MoCo Public Schools Adopt “Ring Around the Rosie” Plan to Maintain In-Person Attendance

ROCKVILLE, MD – The Montgomery County Board of Education (BOE) has announced its adoption of the “Ring Around the Rosie” Plan to decide whether to continue in-person learning in January after a brutal holiday season of record COVID cases.

“Science has eliminated the scourge of ignorance that caused millions of deaths in 14th century Europe, but we all know that vaccines can be a big bad ouchie. We’d rather fight this virus with fun and play,” said BOE President Brenda Wolff while introducing the plan. “Plus, everything will smell pretty.”

The 4-point Ring Around the Rosie Plan avoids difficult decisions about mandating vaccines, procuring tests, or distributing masks, and instead uses children’s natural joy to ward off infection. The points are:

1. Ring Around the Rosies
Turns school overcrowding into an asset – packed classrooms make it easy for children to simply grasp hands and skip in circles around their infected classmates.

2. Pocket Full of Posies
Students will get a living history lesson during a special day dedicated to using classroom craft materials to make beaked masks like the ones used by doctors during the Black Plague. Each child will be given a sachet of potpourri to put inside their homemade masks, just as doctors in the Middle Ages tried to ward off bubonic plague with dried flowers because they thought bad smells caused the disease, now known to have been carried by rats.

3. Ashes, Ashes
Although historical accounts differ on the meaning of this part of the rhyme, the BOE voted to endorse the “sneezing” interpretation over the “too many cremated bodies” interpretation so as not to scare the children. Students will be encouraged to reenact this part of the rhyme by breathing closely into each others’ faces.

4. We All Fall Down
The final part of the plan requires children to fall down dramatically at the end of the rhyme to play dead, with hopes the virus will think it won and slink off to find other victims.  

Should the Ring Around the Rosie Plan fail, BOE says they plan to implement the Tom Sawyer Policy where kids just ditch school and do whatever the hell they feel like.