Recommended? Or Ridiculous?

[LongJim]

My vote is ridiculous.

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"The spike in Omicron cases has sent school districts across the country into a panic, moving them to impose bizarre Covid mitigation measures such as forcing children to eat lunch, and teachers to take instruction, outside in frigid temperatures, while masked."

Common sense.  A rare commodity these days.

[MeanGreenTexan]

Being the husband of an elementary teacher, I think I can help offer a different point of view here (because I hear about it all the time):

Any good teacher who cares for their kids does not want to go virtual... at all.   Administration also does not want to do this.  I'm willing to bet most parents also don't want to go virtual again either.    However, hospitals are starting to fill up again with Covid patients.
So, desperate times call for desperate measures.

There are some wacky options out there that School districts are trying to utilize (like this weird one in Boston) to keep in-person education happening.   I assure you a lot of thought goes into it, and every teacher worth a damn in Boston would rather open their windows ALL THE WAY UP than go back home & try to teach virtually.

Granted, Omicron seems to be much less deadly than it's predecessors (normal for viruses to mutate in this way: increase communicability, decrease fatality, to provide itself the best chances of spreading & staying alive), it's still this new virus that we're unsure of.  And, the original (much more deadly) SARS-CoV-2 is still out there as well.  So we're not yet to the point of going back to normal.  Hopefully we can soon.   I'm hoping this latest surge of Omicron might be the last one, and we can start getting back to normal after this.

[LongJim]

Thanks for another perspective MGT.

[CaribbeanGreen]

Measures like that are likely very rare; I'm in education and don't know of any schools in North Texas doing anything similar; as far as closures/going virtual, that's obviously a last resort. Any closures this time are going to be more brief (barring anything unexpected and unfortunate) and are for a completely different reason than last go round. Staffing was a bear this year to begin with, and now with this variant we have schools that can't safely monitor students and teachers/staff being asked to cover and pick up slack that strains them beyond reasonable levels. Mesquite ISD announced closure til 1/20 today, and I expect similar short closures to follow, at least until this spike passes, to beef up staffing numbers. 

[untbowler]

Here in Central AR most districts have gone to virtual for the next week or 2 trying to get staff and students healthy and out of quarantine for proper staffing levels. Not likely they will go full time virtual again as they did in 2020. Let the spike crest and then watch the number plummet, or at least hope for it.