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Poll results

As the start of the school year approaches, Central Massachusetts school administrators are under pressure to come up with reopening plans matching student learning needs with parental concerns, all the while prioritizing the health and safety of their communities. Cities and towns are caught in a struggle between the desire to hold classes in-person while juggling the threat of an impending COVID-19 resurgence.

 

Should public schools reopen in-person this fall?
Yes, I'm not worried about coronavirus' impact on my community. (20%, 64 VOTES)
Yes, even though I'm worried about COVID, I don't have an alternative option for child care. (6%, 19 VOTES)
Yes, as long as officials go back to online-only if cases spike. (35%, 113 VOTES)
No, it's not safe as coronavirus cases are already on the rise again. (40%, 129 VOTES)
Poll Description

As the start of the school year approaches, Central Massachusetts school administrators are under pressure to come up with reopening plans matching student learning needs with parental concerns, all the while prioritizing the health and safety of their communities. Cities and towns are caught in a struggle between the desire to hold classes in-person while juggling the threat of an impending COVID-19 resurgence.

 

  • 325 Votes
  • 4 Comments
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4 Comments

  • August 5, 2020
    I think the high school should do all remote learning. They are much more able to do it than the younger children. Put the middle school in the high school to spread out class size, and move the other students around so they have smaller class size, one bus trip, and the experience of in person teaching.
  • August 4, 2020
    Schools should fully re-open. Businesses should fully re-open. If you really need to do something, you'll always find a way to do it. If you don't want to do something, you'll always come up with excuses to not do it. Your choices or preferences aside, we should consider the reality and the facts that a society, like any organism, large or small, needs to move and stay active to survive. That's the law of nature. In other words, it needs to live! Being locked down and paralyzed, a society will decay and die. We need to go back to living and we should simply take the necessary measures to accommodate the new realities. If we need to ensure social distancing, for example, we should just do so. If we need to do something to insulate the more vulnerable to protect them, we should do so. Let's put all the necessary mitigation in place and go on living. If we quit before we tried to conquer our environment, built homes to protect ourselves from the environment, tamed fire and animals or if we quit exploring the oceans just because we were not willing to build a boat or quit exploring space just because we were not willing to build a rocket, where would we be now, as a society or as a species? Let's not be timid losers, but remember that we, as a species, have survived and thrived, most likely because we have been bold and courageous winners.
  • August 4, 2020

    The first response should have been worded differently. Yes, schools should reopen in the fall, but that doesn't mean that those who answer "yes" are "not worried about coronavirus' impact" on their community. Everyone, of course, is worried about coronavirus' impact, but young people rarely catch COVID-19 and there's no evidence that they transmit it to adults. Yes, there's risk. But if restaurant workers can wait tables, shouldn't teachers be able to teach in a classroom? If the education of our children is as important as educators say it is, we need to get our children back in the classroom. (Editor's note: Children under age 18 do contract COVID-19, although at lower rates than the rest of the population; they accounted for about 7% of U.S. cases through the end of July, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Children do transmit the disease to adults, and there is evidence of that, according to KFF, although the exact frequency and extent of that transmission still needs further research.)

  • August 4, 2020

    There should be another option - No, since we are likely going to have to go back online at some point anyway, I'd rather schools focus efforts on creating quality online education.