Talk About It Tuesday - Illness and the Work/School Problem

 

With the Delta variant of COVID running rampant through the country, we are faced with having to make decisions that we didn't have to make last year.  For many, gone is the ability to work or learn from home.  (My state has disallowed virtual or hybrid learning for schools this year, unless it is a fully virtual school.) It's either stay home even if you aren't feeling THAT bad, or go in and have a chance to infecting others if you turn out to have something communicable.

I've never understood the focus on perfect attendance, either at school or in the workplace.  Ideally, yes, being at school or at work is the best way to make sure learning and working happens.  But putting the focus on "perfect attendance" or coming into the office even when you're not feeling as well shows just where perfection and your own health comes in the hierarchy.  And it relegates those who DO put their own health first to "imperfect".  Personally, I'm fine with being imperfect and letting my kids be the same.  I'm fine with my husband taking mental health days on the rare occasions he hits a bout of depression.  (Because mental health is still health, dammit!)  But that's not the way our country is made to see things.

This year, it's... well, confusing, honestly.  Almost every school in my district has the words "Attendance Matters" on their outdoor boards.  Anything more than 5 unexcused absences can start the truancy ball rolling.  Parents' notes stating our child was out due to illness usually will count as an excused absence, but even those can be looked at if there are too many. So while they are telling us that Attendance Matters, they are also telling us not to send our kids in when they are sick.  Fevers, of course not.  But sore throat?  Muscle aches?  Those could be signs of something worse, yet parents are still sending their kids in with this because Attendance Matters is more important than not only their child's health, but the health of the students, teachers and staff.  In the two schools that my kids attend, as of Monday there were 19 newly confirmed cases of COVID in the school - this is new for one week, and this was for the second week they've been in school - and 93 teachers/students/staff have been required to quarantine.  This is in two schools.  In our whole district, there were 462 confirmed cases with 3022 quarantines.  In one week.  This is out of over 96,000 students, teachers and staff in all of our 155 schools.  That is, in one week, just under 0.01% that have tested positive and 3% that have had to quarantine.  In the first week, there were an additional 259 confirmed positive cases and 1075 quarantines.  That's an increase of over 50% in one week for confirmed cases and over 35% for quarantines.  If the rates keep up like this, we'll have to have more people out of the schools than in.

It's a tightrope.  I get that.  You need to balance the need for students to be in physical classrooms (because there are many - though not all - that do better in the physical classroom) with the need to keep everyone safe.  But when it comes to the health of our teachers and our children, shouldn't that count a bit more than having everyone inside the building every day?