Friday, March 13, 2020

School Closure -- Texas -- March 13, 2020

Schools in Grapevine, TX, north Texas, DFW, will close for two weeks, beginning immediately.

The tea leaves suggest the governor will follow the rest of the nation and direct all Texas public schools to close immediately.

My hunch is that not a whole lot will have changed two weeks from now, except perhaps higher numbers, necessitating prolonging the closure.

I think there's a very, very good chance that we've seen the end of the school year for this year. As it is, by the time the students get back to school, it will be nearly April and school adjourns for the year in late May. [See my reply to a reader's comment in the comment section below.]

So, we'll see.

7 comments:

  1. The three counties surrounding Seattle; King, Snohomish and Pierce count have cancelled all schools for the next six week. 600,000 students.

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    1. This decision "today" was easy. It was impossible for schools not to close with "everything" else closing. This is the real problem. The number of cases will increase dramatically over the next two weeks (for obvious reasons) even if percentage of deaths decrease dramatically (which one would expect).

      This then becomes the real dilemma: two weeks from now when the numbers are appreciably higher, do the schools still need to remain closed. If they close with so few cases, common sense they will need to close for another two weeks.

      My hunch is that this is the end of this school year.

      I doubt anyone will be interested in moving the last two months of school (April, May) to the late summer (July, August).

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  2. Flattening the curve implies a longer span of time

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    1. I think it will be fascinating to watch. My trolling -- suggesting that this is the end of the school year -- was as much emotional as anything.

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  3. My last comment was this morning, this afternoon the Governor closed all state and private schools in the whole state.

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    1. Thank you. I think our own Texas governor is still "on the fence." Larger cities like Dallas and Houston are closing but there are a lot of small one-room schools in southwest Texas I would bet.

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    2. Home schoolers -- who already perform pretty well on standardized tests -- are probably going to have a great year compared to their public/private school friends.

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