Back-to-normal classes an elusive goal
Major strides made but infection rates, vaccine efficacy still factors
With most teachers vaccinated, coronavirus cases dropping and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) loosening up social distancing requirements for schools, many are hopeful that learning can soon return to the way it was in pre-pandemic times.
State Department of Health officials say they are reviewing amended guidance published by the CDC on Friday that indicates students can be safely seated 3 feet apart, rather than the previously recommended 6-foot space between seats, allowing districts greater flexibility as they map out a plan to bring more students into school.
But how soon Capital Region students can return to the classroom full time depends on a number of variables, including county COVID -19 infection rates, new data about the efficacy of the vaccine, and students’ ages, officials said.
“We are going through the guidance that the CDC put forth. They have multiple different zones, or I shouldn’t say zones, but color-coding of low transmission, moderate, substantial transmission, high transmission,” state Department of Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said in a phone call with reporters on Monday.
The CDC guidance allows elementary students to be seated 3 feet apart in any zone. On the secondary level students in areas with high infection rates can sit 3 feet apart if they are isolated in cohorts or pods. Students who cannot be “cohorted” must be seated at least 6 feet apart.
Every county in the wider Capital Region — like most others in New York state — is categorized by the CDC as having a high risk of infection.
State officials are advising school districts to wait for county health departments to advise them. Counties are waiting for the state to adapt the CDC guidance for New York’s unique needs.
“We can’t just make it happen overnight, we have to wait to get guidance,” Albany County Executive Dan Mccoy said at a press briefing last week. “To the parents who watch this, educate yourself, take a deep breath, don’t get caught in the hype.”
In the Capital Region, most school districts have been providing the option of full-time inperson
education to elementary students and some middle and high school students with special needs. Still, many families have elected to keep their children home this year.
Most middle and high school students in the region are attending school on a part-time basis, with a hybrid of remote and in-person instruction. Some larger districts, like Albany and Schenectady, have had the majority of middle and high school students fully remote since last March.
Both districts have begun to bring struggling students into the classroom for more support and hope to have most students in school at least one day a week by the end of April.
Suburban school districts like Guilderland, which has offered a hybrid instructional program to middle and high school students since February, have started bringing high school students needing more support into the classroom full time.
On Monday, parents across the state gathered at the Capitol to pressure health officials to adapt the CDC guidance and support schools in bringing students back full time.
A number of Hudson Valley districts have not provided any in-person instruction to students in any grades since last spring, which has created a mental health crisis, according to organizers from the new Bring Kids Back NY coalition.
Kids “were sent home with Chromebooks a year ago and hardly anyone has been checked on since then,” said organizer Kristen O’dell, a nurse practitioner and mother of three from Highland Falls, in Orange County.
In recent months, schools in some states have been disregarding the CDC guidelines, using 3 feet as their standard. Studies of what happened in some of them helped sway the agency, said Greta Massetti, who leads the CDC’S community interventions task force.
“We don’t really have the evidence that 6 feet is required in order to maintain low spread,” she said. Also, younger children are less likely to get seriously ill from the coronavirus and don’t seem to spread it as much as adults do, and “that allows us that confidence that that 3 feet of physical distance is safe.”