We had our first staff meeting of the 2020/2021 school year this afternoon — via Zoom. I think that’s fairly indicative of what the year will be like.

What do we know now? We know what our various schedules will look like. We have four possibilities:

1. Remote learning 100% — no days in the school.
2. In-person learning 25% of the time — every kid comes to school one day a week, with the other days being online-only. (Reduces class sizes to about 7 per period.)
3. In-person learning 50% of the time — every kid comes to school twice a week, with the other days being online-only.
4. Full-time in-person learning.

But we’ve known about these possibilities for weeks now. What exactly will we be doing? We’re supposed to find out 10 August — the first day teachers head back for in-school work days. If we go with option 1, which would be the sensible option given how awful our state if faring because of the high proportion of anti-maskers in our lovely red state, all our “getting rooms ready” time will be for nothing. No big deal — more planning time.

Still, there’s a lot more behind the scenes than I’d really thought about. What about kids who would otherwise be suspended? If we’re in scenario 2, a three-day suspension would mean in reality three-week suspension. “We’re just not going to do that if we can at all avoid it,” our principal said. That was a scenario that I’d never considered, though.

I expect in the coming weeks, we’ll be encountering much we didn’t expect, no matter what our schooling looks like.