Preparing the School House

We decided to take a portion of our basement and turn it into a full time classroom.  The girls will be working with their teacher for 6 hours a day so we needed to find them dedicated space.  We ordered all 3 girls the same laptop to keep things consistent and easy for the teacher.  We also decided to build their desks.  Jim enjoys wood working but he rarely has the time to do it.  We thought having the girls help build and paint their own desks would help get them even more engaged with their classroom and the 2020/2021 school year experience.  While the girls did help some with the building and sanding the parents spent an entire weekend in 90 degree heat building and sanding the desks.  Ben and Jodi are now pros in wood pocket filling and sanding.  The girls did help a little more once we reached the painting stage.  As you can see from the pictures Rachel picked a blue/green color; Alana a light purple and Kira went with a bright and bold Island orange.  We will continue to work on the basement to school house transition and share more pictures soon.  We only have a few more weeks to get it ready!

Hiring

In order for plan C to work we knew that we had to make some major changes from the Spring.  While both of our companies have been extremely accommodating and flexible Jim and I do need to work full time.  We can work from home but we need to be more focused during business hours.  In the Spring the girls were super responsible about getting their work done but they did it quickly and the quality was not always there.  Jim and I did not have the time needed to sit with them and work through the lessons.  We realized that if we did not want the girls to fall further behind we had to hire someone.

Our neighbor Jodi wanted the same thing so we started the search to hire a teacher for the 3 girls (Alana and Kira for 4th grade and Rachel for 1st).  We say teacher but we were not really sure at first what we were looking for.  We were rather fortunate that Jodi found a teacher that was teaching at a local private school and she was not comfortable returning to the school with COVID-19.  She was teaching 4th grade and has taught kindergarten - 4th grade during her teaching career.  After interviewing, checking references and a meet and greet with the girls we knew we had found the perfect person.  She will work with the girls to keep them on track in the Virtual Academy but she will also teach and supplement their work.  She plans on breaking up the day with fun activities, walks outside, crafts and teaching them Spanish.  If things should completely fall apart with the Virtual Academy we have the option for her to home school the girls.

As a side note:  On July 21st Wake County voted again and decided to start everyone in the county on-line.  They kept the Virtual Academy and a Plan B transition where at some point if conditions allow students will return to school for one week and work remote for two weeks.

2020 - COVID-19

The Year 2020 has been an interesting year so far. In January a cluster of people connected to a seafood market in Wuhan China developed an unusual pneumonia. The market was closed and disinfected but soon more cases popped up. As the virus spread it took a while for doctors and scientists to discover that people were getting sick from SARS-CoV-2 (a virus that causes COVID-19). The virus quickly spread through several countries and in March the US started shifting businesses to all remote. One day we were at work and the next we were home with no end date established. We were very fortunate that we could both complete our work in a fully remote environment. One week after we were home the schools closed. The shift was sudden and the schools were not prepared for it. Learning stopped for a few weeks as teachers and administrators worked on a plan. After several weeks schools started an on-line platform that mostly focused on review and maintaining educational levels. This continued until the start of summer.

Fast forward to June and early July where most of the US was seeing an increase in COVID-19 cases as well as deaths. North Carolina remains one of the red states with increasing numbers. As of today (July 30th ) North Carolina has had 118,015 cases, 1,888 deaths and there are currently 1,291 people in the hospital.

The Governor of NC told schools to prepare 3 plans for the upcoming school year:

• Plan A – everyone goes back to school with enhanced cleaning protocols
• Plan B – a hybrid approach where you are in school 1 week and out 2
• Plan C – fully online

In early July the Governor gave further direction that each county needed to decide how they wanted to open but that it could not be more aggressive then Plan B. Wake County first decided to give 2 options – Plan B or Plan C. Families were given about 2 weeks to decide if they wanted Plan B or Plan C. As you can imagine each plan had benefits and concerns. We all felt that our elementary kids needed in person instruction but we also wanted to keep everyone healthy and safe. We chatted a lot with our neighbors (Jodi and Ben) and after a lot of discussion we decided to go with plan C. Plan C for Wake County is called the Virtual Academy. The deciding factor for us was that while in general kids are doing pretty well with the virus nobody knows the long term impacts. We also wanted consistency for the entire school year.