Omicron Surge Leaves Families and Schools Scrambling

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 10 January 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As the surge of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to intensify, some Bay Area schools have been closing or shifting to remote learning. In San Francisco and Oakland, hundreds of teachers and aides called in sick for in-person classes last week to protest what they say are unsafe work conditions. Meanwhile, many parents are stumped about how best to protect their children from being infected – especially those of kids too young to be vaccinated – as hospitalizations of young people rise across the state. We’ll talk about how schools and families are coping with the omicron crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQWED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, holding their annual Summer Institute for educators from June 24 through 26th.
0:09.1	More information at landmark.edu slash LCSI.
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0:30.1	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:46.3	You know what no one likes?
0:47.7	A complex situation with no easy, fully satisfying answer.
0:51.4	And that's what we have in our schools right now amidst the Omicron surge.
0:55.5	We can test. We can ensure everyone wears a higher quality mask. But with this variant of the
1:00.2	virus, transmission happens where people gather. How do you fully protect teachers, students,
1:05.2	and all of their families while doing in-person learning? You can't. And yet, the schools are
1:10.0	open, even as waves of kids test positive or have to quarantine.
1:13.9	So today, we're going to talk about what's happening on the ground in different Bay Area
1:17.3	school districts and dig into the ethics of this experiment in trying to recreate some
1:21.5	kind of normalcy in these strange times.
1:24.2	That's next after this news.
1:39.3	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. If you're a parent, a teacher, a student, you work at a school, you work with people who have kids in school, I probably don't need to tell you.
	...

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