the things I've reading and hearing for the coming school year.
Hopefully, by the turn of the year, we will have gotten through the worst of it--though a vaccine is still a ways away. We will have weathered the "second wave" that L.A. is seeing right now that comes from reopening, more people out, more exposures, and as a result, more infections.
San Diegans have been fortunate. Our numbers have been relatively good. People have behaved themselves, overall, pretty well, practicing social distance and wearing masks when within six feet of non-household members.
The classroom this fall? My neighbor, a teacher at Lewis Middle School, says he's going to need more time between periods to wipe down his room. (Nobody sees a designated-wiper custodian coming to each room each block of the day to make things safe.) One of the state guidelines that came out yesterday suggest staying with one homeroom or teacher, to cut down on movement and exposure on campus.
Plan for more Zoom, though not as the whole package as it has been this spring. Some on-campus attendance. The amount will be dictated by the numbers of infections.
We're doing all this in the dark, because we still don't have mass testing, though testing is increasing. As a result, we don't know who is a carrier not exhibiting symptoms. Carriers, themselves, don't know unless they've been tested, which is not part of our daily experience so far.
So, when a kid shows up at my classroom door where I'm hopefully subbing in the fall at, say, Canyon Crest Academy, how do we know he's not going to spread virus? We don't. We can ask about symptoms (just like the nurse asked me yesterday outside Kaiser Clairemont before I was allowed to go inside to get a prescription). We can take temperatures (just like Wilhelmina did of me yesterday).
Then, if students report 14 days later that they got infected, County Health will direct that that class, or room, or cohort, or whatever be shut down, if it points to an outbreak.
Steve Miller's "Living in the USA". I propose "Living in the COVID (Era)." New stuff.
"Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, living in the COVID era."
By the way, this column focusing on the reopening of high school sports is not intended in any way to diminish the tragedy and seriousness of the 100,000 Americans who have already died from the coronavirus. Nor is my discussion meant to divert attention to the ongoing protests (now in their third week) over black people being killed at the hands of police officers, and demands for justice in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck as he was handcuffed and lying on the ground for eight minutes, 46 seconds.
At this point in the COVID-19 situation (June 9), there are signs pointing to a January kickoff of high school football in San Diego and California in general.
Eric Sondheimer, who has covered high school sports for the Los Angeles Times for years and is quite knowledgeable, reported that the CIF Southern Section's Commissioner, way back in mid-May, saw no way to a timely August 21 start to the prep football season (as originally scheduled long before the coronavirus hit).
The word being bandied about was, and is, that Viking footballers and their opponents will hit the gridiron for games come the turn of the year, in January 2021.
Basketball would follow the next month, February, under this proposed calendar.
More recently, San Diego officials "have drawn up more than one calendar", which is how they are phrasing things right now, and one scenario places football in the January slot. This is according to local sources.
The thinking, as I understand it, goes like this: School campuses are not going to open fully for students on August 18 or so. (School officials are looking at a hybrid Zoom-with-in-person instruction to begin the fall semester.) With four to six weeks necessary for preseason practice, football could not start in August, or probably even September.
Non-contact sports, namely tennis and golf, by their nature afford more accommodation to the state's requirement for social distancing. "Different sports may start on different dates," we are being told.
So, early in the semester in Fall 2020 we could see those two individual (while played in teams) sports in CIF competition. Boy, what news for coaches Darice Carnaje and Aaron Quesnell (head coaches in Viking tennis and golf, respectively)--boy, oh, boy, they might be saying, because the opportunity may be there but the uncertainty of the COVID era will come with it.
Where does that leave other fall sports? Girls water polo and field hockey are both close-quarter, contact sports bringing competitors into guarding, checking, and non-social-distancing stances on defense and offense. When will we see them, if ever, this fall? Good question.
If the general student body is not going to be allowed on campus full-time, then how can student-athletes be put in a separate category, as if their safety is assured by compromising restrictions that are kept for non-athletes?
Here is the way I'm thinking about it: I'm going to be substitute-teaching in the fall, hopefully (though in San Dieguito and Poway districts, not San Diego City), and this entire approaching school year 2020-2021 is going to be different. It is going to be a mishmash.
Don't freak out, Ed, I'm counseling myself. We have to get through the transition period necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, a once-in-102-years pandemic. The virus will dictate how fast things will continue to reopen. We don't control that. The bug does.
So, get through 2020-2021, then we'll see more normalcy, hopefully for the 2021-2022 school year.
Many of my family members are public school teachers, and they are only so happy to end the full-time Zoom instruction they've been limited to this spring as the City Schools end the year today, June 9.
It has been a grind I haven't had to participate it, given I retired from classroom teaching five years ago. (I taught in the county's Juvenile Court and Community Schools program.) I don't feel their pain, but I have heard plenty about it in family get-togethers (even my Zoom birthday party, when that was still a novelty, back on April 19).
No state playoffs; get a CIF champion in each sport and division; shorter season; limited travel. Those are the things I've reading and hearing for the coming school year.
Hopefully, by the turn of the year, we will have gotten through the worst of it--though a vaccine is still a ways away. We will have weathered the "second wave" that L.A. is seeing right now that comes from reopening, more people out, more exposures, and as a result, more infections.
San Diegans have been fortunate. Our numbers have been relatively good. People have behaved themselves, overall, pretty well, practicing social distance and wearing masks when within six feet of non-household members.
The classroom this fall? My neighbor, a teacher at Lewis Middle School, says he's going to need more time between periods to wipe down his room. (Nobody sees a designated-wiper custodian coming to each room each block of the day to make things safe.) One of the state guidelines that came out yesterday suggest staying with one homeroom or teacher, to cut down on movement and exposure on campus.
Plan for more Zoom, though not as the whole package as it has been this spring. Some on-campus attendance. The amount will be dictated by the numbers of infections.
We're doing all this in the dark, because we still don't have mass testing, though testing is increasing. As a result, we don't know who is a carrier not exhibiting symptoms. Carriers, themselves, don't know unless they've been tested, which is not part of our daily experience so far.
So, when a kid shows up at my classroom door where I'm hopefully subbing in the fall at, say, Canyon Crest Academy, how do we know he's not going to spread virus? We don't. We can ask about symptoms (just like the nurse asked me yesterday outside Kaiser Clairemont before I was allowed to go inside to get a prescription). We can take temperatures (just like Wilhelmina did of me yesterday).
Then, if students report 14 days later that they got infected, County Health will direct that that class, or room, or cohort, or whatever be shut down, if it points to an outbreak.
Steve Miller's "Living in the USA". I propose "Living in the COVID (Era)." New stuff.
"Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, living in the COVID era."
By the way, this column focusing on the reopening of high school sports is not intended in any way to diminish the tragedy and seriousness of the 100,000 Americans who have already died from the coronavirus. Nor is my discussion meant to divert attention to the ongoing protests (now in their third week) over black people being killed at the hands of police officers, and demands for justice in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck as he was handcuffed and lying on the ground for eight minutes, 46 seconds.
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