Sunday Musings
First off, a little mini rant.
1) What do small business owners not understand about the PPP money and how to avoid this being a loan they have to pay back? All the news articles I read note their conundrum about how they don't know how to use this if their business is closed or having only limited hours and that they hope the time frame is extended or they don't know how they will ever be able to pay the loan back.
Maybe I'm missing something but it seems a pretty straightforward program that was meant to put money in employees' pockets for this 8 week period, whether or not they were doing actual work. This was a way to avoid unemployment, to keep employees connected to their workplace, and to help people pay expenses like rent and food.
As much as small businesses would like other aid to help them in the long term, this program wasn't intended to do this (although having government finance your payroll plus 50% for utilities and rent and all is nothing to complain about). Yes, small businesses probably need other aid for more long term viability, but the PPP seems pretty easy to understand and rather than lament how they would rather use this money, these businesses should keep employees on payroll for 8 weeks (for free!), lessen the burden on unemployment, and help their workers have money in their pockets.
2) On the economy, I (and others) continue to puzzle over the rally in the stock market since it's low in March. As much as everyone wants to "get back to normal" and be optimistic, 30 million unemployed and a not solved virus and huge systemic problems that will not just go away all portend a prolonged financial struggle. Crazy to see stock values keep rising.
3) While I have been impressed with Vermont government's actions in this crisis, and the Governor has been such a good leader that many are wondering why we bother even having a gubernatorial election this year, it seems as they "open the spigot" they could figure out how to be clearer with directions. I continue to be confused with the 10 person gathering directive. Does this mean you can have close gatherings with 10 or less? It seems obvious that any gathering of any size still means 6 foot physical distancing. But if that's the case, then why 10 people? If everyone is 6 ft or more apart, why not 20 or 30, or 50?
It was nice to see the opening for recreation and informal sporting activities. But then when asked if it was okay to play 3 v 3 or 5 v 5 basketball, the answer was incredibly vague and seemed to focus on being non-contact athletics. So as long as you never foul, it's okay to play? Or only with zone defense or by not covering anyone closely? Maybe they don't know anything about basketball, but that seemed the clearest question for a clear answer--I think the answer is no, you can't play sports like basketball or soccer that involve defensive players covering offensive players since that would be closer than 6 ft. But you can play related games like around the world or horse that allows you to stay physically distant.
I think the main point continues to be about physical distance (which seems to have been the point all along) and anything that is "opening up" is about allowing people to be out and about as long as they keep this distance (and probably wear masks). But then this mostly seems like the rules all along, so I'm not totally clear how things have changed--making the physical distance edict the main point, with the new openings as the minor point, might help clarify what we are being asked to continue to avoid a resurgence of contagion.
That off my chest, on to my realization that we need to get on top of end of year things for school. I've felt successful at taking things in stride and encouraging us to focus on what is right in front of us and not get ahead of ourselves, but I just realized what is now pretty close to right in front of us is portfolios, graduation and end of year celebrations. Graduation is 3 weeks from today and now that has been decided we can't do any large gatherings, we need to figure out something that can be hopefully meaningful.
It could be fun and manageable to do a drive-in like, tailgater graduation, and that would be easy to do with social distancing, but I think that would violate the 10 person rule? If we can't get everyone together, is it better to do something at the same time (which seems to mean an on-line meeting) or to do something more personal where some configuration of teachers is in the same place as some configuration of students and their families. One idea I thought of was sending out a teacher to each of our senior's house and at the time scheduled for graduation, we all do our individual graduation ceremony live at each kid's house. I guess we could try to video connect these individual events (kind of hard to be present with the event at your house and watch those going on elsewhere).
I am presuming I'm not giving a big graduation speech in whatever forum we use. I can't imagine anyone wanting to sit through a long speech or ceremony if not in the same physical space. I had thought this year would be some kind of swan song, farewell speech for me, but I think that is off the table now, which at the moment mostly a relief.
But there is just a few weeks to plan graduation and write whatever words should accompany that, to get the Compass Journal written and printed, to determine some hopefully meaningful end of year celebration for all the students, to arrange portfolio roundtables for all, and to plan the end of year teacher meetings after school ends. All of this is pretty manageable in a normal year, but the curve ball of the physical distancing and deciding what formats to use and what to include from the past, what to abandon and what new to add all makes things just a little harder.
I often forget in these times that all this is far from my burden to carry and our incredible teachers will carry the ball for much of this and already probably have some of this in order in their own head. So I will take a few breaths, remember this is the weekend and time for distancing from work, and get back to this tomorrow, as we enter week 2 of Project Week and my new group's investigation of How Things Work.
1) What do small business owners not understand about the PPP money and how to avoid this being a loan they have to pay back? All the news articles I read note their conundrum about how they don't know how to use this if their business is closed or having only limited hours and that they hope the time frame is extended or they don't know how they will ever be able to pay the loan back.
Maybe I'm missing something but it seems a pretty straightforward program that was meant to put money in employees' pockets for this 8 week period, whether or not they were doing actual work. This was a way to avoid unemployment, to keep employees connected to their workplace, and to help people pay expenses like rent and food.
As much as small businesses would like other aid to help them in the long term, this program wasn't intended to do this (although having government finance your payroll plus 50% for utilities and rent and all is nothing to complain about). Yes, small businesses probably need other aid for more long term viability, but the PPP seems pretty easy to understand and rather than lament how they would rather use this money, these businesses should keep employees on payroll for 8 weeks (for free!), lessen the burden on unemployment, and help their workers have money in their pockets.
2) On the economy, I (and others) continue to puzzle over the rally in the stock market since it's low in March. As much as everyone wants to "get back to normal" and be optimistic, 30 million unemployed and a not solved virus and huge systemic problems that will not just go away all portend a prolonged financial struggle. Crazy to see stock values keep rising.
3) While I have been impressed with Vermont government's actions in this crisis, and the Governor has been such a good leader that many are wondering why we bother even having a gubernatorial election this year, it seems as they "open the spigot" they could figure out how to be clearer with directions. I continue to be confused with the 10 person gathering directive. Does this mean you can have close gatherings with 10 or less? It seems obvious that any gathering of any size still means 6 foot physical distancing. But if that's the case, then why 10 people? If everyone is 6 ft or more apart, why not 20 or 30, or 50?
It was nice to see the opening for recreation and informal sporting activities. But then when asked if it was okay to play 3 v 3 or 5 v 5 basketball, the answer was incredibly vague and seemed to focus on being non-contact athletics. So as long as you never foul, it's okay to play? Or only with zone defense or by not covering anyone closely? Maybe they don't know anything about basketball, but that seemed the clearest question for a clear answer--I think the answer is no, you can't play sports like basketball or soccer that involve defensive players covering offensive players since that would be closer than 6 ft. But you can play related games like around the world or horse that allows you to stay physically distant.
I think the main point continues to be about physical distance (which seems to have been the point all along) and anything that is "opening up" is about allowing people to be out and about as long as they keep this distance (and probably wear masks). But then this mostly seems like the rules all along, so I'm not totally clear how things have changed--making the physical distance edict the main point, with the new openings as the minor point, might help clarify what we are being asked to continue to avoid a resurgence of contagion.
That off my chest, on to my realization that we need to get on top of end of year things for school. I've felt successful at taking things in stride and encouraging us to focus on what is right in front of us and not get ahead of ourselves, but I just realized what is now pretty close to right in front of us is portfolios, graduation and end of year celebrations. Graduation is 3 weeks from today and now that has been decided we can't do any large gatherings, we need to figure out something that can be hopefully meaningful.
It could be fun and manageable to do a drive-in like, tailgater graduation, and that would be easy to do with social distancing, but I think that would violate the 10 person rule? If we can't get everyone together, is it better to do something at the same time (which seems to mean an on-line meeting) or to do something more personal where some configuration of teachers is in the same place as some configuration of students and their families. One idea I thought of was sending out a teacher to each of our senior's house and at the time scheduled for graduation, we all do our individual graduation ceremony live at each kid's house. I guess we could try to video connect these individual events (kind of hard to be present with the event at your house and watch those going on elsewhere).
I am presuming I'm not giving a big graduation speech in whatever forum we use. I can't imagine anyone wanting to sit through a long speech or ceremony if not in the same physical space. I had thought this year would be some kind of swan song, farewell speech for me, but I think that is off the table now, which at the moment mostly a relief.
But there is just a few weeks to plan graduation and write whatever words should accompany that, to get the Compass Journal written and printed, to determine some hopefully meaningful end of year celebration for all the students, to arrange portfolio roundtables for all, and to plan the end of year teacher meetings after school ends. All of this is pretty manageable in a normal year, but the curve ball of the physical distancing and deciding what formats to use and what to include from the past, what to abandon and what new to add all makes things just a little harder.
I often forget in these times that all this is far from my burden to carry and our incredible teachers will carry the ball for much of this and already probably have some of this in order in their own head. So I will take a few breaths, remember this is the weekend and time for distancing from work, and get back to this tomorrow, as we enter week 2 of Project Week and my new group's investigation of How Things Work.
Comments
Post a Comment