Pandemic Planning School Year 3

Remembering the early days — the creeping sense of unease, moving to prepare and then close the physical school before the city fully realized what was about to hit us, refrigerator trucks in both my park meditation spots, and acute awareness that our neighbor’s sickness or safety was our own in these old apartments — it’s notable how mundane covid-19 management has become. Whatever the political pundits and The Discourse TM say day-to-day, we know now that covid is airborne. That vaccines are very protective but don’t completely protect us, especially with the Delta and Mu variants circulating. That the city isn’t testing enough for it’s positivity rate to be an ideal indicator, and that folks will self-report their recent exposure list is low even though they traveled for a party over the weekend because it feels low to them (notably, not because they’re deliberately lying, though that probably happens, too). That the DOE says it won’t be offering an online option this year, but they also don’t have the resources to get all schools prepared to open safely, and the specialists still are forecasting an autumn spike.

So what is to be done? Prepare with the expectation that there will be actively infected and contagious people in our space at some point, even with as many messages as possible encouraging families and staff to take preventative measures, and make our ‘normal’ an environment that minimizes the risk of transmission when that happens. We’ve learned covid is airborne and delta spreads outside, that means universal masking, opening windows and turning on fans to increase ventilation, HEPA filters and Corsi-Rosenthal boxes all around the space, lots of outdoor time, and taking care not to eat around each other. It means strictly limiting visits, making online participation a consistent option, and letting folks know they’ll be sent home if they show up symptomatic. It means encouraging vaccination (grateful all staff and regular volunteers were able to get vaccinated early on) and regular testing, though buying test kits is proving much harder than one would hope 19 months on. Like, I searched online for the past 2 weeks, searched in 10 pharmacies today having failed to find tests at 3 earlier this week, and found 1 online site that said they maybe sold them but then refused since I didn’t have a prescription. But then said they’ll review my order request. Will the order get cleared? Will an order be able to get to me even with the ongoing supply chain issues? Will there be an extra grand for test kits when it’s time to hit ‘pay’ on the order? Uncertainty is really the only constant.

Here’s the plan I wrote in June, updated slightly in August, and got enough info from the DOE and DOH to make official in early September. It doesn’t have the steps/levels that the previous year’s plan did, since asking everyone to track that additional complexity and keep changing plans doesn’t make sense so long as folks are burned out and the changes would be in response to data that are really incomplete with how little testing is happening. It keeps the expectation that we’ll need to adjust as the year goes on and that we’ll have at least one more surge to navigate through in the coming months. It does have more information about ventilation and air filtration, as well as some updated resources and links to follow the evolving government regulations, and it leaves some room for staff and families to decide together how to address things like public transit use as case numbers and vaccination rates change through the year. Weirdly, writing it didn’t feel too different from updating our handbook for the start of a new year. Given all we’ve learned, I feel pretty confident that it’ll be thorough and effective, and it feels like we’re transitioning out of the phase where I’m making executive decisions much of the time because other folks are burned out or can’t keep up with the reading on top of *gestures*at*compounding*crises.* Hopefully folks will be as excited to get back to collaborating as I am to get back to having collaborators, and hopefully the virus and weather will let us catch our breath a little before the next plot twist. We’ll see.