Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Yeah the real thing that shot budgets to hell is the shortfalls in the state budgets. California did some voodoo with its budget that some cuts won't kick in unless federal dollars don't come through. Then schools are going to take it on the chin. Already, the Cal States are talking about furloughs and layoffs. Nothing finalized yet, but my wife and I are playing the "what will we do if" game.

Then comes what NC is talking about. Districts that weren't already 1-to-1 device for students (like mine) had to go out to find new computers. We're going to be giving devices to everyone even if families already have computers so we can control apps used for school and tech support when things go wrong. We're probably buying Chromebooks, which are extremely cheap for computers, but that cost adds up. Then we have to do hotspots for families that don't have internet. We already got a bunch in the Spring, but we are going to have to reassess.

When schools restart (as of right now in January for my district) schools are going to need more custodians to handle the levels of cleaning we'll need. My district was talking about hiring one or two more people per site. That's going to be around $130,000 without accounting for benefits (assuming 10 extra people are hired for 6 months at a full time rate with some rounding). And we have to buy masks, shields, extra desks, dividers, chairs, more sanitizer and the list goes on.

 

It's time for Trump administration doctors to speak up — whatever the consequences

 

under normal conditions the first day of school here would have been August 11th. We have early start in Florida. Right now a lot of districts are in the process of pushing that start date back two weeks to August 25th.

 

Randy Rainbow is a national treasure.

Words fail me.

 

This
Is
Gonna
End
Real
Soon

Dumb
As
Blind
Oxen

 

I was surprised when I started reading about late starts. Aug. 10 or 11 is what I had thought it would be.

 

Biden’s alma mater!!!!

 

Trumpist governors cooking the books, Chapter 1,894,561.

Florida’s hidden data skews COVID-19 test results

 

This should terrify every administrator in higher ed. Especially those at large (generally public) universities. One big party can shut the whole in-person operation down. Hard to tell, but at UC Berkeley, room and board look comparable to athletics revenue, which amounted to $94 million in FY 19. For a semester, that's tens of millions gone if there are no students on campus.