One of my sisters is back at school. The students are still doing online work from home, but the teachers are actually in their classrooms. They’re using #Zoom (a class-wide session in the morning and another one in the afternoon) and using some online curriculum in between.

The school district’s IT department is overloaded. They’re on “no overtime”, but they aren’t permitted to do anything or set anything up until administrators / managers decide what to do. Usually, that is shortly before it has to be implemented and deployed to all district schools.

The district is trying to use the pandemic restrictions as a way to save money, while the employee unions say “we still have to pay our bills, why shouldn’t you pay yours?” ... so there is a potential of a strike.

I get the impression that this district is one of the worst in the state (reason why my sister stays there ... the kids in the district got the short end of the stick and if no one fights to make things better, that will be lifelong).

The other sister that still works for the school system has not said whether her district is doing in-classroom or online learning. I know her district is also a financially poor district, with a high level of non-English-speaking households. I know they issued mobile hotspots to some households, but many other households still had no Internet service at home.