A New Third Choice About Schooling in Pandemic

So far, the only two choices that we’ve had have both been difficult and
ultimately unsatisfactory:

      1. Back to school with physical separation, ventilation, classes outdoors as
        much as practical, possibly face shields plus masks, reduced in-person
        schedule, and innumerable other precautions
      2. Do it by computer video e.g. Zoom

The first is more difficult than unsatisfactory, and the second is more
unsatisfactory than difficult. But neither is a shoo-in, and for good reason.

So here’s a third option.

Let’s call it a Specific Mixture defined as follows:

      1. The baseline would be do it by computer video, but with a pivotal proviso:
        each student gets a one-on-one with the teacher at least once a week.
      2. That would start the semester, and within a month there would be a single
        day of coming to school, after extreme preparation, and each school
        breaking its students into subgroups coming on different days that week.
      3. Two weeks later based on the disease fallout of that one-day event the
        parties on the ground would decide the optimal next step for each school
        district. Which could be to step up the frequency of coming to school or
        not.

In this way the process would balance between coming back too fast or too slow.

A Nash Equilibrium.

This will surely be tested soon, or something very much like it.

Be at your best,

Bill