#childcare may or may not stay open which means i either go on ei for two weeks or have close to full time hours

[foreverlogical]

There’s a right way to reopen America’s schools. It requires a clear-eyed look at the data. It demands a balanced discussion of the benefits and costs — to students, parents and educators.

And it looks very little like the path America is on.

“We really run the risk of drowning out balance by having this be ‘the people who want to reopen’ vs. ‘the people who don’t want to reopen,’” says Emily Oster, an economist at Brown University who has spent the past several months tracking coronavirus.

Oster, the author of two bestselling books taking a data-driven to parenting and pregnancy, counts herself among those in the “reopen the schools” camp. She worries that keeping schools closed will hurt kids’ education, hurt the economy, hurt parents—especially moms—and widen the inequities that the pandemic is already causing.

But when it comes to how we re-open, that’s another matter. “Florida has said its schools will open in the first weeks of August,” she says. “That’s three or four weeks from now. That’s crazy,” said Oster. “Based on where we are now, if Florida just opens the doors to schools and has everybody back in a normal way, just with a few masks, then a bunch of people are going to have Covid.”

“We’re telling places, ‘Open your schools! Open your schools!’ Like, with what money? Schools don’t have the money to do what they’re supposed to in a basic setting, let alone in this moment,” said Oster. “I look at the bills and run some of this stuff at Brown. I look at the money we’re going to spend on disinfecting wipes. And it’s millions of dollars — on wipes! I mean, this is expensive for a highly funded Ivy League university. Forget about it for a rural school.”

Since early May, Oster has been sorting through the data about coronavirus at Covid-Explained, a website she launched with other academics and medical experts to give normal people a clear reading of what we really do and don’t know about the virus. She concedes that there is a risk to reopening schools—there is a risk to keeping them closed, too. And she acknowledges the high stakes of that decision can seem daunting.

“One of the things I try to remind people is that we make those calculations all the time,” said Oster. We allow people to drive their cars and to have swimming pools and do all kinds of stuff we know to be risky, and which — in the case of driving cars — have risks to other people. As a society, we allow some of those tradeoffs, even though we might not be thinking about them in exactly this way.”

So, what would need to happen to safely reopen schools — and how far are we from making that happen? On Thursday, Oster spoke to POLITICO about all of this. A transcript of the conversation is below, edited for length and clarity.

Zack Stanton: Let’s start here: What is the case for reopening schools?

Emily Oster: The positive case for reopening schools is that kids learn better in school — quite a lot better. That’s one piece of it. In this experience, we’ve seen pretty large learning losses from kids not being in school. And those losses are disproportionately felt by lower-income students and students with fewer with fewer resources. So for the same reasons we worry about the “summer slump,” there’s now many months of summer slump, and the idea of a whole year of summer slump is pretty problematic. The second piece is that unless kids are at school, it’s difficult for parents to work, and that’s going to make it harder to reopen other aspects of the economy.

Stanton: You’re a professor of economics. From an economist’s viewpoint, how do you measure the costs and benefits of reopening schools?

Oster: It’s very, very hard. I just gave you the case for reopening, but I think there’s a case for staying closed, which is largely rooted in public health — and, in particular, concerns about health risks for staff, who are at a much higher risk than students — and the general sense that if schools open, there will be more movement around, and that may itself trigger more cases. That’s the cost side.

From an economist’s standpoint, we want to take this seriously. How large are the potential health risks? What does the evidence say? How large are the potential benefits in terms of, say, long-term impact on kids, as well as immediate impact on their parents and the economy? Think about how to weigh those things. Part of what makes this difficult — and part of why people find economists unpalatable in these discussions — is that ultimately all of those trade-offs are going to involve saying, “I’m willing to take this risk with someone’s health in order to have these other benefits.” That is a viscerally uncomfortable thing to say — and I also find that uncomfortable. I’m a person in addition to being an economist. But one of the things I try to remind people is that we make those calculations all the time. We allow people to drive their cars and to have swimming pools and do all kinds of stuff we know to be risky, and which — in the case of driving cars — have risks to other people. As a society, we allow some of those tradeoffs, even though we might not be thinking about them in exactly this way.

Stanton: You’ve written two books about data-based parenting. Part of your approach is being a parent and economist who’s willing to read the data and take calculated risks. But when it comes to reopening schools, it’s not just the risks for your child, it’s every child in town. Does that change the way you approach this conversation?

Oster: Yeah. So I think there’s actually two conversations we can have. One is the conversation policymakers are having. As they make choices, they are facing those tradeoffs, and ideally, they are thinking about those tradeoffs not from the standpoint of, “What is good for my kid,” but “What is good for the kids and the adults and the public health situation?” Absorbing all of those things. Some of what I’m saying here relies on the idea that we’re weighing those tradeoffs not just as parents.

Now, part of what’s odd is that I am also making all these choices as an individual. I’m thinking about what to do with my kid, both in terms of what is safe for them, but also what is safe for the broader world. It’s harder to think about than sleep-training [a baby], where either you sleep-train or you don’t, and the person experiencing that is you and all the people experiencing the repercussions are in your house.

Stanton: Now, it’s like you’re sleep-training a baby, but everyone in town is waking up throughout the night.

Oster: Exactly.

Stanton: Schools are the default childcare system for most kids ages 4–18. What does life in America look like come fall if schools don’t open up?

Oster: I’m not sure. I think it depends a lot on what we mean by “don’t open up.” The things I’ve seen districts talk about range from classes being totally online, to in-person two or three days a week, to “bring them all back and hope for the best.” New York City announced that kids are going to be in school between 1–3 days a week. For some families, those other days are going to be covered by parents. I think we’ll see more people, particularly women, slowing down their return to the labor force or moving to part-time. There will be some economy-wide implications around that, particularly for women. There are also families in which it is not an option to go part-time, whether financially or for some other reason. We’re going to see a bunch of kids who go to school, and then on the “off” days, go to home daycare or other childcare. There are very significant public health concerns around that. If your whole thing is, “I want the kids to be in a ‘pod’ in school, because that’s the safest thing,” and then on the other two or three days of the week, they’re in random other ‘pods’ of childcare or in a home daycare with an elderly caregiver and a bunch of kids rotating through, that’s actually substantially more risky. We haven’t really thought about what the alternatives are, and how those may be costly in the same kind of ways.

Stanton: You recently wrote a piece for the Atlantic on the quality of the data about the safety of schools reopening. How good is the data that we do have?

Oster: Terrible. Very bad. Let me caveat that: It is increasingly clear that the ways in which Covid impacts kids health-wise are fairly limited. Most kids don’t get especially sick. It’s not that they can’t get sick, but they tend to have mild infections and infection rates tend to be lower. That’s the piece where the data has come to some conclusion and has been reasonably good. But on the broader questions — When you open schools, how much transmission will there be? Will they be sources of infection? Are there going to be big clusters? — our data is very, very poor.

The data from Europe is pretty encouraging. They reopened schools. And, of course, they’ve seen cases of Covid, but for the most part, they haven’t seen schools as major vectors of infection. At the same time, the school situation in Europe is very different than in the U.S. They took many more precautions. The classrooms were socially distant. There was a lot of mask wearing. Also, Europe is a different place than America. So that data is helpful, but in a lot of ways, it’s hard to learn from. In the U.S., there are some settings we could learn from, like early childcare centers that have stayed open. I tried to collect a little bit of data about that, but actually our evidence is really poor. The way that states and official reports come out, it’s very difficult to use the data. Even the small amount of information they are putting out is actually not sufficient to make any decisions with, because it doesn't contain enough of the right pieces of data. It’s very bad.

Stanton: I imagine that there’ll be some concern about making policy decisions when the data we do have is questionable at best.

Oster: Yeah. What would be great is if states were doing a better job tracking childcare settings. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about the importance of summer camps, too. Early childcare centers are good to track, but it’s not exactly the same age range. A lot of places have opened summer camps; that’s a place you could track. But again, it’s not enough to just say — I’ve seen some things in the media like, “There was an outbreak. There were some cases of this at a camp.” That’s good to know. But what we would like to understand is, say there are 40 cases, how many kids were there? What precautions were they taking? What is happening in all the other camps? We don't just want to report on the one case where this happened.

Stanton: Do you know which state is planning to reopen its schools first?

Oster: So, Florida has said its schools will open in the first weeks of August. That’s three or four weeks from now. That’s crazy.

Stanton: Florida’s done a pretty miserable job of managing coronavirus.

Oster: Very bad.

Stanton: Are you concerned with Florida as the test case here — that they’ll come back ahead of most other states, and if things go poorly, it’ll deter schools elsewhere from reopening?

Oster: Yeah. I think it could go in directions. But based on where we are now, if Florida just opens the doors to schools and has everybody back in a normal way, just with a few masks, then a bunch of people are going to have Covid. And just to be clear, that may have nothing to do with the fact that they were in school, it’s just that a lot of people have Covid in Florida, and there will be some spread in school because there’ll be some spread everywhere. We’re gonna see that.

It’s very irresponsible to do this in the middle of an enormous outbreak without appropriate precautions. And I am worried that then people will say, ‘Look, we can’t reopen schools safely anywhere.’ Here in Rhode Island, we’re doing the most testing in the nation. The share of people testing positive is about one percent. At the moment, we have like 35 people with Covid in hospitals in the whole state. To say that we’re going to look at Florida and say, “They reopened the schools and look what happened. We shouldn't reopen them at the end of August.” [pause] It’s bad. This whole thing is really — it’s like there’s so little oversight and leadership, and so few resources. And the other piece that’s really frustrating is we’re telling places, “Open your schools! Open your schools!” Like, with what money? Schools don’t have the money to do what they’re supposed to in a basic setting, let alone in this moment.

Stanton: Yeah, the School Superintendents Association estimated that an average school district — something like 3,600 students, eight buildings and 300-some staff — would need $1.8 million just to meet basic reopening needs, like PPE or deep cleaning or —

Oster: Hand sanitizer! We’re doing this at universities, and I look at the bills and run some of this stuff at Brown. I look at the money we’re going to spend on disinfecting wipes. And it’s millions of dollars — on wipes! I mean, this is expensive for a highly funded Ivy League university. Forget about it for a rural school.

Stanton: In thinking about reopening schools, when you break it down into the component parts that are required for that to happen, it’s difficult to imagine figuring out all the moving parts in time. Kids riding school buses: how does that work? Cafeterias and school lunches?

Oster: And recess.

Stanton: Music classes, with kids singing aloud or breathing hot air through instruments?

Oster: Yeah, no singing.

Stanton: Or gym class. Or water fountains. I could go on and on. How do you think through all of that — the component parts of reopening schools?

Oster: One of the things I’ve been emphasizing is a need to decide some big-picture things — what we’re going to do — and then try to tackle these individually. I think what’s very overwhelming for people in these discussions is that we are sort of simultaneously discussing the question of, “Should we reopen, and in what broad sense?” And questions like, “What about the buses?” Really, those questions need to be sequenced. You need to say, we’re going to open two days a week, five days a week, not at all — whatever it is. Make some decision there, and then move on to these individual things. Until you have a basic plan, it is very hard for all the individual pieces to come together. If I’m thinking about buses, that is dependent on whether there are five days of buses or two days of buses or no buses. You need a basic framework and then you’ve just gotta tick through these as much as we can.

Stanton: When it comes to things like students wearing masks, we’ve all seen these viral videos of adults having hissy fits in Costco or Wal-Mart —

Oster: Or Trader Joe's.

Stanton: — after being denied entry or service because they refused to wear a mask. It’s easy to imagine an amplified trend of that this fall if and when a student or parent is denied entry into a public school unless they wear a mask. Given that some people are refusing to do even the most basic things you'd want them to do to combat coronavirus, what makes you confident that we will be able to do the more complicated and nuanced aspects of this that are needed for schools to open?

Oster: I wouldn't say I’m confident. I’m not confident. [Laughs] The thing that schools have that is different from some of these other cases is the ability to enforce. Look at something like vaccines. I’ve done a little bit of work on vaccination compliance in California. California has a pretty significant anti-vax population. And the vaccination rates were going down, down, down. Schools basically said, ‘You should be vaccinated, but if you write down on a piece of paper that you don’t feel like it, we’ll let you out of it.’ That was the standard policy. And then after the [2014-2015] Disneyland measles outbreak, California passed a very stringent vaccination law, which said basically, ‘If you don’t have your vaccine, you either don’t go to school, or we’ll call up a doctor and schedule all of your vaccines.’ And vaccination compliance rates went up immediately. If you tell people you can't enter a public school unless you get vaccinated, yes, a few people are going to be the vaccination equivalent of the guy in Trader Joe’s who refuses to wear a mask to get his Brussels sprouts.

What’s potentially more problematic is individual school districts. People have written to me: “What do you suggest I do? The school superintendent in my district thinks the coronavirus is a hoax.” Well, if that’s the case, then I don't see how you’re going to get people to wear masks, because it’s not a problem with the people; it’s a problem with the leadership. That’s the piece I’m more worried about.

Stanton: So let’s say that schools are mostly safe to reopen, but not perfect. Who should be making the cost-benefit calculus as to whether a school or district reopens? Teachers? Parents? Districts? States? The Trump administration?

Oster: Not last one. At the end of the day, this decision is going to need to be made by probably some combination of the of the state and the school administration. But one of the pieces that’s really missing from a lot of the discussion at this point is input from teachers. There’s a lot of teachers’ groups — unions, yes, but not just unions — who feel like basically these choices are being made for them. And they’re very nervous. I do see the perspective of the administrators, which is, ‘We’re trying to think about everybody, and we don't have time to fight.’ But there is a point to listening and hearing people’s concerns, and also trying to make teachers and staff understand the ways in which, hopefully, we will be protecting them. I’ve been pushing for routine [coronavirus] testing for teachers. Spread among teachers in a school is probably more important than spread from kids to teachers, based on what we know.

Stanton: Within the last couple of days, there have been reports that the White House is planning to release its own guidelines for school reopenings —

Oster: God only knows what that will involve.

Stanton: — and saying the CDC’s guidelines are too restrictive. The CDC director said it was “not the intent of the CDC to be used as a rationale to keep schools closed.” What are the risks of school reopenings getting politicized?

Oster: As these things get politicized, the ability to have a balanced discussion about it deteriorates. I’ve found that even in the last couple of days. I am basically more pro-school reopening than some people, but I’m trying very hard to sort of take a balanced view. Yes, it’s important for kids and the economy, but we need to be very careful to do it safely.

But I’m finding myself being like, “Oh my God. The person agreeing with me is Donald Trump. That’s not a comfortable place.” And they’ve taken like a totally different, less-nuanced approach — like we have to just reopen at all costs.

We really run the risk of drowning out balance by having this be “the people who want to reopen” vs. “the people who don’t want to reopen.” I think we could all agree that schools are important. I think our question is, how are we balancing these risks and benefits? But that’s not the president’s question.

Stanton: How concerned are you about the way that this whole experience will imprint on kids for the long term?

Oster: My big concerns really revolve around kids who are in lower-income circumstances, who are going to experience learning losses and the sort of trauma associated with just how difficult some pieces of these last few months have been. And kids who lost family members — there’s a lot going on there. Certainly, there’s some increased anxiety in kids; I suspect that is manageable, and probably people are feeling it more now than they will in the long term. But I think if we don't open, if we don’t have good schooling next year, things are going to be worse.

Stanton: Final question: What’s your advice to a parent who wants their child to return to school, but is really nervous and unsure about all of this?

Oster: The main thing I would say is this: If your kid is healthy and not immunocompromised, then the risks to them are really quite low. And if you are healthy and not immunocompromised and relatively young, the risk to you is also pretty low. We really don't have a lot of examples where kids are the index case in a household. In that sense, the data is reassuring.

But the other thing I would tell people is that even within your family, you have to make a choice you’re comfortable with. And if you feel like you are not comfortable with your kid going back to school, and you think you can manage it at home, that is a totally legitimate choice and one you should feel comfortable making.

Part of what’s hard about this is everybody’s managing this for the first time, and it is sort of like this macrocosm of other parenting things. It’s like, “How could you make that choice? What are you, afraid of the coronavirus?” Yeah! I’m afraid of the coronavirus! It should be OK to say, “Yes, I am uncomfortable. This does not work for my family.” Just like some of us are going to say, “You know, I’ve thought about this, and I think the best thing for my family is for my kids to go back to school.” I think we have to try to be nice to each other. That’s my message: Try to be nice to each other.

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[dorothydelgadillo]

How to Survive Working From Home During Your Kid’s Holiday Break

I spent the twelve years since my oldest daughter was born as a stay-at-home dad and homemaker, and—during that time—periods like winter break when the kids are home from school were busy but manageable. But this year’s winter break marks a big change for me—it’s the first one where I’ll be juggling a job on top of childcare. The kids and I made it through my first working summer—barely—but the summer was regimented enough with activities like camp that it was similar to the school year. The intense two weeks of winter break are a different ballgame, though—too short to really schedule a routine, but long enough to create all kinds of productivity pitfalls.

In hopes of avoiding those snags, I wanted to get ahead of the curve and go into this winter break with a solid plan. I know what will happen if I don’t, and it’s not pretty—by the end of the break my two daughters and I will be rocking back and forth, feral, snarling, and blinded by the light of day when we finally emerge from the house, and my coworkers will have sent a search party. I figured there’s got to be a better way, so I reached out to a group of work-from-home parents, hoping to learn their strategies for transforming winter break into the holly, jolly time of year we’ve all heard rumors about.

Get Ahead of It With Workarounds, Co-Working, and Working With Others

Although winter break is listed on school district calendars months in advance, it’s easy to be so caught up in the minutiae of the day-to-day that its arrival turns us into wild-eyed reactionaries. But, according to Lindsay Nash, Marketing Manager at Waldo Photos, with just a little bit of pre-planning we can meet those two weeks with a proactive, cool head instead. Start that planning as soon as possible (like now).

Remote work typically comes with a certain level of flexibility—half the time your colleagues aren’t even in the same time zone, so there’s leeway for scheduling meetings and deadlines— and winter break is a key time to use this to your advantage. Nash—an American expat who works remotely in South Korea—always makes sure to schedule winter break meetings and conference calls when her kids are either asleep or out of the house. In her case, her employer and team are open to working with her timeframe, but even if you’re working in a less forgiving environment, a little bit of creative planning can keep your kids and conference calls separated. Nash suggests looking to nap times, early mornings, late evenings, or even taking your laptop and heading out of the house to a park or coffee shop for uninterrupted meetings.

On the other hand, Nash says you could flip the script entirely and keep your kids close. Nash’s kids are curious about everything she’s up to—whether she’s working at her desk or trying to take a trip to the bathroom—so one of her strategies is to simply include them in her work. Nash sets up a desk near hers and provides “work” activities (coloring sheets, math problems, and puzzles), allowing them to be co-workers with her. Even if it only lasts a little while, kids will feel like they’re “in” on the action, which means you can take the moment to get some work done sans interruption. You may still be followed to the bathroom, however.

Set Boundaries Around Lunch Breaks, Blood, and Fire

With your kids are running around the house while you try to answer emails, boundaries are more critical than ever. During the weeks that his kids are home, Paul Dessert, Web Developer at Airbus Defense and Space, sets aside his lunch hour as a time to visit with them, and he preemptively steps out of his office for a few minutes each hour that he’s working to check in. When it’s time for him to buckle down, though, he closes and locks his office door and enters “Do Not Disturb” mode. By being accessible to his kids on a regular basis during the breaks it makes it easier for them to recognize and understand the times when he can’t be interrupted.

Making clear what counts as an emergency is key, and Joshua Peskay, VP of Technology Strategy at RoundTable Technology—sets up winter break boundaries in living color by instating a “RAG” (red, amber, green) status system in his home office. Green means that Peskay’s working, but it’s fine for the kids to come in if they need something or want to talk, amber or yellow denotes that if it’s important, it’s okay to interrupt, and red means that if the kids aren’t on fire or bleeding, don’t come in. A system like this further codifies and regiments boundaries, removing the ambiguity that can quickly lead to irritation and bickering when the kids are expected to read your mind. Not that I’d know anything about that, of course.

Hire Yourself Some Temporary Childcare and Housework Help

After spending so many years as a homemaker before doing paid work from home, outsourcing domestic chores doesn’t come naturally to me—I fear that if I hired someone to clean my house, I’d spend a week cleaning it myself in preparation. But when I add up the amount of time I already spend on housework and parenting when I have the benefit of having my kids at school all day, I know I’ll need to call in reinforcements when they’re home for winter break.

Nancy Fulton and Mark Mazur work together from home, each owning and operating their own businesses—Fulton runs online and face-to-face events for producers and screenwriters in Hollywood and Mazur is an app developer and CTO. They’ve been at the home entrepreneurial game for over 20 years now, and in the meantime have raised three kids. With many a winter break under their belt, they’ve developed a good deal of insight into staying sane and productive with kids home and underfoot.

According to Fulton, their secret is outsourcing. As two parents with paid work (in addition to parenting responsibilities), there comes a time when you need to hire outside help, and it becomes crucial to put some of your money toward making more money without losing your mind.

Start by hiring a housekeeper or cleaning service to pick up the domestic slack—if only for the duration of the school break (this could mean somebody comes just once a week or every other week—just enough to keep the place clean but without racking up a massive bill). By paying someone to take out the trash, sterilize the bathrooms, and do dishes, you’ll be freeing up precious time that can be spent both on work and on connecting with your kids.

In addition to housekeeping, Fulton adds that hiring a nanny or babysitter to spend time with the kids during the break is another wise investment. She and her husband usually recruit students from their local junior college or university, and that having someone occupy the kids for even a few hours a day frees up precious time that might otherwise be spent refereeing sibling disputes or being nagged relentlessly to take them ice skating.

If a nanny isn’t a financially viable option, turn to your community. Nash says to remember that—despite the feelings of isolation that can creep in when you’re home with kids during winter break—you don’t have to be alone. Nash has cultivated a small community of fellow remote-working parents who take turns watching the kids. Kids get to play with friends, parents get quiet working time, and everybody’s happy. And even when it’s her turn to watch the group of kids, Nash still gets more work done than if she just had her own, since they’re all preoccupied playing with each other—so you might consider opening up your house to parents who don’t work remotely and can’t take on watching your kids, but can provide their own kids as distractions for yours.

Give Up the Fight About Screen Time

For the past few years, the major parenting debate seems to be screen time. In fact, when I made my inquiries for this story I didn’t expect to hear any shout-outs to tablets, smartphones, video game consoles, or other digital pied pipers, but several of the pros I spoke with brought up the beauty of screens.

James Pollard, Marketing Consultant at TheAdvisorCoach, says he’ll sometimes pull out an early Christmas present—particularly a video game that his kids can lose themselves in for a few days—as a winter break tactic, while Nash says that screen time is a natural part of contemporary parenthood, and sometimes ends up being her go-to for a moment of peace, quiet, and productivity.

I personally gave up the fight over screen time with my kids years ago. In fact, I never really fought it. I felt like I couldn’t regulate my children’s screen time in good faith without regulating my own, and so—whenever my kids are home—the floodgates of Minecraft, Roblox, and YouTube are wide open. But to my surprise, my kids end up regulating themselves. Both of my girls have healthy social lives, my youngest plays soccer, my oldest writes fiction, and they excel in school—all while using screens to their heart’s content. And so, like Pollard and Nash, I’m on board with a screen-friendly winter break.

Of course since they don’t have hard and fast limits, my kids get sick of their screens pretty quickly, and then we’re back to square one—the two of them irritated with me for not entertaining them, and me irritated because they’re up in my grill while I’m trying to work. And so this year—armed with the tips listed above—I’m going to get ahead of the situation! I’ll stop working in the living room with a girl on either side, and turn our storage room into an office to establish some boundaries. I’ll set aside money to pay for a housecleaner so my kids won’t grow up remembering me as the guy yelling at them to get off the couch when I’m trying to lint roll it. I’ll take advantage of my flexible remote work by shifting the bulk of my work to times when the kids aren’t around, and try to network with other parents in similar situations. And screens. Lots and lots of screens. For me, of course. I hear there’s a new Mario game out.

from Web Developers World https://skillcrush.com/2017/11/13/working-from-home-during-holiday-break-tips/