My regular Wednesday pick-up hoops game got screwed up by Covid testing yesterday.
Not testing of any of the participants, mind— we weren’t contact-traced, or anything like that. It was screwed up because the college was taking over the gym to use as a testing center, again. With the new academic year looming, students are beginning to return to campus— the football team has already been here for a couple of weeks, and most of the other teams come back this week— and they’re going to be testing everyone on their re-entry to campus.
The loss of our lunchtime game was the first I heard of this plan, but a somewhat more informative email came around later in the afternoon, with a few details of the plan for re-opening. At right around the same time, we got email from our kids’ school about their plan for the new school year that will start in a couple of weeks. (These had been discussed in a story in the local paper before I got the email; nice to see that locally as well as nationally, nobody can get the comms strategy right…) So these are both things that are happening.
We’re very lucky to be living in the Northeast in a lot of respects, not least because school doesn’t start for us until after Labor Day— in a lot of other places, schools are already in session, under less-than-ideal conditions. We’ve still got a couple of weeks left to prepare for the new academic year, to whatever extent that’s possible. We’re also in a reasonably sensible area: the Capital District of New York has one of the highest Covid vaccination rates in the state, and Schenectady County is right near the top of the state, with 85% of the population having at least one dose. On the down side, whatever number wave we’re calling this started later in this region than in some of the more troubled regions, so we very likely have some more increases in the number of cases ahead, but hopefully the worst effects will be blunted.
This means that, whatever deficiencies we may have on the comms side, the policies being enacted by the educational institutions we deal with directly are pretty sensible. Union is requiring vaccination for all students, faculty, and staff on campus, and recommending masks in indoor public spaces on top of that. They’re going to be doing re-entry testing for everyone, and some amount of surveillance testing during the year. Niskayuna’s not formally requiring vaccination yet (except apparently for athletes), but they will be requiring masking and implementing some level of distancing during the year. (And the state may yet impose a mask or vaccine mandate; it’s not clear yet because New York’s government is chronically incapable of making decisions in a timely manner.) They’ll also be doing some “pooled surveillance testing” on a regular basis, though what exactly that will look like remains unclear.
This leaves me in a kind of weird position relative to a lot of my social media circles, where a lot of parents and academics are absolutely freaking out about the coming year. The story about a professor resigning a tenured position has passed through my Twitter feed about twenty different times (though he does not yet seem to be the leading edge of the long-promised wave of retirements that’s coming any day now).
I find myself basically okay with what’s coming locally, though. It feels awkward to say publicly, because of the negativity bias I’ve written about before; also, despite having aPh.D. in physical sciences, I can’t help worrying that I’m going to jinx one or both of these. Those ancillary concerns aside, though, I’m more or less comfortable with the new school year, at both levels.
That’s not to say that I’m not worried at all, mind— The Pip is still too young to be vaccinated, which is a worry, and I’m a little uneasy about the recent trajectory of cases in the area. I have a reasonable degree of confidence, though, that the local authorities are doing the right things to be able to operate safely in person. And while the residual risk isn’t zero— it can’t be— I think it’s worthwhile to try because remote school (and even hybrid school) sucked so very, very much.
More than that, though, I’m reasonably confident in this because of the students. That may seem like a weird thing to say, because we’ve come to take for granted a kind of undercurrent of contempt for young people that runs through a lot of the discourse about schools re-opening. I think that does a serious disservice to our students, though, who absolutely have the capability to rise to the occasion and do what’s needed to keep safe.
This isn’t a hypothetical, academic supposition, either— we know it, because we’ve seen it. Both Union and Niskayuna ran in-person classes all last year, with way more stringent masking and distancing requirements and absolutely nobody vaccinated, and it worked. It kind of sucked— I would be very happy to never again have to deliver a lecture in a mask— but it worked. The students did what they needed to do, and we got through it; I don’t think we’ve given them enough credit for that. I’m not sure we can give them enough credit for that.
Given that experience, I’m confident that they’ll be able to do what’s needed to get through this year, too. Especially as we’ll be asking them to do a bit less thanks to vaccines and a better understanding of Covid more generally. It’s not a sure thing, because nothing ever is, but I do think it can work.
Kids are both adaptable and resilient. Back at the start of The Pip’s baseball season, when the league was still requiring everyone to be masked even though we were outside, the kids were way better about mask-wearing than the adults. Some of them stayed masked all the way to the end. The day camp that my kids go to in the summer is requiring masks, and both SteelyKid and The Pip are perfectly fine with it. It’s just not a major trauma for them and their friends, despite the histrionic claims of some adults.
So, yeah, I’m a little nervous about this coming year, particularly with regard to The Pip (who’s still not vaccine-eligible). But I don’t feel like we’re setting ourselves up for disaster, thanks to sensible leadership at the state and local levels, reasonable behavior from our communities more generally, and most of all our students, who have already demonstrated more ability to behave in a mature and responsible manner than a lot of adults out there. I’d be happier if the messaging were handled a little better at all levels, and especially if the FDA would show a little urgency and approve the goddamn vaccine for younger kids, already. But having made it through last year, there’s no reason to think we can’t handle this one.
I’m not sure this really counts as upbeat and inspirational, but if you’d like more in this vein, you can click this button to get it sent to your inbox:
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If you’d like to berate me for being overly optimistic, well, I’d be happier if you didn’t, but that’s clearly not going to carry much weight, so I’ll leave the comments open.