Primarily non-US, as there's been a lot of discussion for various places in the States.

In my country (Croatia, EU), nobody knows anything, including the government, and the school year starts in three weeks. With the govt change this summer, and the new ministers enjoying their summer vacations, they only created a "task force" last week, which only met today for a few hours and concluded "there are challenges ahead". The minister in charge "thinks" schools will start normally, and "thinks" masks won't be required, with no straight answers or plans.

Teacher associations, individuals, parent groups have been calling for development of some kind of strategy for weeks (as a tourism-powered 2nd wave hit us), but there doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency on the part of govt.

This leaves parents (we'e gor one kid in primary school, other in kindergarten) in total fog, there's no way to prepare. Our family is better placed to handle this due to grandparents around to help and flexible schedule (self employed), but the online school from this spring was a disaster and I don't see a chance of the fall doing any better.

Even with preparations it would be hard, right now looks like it's going to be a disaster.

How is your country (not) coping with these challenges?

(edited to clarify the school year start)

My feelings are a bit mixed as there are painful consequences on both sides of the equation. However, I ultimately feel that schools in their current set up cannot work in the current environment and shouldn't be re-opened. The likelihood of the virus spreading and killing grandparents, parents, and teachers is guaranteed. But I feel like the US has to address the negative consequences of kids staying at home. What that would look like, I'm not 100% sure. I don't even think you can apply a set of guidelines that would fit every situation out there.

Some things that I think would work in some areas:

• Open air schools
• Cafeteria food delivery to students on free, or reduced lunch.
• School-provided internet hot spots (I think this is being provided for already in some places)
• Traveling teachers- teachers providing some sort of in-person check ups on students, especially those that are at-risk.
• Schools move towards being open in the Spring, Summer, and partial Fall, with Winter break replacing Summer break.
• Schools partially re-open, with 1/5th the students coming in on one day a week.

Would really be interested in hearing the thoughts and ideas of others on this topic. Especially the people who work in the education field.

People like me are why I believe the slippery slope is a fact, not a fallacy...

I'm asking this in the context of a school project mainly because of 2 things:

1: 2 of the questions of the project are about main and secondary characters and their physical and psychological characteristics, so the book is gonna require those unless I'm misinterpreting those questions.

2: The project is for March 12th so something like 1984 with 300+ pages is probably too long. (Although there are probably many technicalities to blur this, like how much text there is in a page and the actual amount of pages I can read in a given time and how much time can I dedicate to reading the damn book.)

Ok I'll start:

Brazil: here the schools are split between the fundamental level, which is 1-9th grade, which is then subdivided onto fundamental I and II, which range from 1-5th (ages 6-11) and 6-9th grades (ages 11-15) respectively. Then we have 'medium' level ("Ensino Médio") which goes from 10th-12th grade, and then we have a national test called ENEM, where everyone takes a test to be able to enroll in the many colleges/universities which accept it, where you then reach 'superior' class and take technical courses and the like.

Class goes from 7-12:20 Am for fundamental II and 1-5:20 pm for fundamental I. This is because each day is divided into six periods of 50 minutes (+a 20 minute break, like in most places) for the sake of making subject distribution easier.

There are 8 subjects in fundamental class, Portuguese (grammar), math, geography, history, science, physical education, English (still mostly grammar) and arts. (Unsurprisingly it's more about culture & music than how to draw)
In 'medium' class, 3 more subjects are added, which are biology, physics and chemistry.

Funding for education is reserved for the states to decide, although it usually goes from 15-25% of total tax revenue.