It's hard to believe that yesterday was the last day of school (for 4 of the kids). After living through a global pandemic with all schools switching to zoom school in March of 2020 until the end of that school year, we weren't expecting the in person school to last more than a few weeks. We were pleasantly surprised that the schools only switched to zoom school for a week after Succos. Individual classes did have to go through numerous quarantines where they were home for a week or two on zoom, but it only happened a few classes at a time.
At one point or another all of our four school aged kids had to go on zoom for a week or so when their class was exposed to someone with COVID. The first class to quarantine was Yocheved's class. We got the following text from the school on Wednesday, October 21:
"Good morning. A student in 3rd grade in Rowshanshad/Purec has tested positive for Covid. Her rapid was negative and now her PCR is positive. This happens in 3% of cases. The class now needs to quarantine for 14 days. The student has been sent home and the rest of the class will now need to be picked up. Please arrange for your daughter to be picked up and the guard will notify us when you have arrived. Each girl will be sent home with a Chromebook and their Zoom classes will begin tomorrow AM."
This text came the week Andy went to Nashville to be with his father when he was having knee replacement surgery. Andy was already at the airport on his way home when Shira called to say she was on the way to pick up Yocheved. Shira was also in the middle of working on The Advertiser. Never a dull moment!
The next quarantine came at the beginning of November, on a Sunday night we were informed that students in 4th and 6th grade tested positive and that both grades would be closed the following day until the school had a chance to assess the situation. Chavi's class ended up quarantining for fourteen days but the counting began from the last exposure to the girl which was the week before, so they only missed a week of in person school starting a few days after Yocheved returned to school.
There was also the time when two of our girls came downstairs in the morning with a bad cold, which covered several COVID symptoms that required us to test them. Since they needed to be tested, that meant the other kids couldn't go to school. We ended up getting a bunch of us with various symptoms tested and everyone stayed home. We were very lucky that the PCR tests came back less than 24 hours later and the next day happened to be a late start due to bad weather. All the kids were able to go to school with their carpools, minus one girl who still felt sick.
We learned to be flexible this year and understand that plans could change at the drop of a hat. We are very fortunate that we are both able to work from home and having kids home for fourteen days at a time, sometimes only finding out the Sunday night before they were to be home became routine for us.
We're looking forward to all of our kids going to camp this summer (Chavi will be working at a camp). We're hopeful that things will continue to return to normal and by next year the school year will be much more normal hopefully without masks!
Chavi got her second vaccine last night, and we're waiting for the rest of the family to be eligible. Have a great summer!