SIAP: PA schools done for the year
- Thread starter PSUcup1
- Start date
Parents sticking their heads out of windows screaming all over the state of PA right now.
Where else are people going to store all the toilet paper they hoarded? Additional new cabinets of course!but cabinets are an essential business ….
Not sure that’s helping the safety of the kids....they might not get the virus but their parents will likely hurt them much worse.
It was inevitable. Our school district is still teaching online and just physical locations closed. I feel bad for some of the very rural school district families. Say an article this morning in the CDT where 25% of students in Bald Eagle Area school district do not have internet. Bald Eagle SD gets very rural and lots of mountains which make obtaining internet for some unaffordable or it is just not available where they live.
PA will not be the last state to call classes for the year. If one kid caught this virus and died if schools were to reopen talk about a sh!t show then. Until a vaccine is out things will be a little herky jerky and this may be the new norm for a while. I am not a fan of state stores closing but here in North Carolina we can still get our drink on.
Something like 10% of Pennsylvanians do not have ACCESS to high speed internet. These people can not get physical access to high-speed lines. This number does not include those that can not afford high-speed internet.
We have DSL with roughly <2mbs download speeds. There is a comcast cable line about 0.30 of mile as the crow flies and about a mile of lines from us. They will not run it to our road. I could pay them outright to run it, but they estimated it was going to cost me $27k-$33k to run it. My "neighbors" are all Amish or Mennonites, so they have no appetite to share the cost.
To help facilitate the internet for the kids school work and for the wife and I to do our jobs, we have had to resort to using our Verizon Data Jetpacks and getting about 24mbs download speeds. Between the four of us we are already over 70Gbs for the last three weeks. Zoom and other video conferencing takes a big bight of our data and things like MS Teams that are constantly running in the background are data sucks too. Our data bill is going to be well over $1000 for the month.
I was surprised to see this. By surprised, I mean surprised at the timing. I don't understand why they couldn't have let it at indefinite and then waited to see what happened. Even if they brought kids back in the middle of May and ended at the end of June, that would have saved at least part of the year.
Full disclosure: I am the dad of a senior in high school and my heart breaks for her and her friends. Maybe it was false hope, but as long as school had not been cancelled for the year, I could still encourage her that she might get to play her last lacrosse season and go to Prom and go on her senior trip and have graduation. Not any more.
Full disclosure: I am the dad of a senior in high school and my heart breaks for her and her friends. Maybe it was false hope, but as long as school had not been cancelled for the year, I could still encourage her that she might get to play her last lacrosse season and go to Prom and go on her senior trip and have graduation. Not any more.
Get this: We (and or neighbors) are not included in the 10% of PA residents that cant get high-speed internet, because the state has allowed the carriers to determine how "Access" is defined. Remember the Obama Adminstrations High-speed for all? In our case Comcast says we have high-speed access through Frontiers "high speed" DSL. Frontier says they will not install new lines to improve our speed because we have access to Comcast. Complete circle jerk.
According to our state rep, this scenario is extremely common in rural areas of the state, and there is little effort in Harrisburg to determine the true numbers. His estimated that the number is closer to 14% cant get access.
While we would love to have Comcast/Verizon, I am OK with how we get by. We choose to live where we do, so I am not complaining. When I find the kids are buried deep in 2 hours of YouTube, I just switch the Jetpacks off.
Kids are not immune to the virus... anyone implying that keeping kids home is (was) an over-reaction is a dullard
Starlink is supposed to be available in Canada and the northern US sometime this year. In 2021 it'll be available everywhere else. Or so their plan is now. OneWeb is on the horizon too (maybe) so it'll be interesting to see how those work as an alternative to the Comcasts of the world.
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That is an outrageous bill for mobile data. There has to be a way to get that reduced. With all the money currently being thrown around, it would be nice if they included a few billion to get high-speed internet to rural America.
It was a joke...I was saying they would be safer getting the virus than having their parents kill them for getting on their nerves. Did you duck when it went over your head?
My kid is an 8th grader transitioning to high school next year. She will be really upset with this. She is a straight A student, top of her class, but she benefits from the structure of he classroom. She has a hard time getting motivated to work over the internet.
I also feel bad for those missing the rite of passage of graduation and proms. My daughter will be sad that she's not returning to middle school to finish up.
What this will do, IMO, is give the districts a path forward to teach remotely if/when it's needed again. For example, major snowstorms, etc.
I also feel bad for those missing the rite of passage of graduation and proms. My daughter will be sad that she's not returning to middle school to finish up.
What this will do, IMO, is give the districts a path forward to teach remotely if/when it's needed again. For example, major snowstorms, etc.
I have been following this closely. It will change the world if the systems live up to the hype.
Just making a light-hearted joke, but I knew you would get it.
Starlink is going to be awesome, if it delivers, and I really hope it does. My daughter runs through her 25Gb of high-speed hotspot data in 3-4 days. She then complains that her speed is reduced, but Verizon doesn't have an unlimited hotspot data plan.
There a few people who could accomplish the things Elon is doing. Although, I don't understand his choice of women to impregnate - very strange.
It was a joke...I was saying they would be safer getting the virus than having their parents kill them for getting on their nerves. Did you duck when it went over your head?
Gotcha... you were trying to be clever. #mybad
Several game changers here - 1) as previously mentioned, no more “snow days” which was already being trialed in several districts around the country; 2) public schools will have a legitimate program in place to combat the exodus of kids to certain private and charter schools - the breadth of high quality programs a legit distance learning Dept can offer means less arguments suggesting a district cannot offer certain programs; 3) other side of that coin - charter schools can now extend their reach to areas further away from their campuses.
I work in a public school district in RI and we literally went from all brick-&-mortar to all online in a single week. Are we making mistakes? Of course, but we’re learning and the overall transition under the circumstances we faced has been quite remarkable.
The school district in NC where my wife teaches gave every kid who didn't have a computer or internet access a Chromebook and / or hotspot. What no one saw coming was it made these families a target for robbery by POS freaking thugs who know what families now have thee in their homes.
I think most of us on this board know the powerful bonds that are forged in a locker room. I still - 30 years later - vividly remember the sights, sounds, and smells (unfortunately) of both the pre and post game locker room from my last football game. All of the life’s lessons accumulated over MANY seasons boiled down to that crystallized moment - the last time those teammates who went through it all with me would ever be together again. I feel very blessed that I had the insight to absorb that moment and preserve it in a special place amongst my memories. My heart truly aches for your daughter and the so many young people who have had that taken away from them. This sucks!
Same her - She was hoping to get back at least before graduation. They have said that the 4th quarter will be graded pass fail. I think Wolf jumped the gun but it seems there is a competition between governors to get in the news as much as they can each day - not saying it isn't the right thing to do but why now? He also said the stay at home will be extended indefinately and I have no idea why he needed to come out with that a few days ago either.
God - I'm only 12 years or so removed from high school, and I can obviously still remember the anxiety of starting my senior year (baseball) and how, while I rode the pine as Junior, this was my shot to start. All the offseason workouts, the after-school lifting, the early morning conditioning... to have that taken away, I just couldn't imagine. At least at the college level, they have the option now to come back for another year (and with this job market, wow... I'd do a 1-year master's in acctg or finance if I had already enough credits to graduate). But in high school - you miss this, you miss this for life. I don't know if we are fully comprehending that loss yet.
My daughter is teaching high school from home and loving it. Her stress level has dropped to nil. Trying to deal with the students every day just shot her stress through the roof, mainly social dealings. Kids on their cell phones, just getting up and walking out in the middle of class usually after receiving a text, etc. Kids just misbehave because they can and know they will usually get away with it. Where she teaches there is not much punishment that can be doled out other than giving a bad grade, and that usually precipitates angry conversations with the students’ parents who think it’s the teacher’s fault. Teachers are not allowed to take cell phones away because it is district policy. So now she doesn’t have to deal with that anymore.
My daughter has had no problem doing the online lessons because she is a millennial and many of her college classes were online. On the other hand, teachers of an older vintage are pretty much lost trying to do online classes, because they never had them or learned how to set them up and teach them. One of the older, more experienced teachers at her school (considered the best in her department) just up and resigned after trying the online teaching for two weeks and just couldn’t hack it.
My daughter has had no problem doing the online lessons because she is a millennial and many of her college classes were online. On the other hand, teachers of an older vintage are pretty much lost trying to do online classes, because they never had them or learned how to set them up and teach them. One of the older, more experienced teachers at her school (considered the best in her department) just up and resigned after trying the online teaching for two weeks and just couldn’t hack it.
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