Due to the rapid growth of Covid-19 cases at Cactus Shadows, the school should shut down and return to online learning.
Cactus Shadows returned to in-person school roughly a month and a half ago, and since then there have already been five cases reported. This is a short period of time for that many new cases, which shows that, regardless of school policy and safety precautions, it is not wise to be back to in-person yet. It was definitely a rushed decision to try to get everyone back on their heels and get a little motivation, however, this is going to come back and hit twice as hard when we have to return to online curriculum.
The district policy states that if a student tests positive for Covid-19, then they will be sent home to quarantine for two weeks, as well as everyone who they’ve been in contact with. Two cases were found within the football team, which meant that the entire football was sent home and quarantined for two weeks. This can cause a lot of damage to those students’ grades, as well as the class environment with that many students missing.
A study done by NPR reported by the Covid-19 school dashboard, shows that 230 cases are present out of 100,000 students at schools that went back to in person after just two weeks.
This may seem like a small amount of people out of 100,000 however, COVID-19 spreads quickly within students given the environment in the school. Close desks, thousands of students, and physical copies of work as well as shared desks and books causes viruses to spread quickly.
While it was good to return to school to get back in the swing of things, it hasn’t really been a full return to school the way it used to be. Things are much different now, and are still confusing, as students are using Canvas (which is the online curriculum). This makes it similar to online as far as confusing assignments and problems turning in work. Assignments don’t always show up, which makes it hard to keep a good grade as many of assignments are turned in missing when in reality, they are turned in.
If we’re using the same learning curriculum, then we should just avoid the risk of spreading Covid-19 and continue to learn online.