A thread on what I’m hearing from teachers during Omicron.
@SFUnified during #Omicron… If you want to know what it’s like in classrooms, ask people who work there, not folks who do press conferences. (This teacher’s story is shared with permission. I will share parent and students stories in later threads.) @UESF
A thread. 🧵 1/
Message received today, 1/21/22 at 11:39 am
“Just to let you know what it looks like on the ground right now:
This morning, 3rd positive case in 2 weeks. I identify close contacts, my admin comes by and says, “Maybe it was a false positive.” /2
No close contact children have been isolated or removed from my room. I can’t get the union on the phone. I’ll be sending close contact kids to the office now. (After waiting on the “slow process” – says our secretary – who is an amazing human – for 3 hours.) 3/
“Guaranteed our horrible admin is chasing down this false positive narrative. On Wednesday he fed us the “COVID is endemic, pandemic is over” line at staff meeting. 4/
“My family JUST lost a fully vaccinated family member to Omicron. I’m livid. 5/
“I want to add: The close contacts stayed in my room all day. (We went outside for the rest of the day). When I asked admin, admin told me that our nurse said the close contacts could stay with the class, that the nurse said they were “not contagious yet.” 6/
“I spoke with our nurse after school. She was not consulted about anything except the vaccination status of the kids. 7/
“It was admin and not the nurse who decided that the close contacts could stay with the class with no input from the nurse. 8/
“It was never said that “they were not contagious yet”. That was our admin’s (not a doctor) reasoning. (Our admin is a habitual liar but this one really makes me mad.) 9/
“The nurse told me that it is now a site-based decision whether close contacts isolate or stay in their classrooms to await pickup, and at our site that decision was being made by admin, not medical staff. 10/
“The retreat of policy is confusing for teachers, and leaves medical decisions in the hands of principals who are motivated to keep attendance high and everything running “as normal.” 11/
“The nurse told me that isolation rooms have been decommissioned. This seems significant because at the end of the day, one of the close contacts who stayed with the class until mom could get there many hours later was discovered to be running a fever as he left. 13/
“Also mom was feeling unwell. Also apparently clusters are not a thing anymore? 14/
“There are lots of non-classroom, higher level people who are bored with COVID. DPH messaging + evolving(?) SFUSD policy leaves children and staff at the mercy of these people. 15/
“2,672 people died yesterday of COVID in the US. And although those deaths are not in San Francisco, #LongCovid can be debilitating not to mention expensive. 16/
“As you know, we need full implementation of the Roadmap to Recovery and I would be grateful for tips on how to help get that going.”
Fin/ 😢
