How are schools preparing in your country?
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)
Also to clarify, the school system in Croatia is extremely centralized - you can think of an entire country as being a single school district. So marching orders come from the top and the individual schools have some small leeway in implementation.
In my case it's São Paulo state.
There are a lot of guidelines on how to reopen but I'm not so sure about preparation.
Schools that choose to reopen (formerly September, but now delayed to October 8) can/should only receive up to a third of the students (which is BASED.) What they're gonna do to reduce their intake is unknown though. The assumption is students aren't gonna have the full 5 days of classes and instead are only gonna come in for a day or 2 after being split into 3 packs, but the state govt left that up to schools, and some say that parents will actually decide whether students go to school or not. In the second phase they'll supposedly up that to 70% and eventually everyone.
Distancing is also a guideline.
They've predicted classes might end at new year because of this late start, which is... unfortunate.
Masks will be obligatory.
Drinking fountains will be shut down (everyone needs to bring their own bottles and such).
They've shown this image but noone knows how they're gonna get the resources.
Teachers and students in groups of risk (i.e basically all the teachers, that happens when education is devalued) will stay in home... indefinitely, I guess.
There will also apparently be a 2-year recovery program until 2022, which is why they won't be rejecting anyone this year. (And if this program happens, I'm not sure if they're gonna reopen schools at all this year either.) I also remeber that someone from school said the results would be analyzed in a 'positive' manner, which seems to confirm that.
All in all, it's probably gonna depend on if the state govt actually holds up on their promises and what schools do otherwise.
Here in Sweden it depends a bit on the grade. My understanding is that the lower grades keep going much as per usual albeit with some changes to how e.g lunches are handled. The equivalent of high schools can decide for themselves if they are going to do distance teaching. Some more practically oriented schools and some outside the city centre where I live have decided to remain open whereas the ones in the city are closed. The reasoning is to reduce the amount of ppl in public transport.
If the kids are showing symptoms they should stay home, but if a sibling or other family member is sick they can still attend school (but should be extra cautious of symptoms). In essence the lower grades and preschools are BAU.
I imagine this is because the official position is that younger kids do not spread disease as much. While older kids have more contacts with more ppl and are thus more likely to be spreading the disease.