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.
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