So, my kids are going back to in-person school in a couple weeks. I wanted to say something because folks in the Twin Cities were asking me about my choices when we first got the option. I kept them in virtual school at first. And now I'm changing my mind and here's why ...

There are two big factors that affected this decision:
1) Teachers and staff are getting vaccinated faster than I had feared. There's no centralized way to find this out for the district, but we talked to our teachers and principals and both schools have covered all who want it.

2) The CDC put out a clear and evidence based set of guidelines and MPS was doing better on all of that than I had feared. The county and the state are well within the Yellow zone. My girls' schools are following the guidelines (for the most part ... more on that in a second).

The biggest thing I was worried about in those guidelines was ventilation. We have a bunch of old schools. The district is not updating the buildings' central HVAC systems. BUT they have distributed in-room air filtration units to every class. And that's in line with CDC recs.

The other thing that's come up in our communication with schools post-other kids going back ... is distancing. Some schools just aren't able to distance kids within a classroom. One of our girls' schools can. The other not. BUT ...

The one that hasn't been able to maintain 3-6 ft distancing in the classroom is stringently following CDC guidelines on podding/cohorting the rooms -- separating classrooms from one another so contact tracing is easier and an outbreak can't spread through the building.

Also: There's no way in hell I'm putting either one of them on a bus.

What hasn't changed is this: There's still no right answer to whether you should send your kids back in-person. And I've also become more aware that the variables are going to differ depending on the specifics of the school -- not just the district.

For instance: CDC recommendations really tout the idea of regular asymptomatic testing as a "better than baseline" step a school can take that will improve safety. One of my daughter's schools is making that available. The other isn't.

Also, I don't think it's reasonable to think of this choice as The One Time I Will Make This Choice. (I mean, lol, it already isn't.) But I now have CDC metrics to watch in the population (independent of pressures on my local government) and those will affect future choices.

Finally: From everything I've seen on video links and heard from my girls' teachers (one of whom was very much against going back initially) the classroom has been a good environment for kids, even with safety measures in place.