Learning on the fly
With no letup in COVID-19, schools to try distance learning
PROVIDENCE — With an overnight spike in the COVID-19 caseload, Gov. Gina Raimondo led the state’s shuttered school districts into uncharted territory Wednesday, ordering them to shift to “distance learning” while they remain closed for at least two more weeks, probably longer.
Addressing reporters at the daily COVID-19 press briefing, Raimondo acknowledged that the path forward for teachers and students will likely come with some bumps, but they must prepare for at-home lessons beginning on Monday and continuing through at least April 3.
“This was a tough decision and it will be tough to execute,” the governor said. “It’s never been done before anywhere in America, not just anywhere in Rhode Island.”
The extended school shutdown came as RI Department of Health Director Nicole Alexander Scott reported that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases had jumped to 33 from the day before, an increase of 10 cases among people who were tested just a day or two earlier.
“We’re not even a little bit surprised,” Raimondo said, adding that the figures released today might show a similar leap. “Everything we’re doing is to try to slow the rate of growth.”
Alexander Scott said the new COVID-19 patients ranged in age from their 20s to their 70s, four of whom are hospitalized, though one of them was expected to be discharged by today. Seven were women and three men, all of whom had a history of having traveled abroad recently to various locations, including Iceland, Amsterdam, Spain, France and the United Kingdom.
Tests results are pending on 334 other individuals the state considers at high-risk, including people who are in hospitals, nursing homes and other congregate-care settings, and EMS workers. Tests on some 540 individuals have been negative for COVID-19, and about 2,500
Rhode Islanders are presently home-quarantined while they self-monitor for symptoms.
But the health director continues to stress that officials don’t have a good bead of the extent of coronavirus in the general population because there are insufficient test kits to embark on a broad campaign of testing, even for people showing possible symptoms of coronavirus.
That’s one reason Raimondo sounded a ominous note of caution on whether schools would reopen anytime soon. She said she isn’t ready to predict how long it might be before health officials can say the spread of the disease has peaked or if it’s receding.
“I think its very unlikely,” she said, when asked whether schools would reopen the Monday after April 3, a Friday. “We’re taking it a day at a time,” the governor said.
Saying she didn’t want to sugarcoat the challenges ahead for educators and students, Raimondo acknowledged that all of the kinks haven’t been ironed out the the so-called distance learning rollout. Not all students, particularly those from low-income families, have computers or highspeed internet at home – key components of online learning capacity. Some need extra help with English.
But Raimondo said
she
would
look
to collaborate with the teacher’s unions, teachers and principals to provide them with the support they need to get the job done. She pointed out that not all learning is tech-based and suggested at one point that students could pick up regular homework assignments at the same locations where the districts are serving up to-go meals that children would normally receive in school.
Education Commissioner Angelica Infante Green, who also addressed reporters Wednesday, said she was working with various companies, including Cox Communications, to close the hardware gap for families that need support.
“Cox reached out to us today,” she said, adding that the company “will support us in getting computers and wi-fi into the homes.”
Public K-12 schools were already shut down this week in what has been portrayed as a pushed-ahead “April” vacation, with no classroom component. In the meantime, school districts were instructed to present to Infante Green plans for distance learning by the end of the day today.
Raimondo admonished districts that hadn’t yet delivered their plans to honor the deadline. She didn’t say who they were, but she indicated there was more than one with plans still in the pipeline.
The governor said she might not have pushed for a distance learning plan had teachers and principals not expressed a firm desire to move forward with it.
“Many states have just thrown in the towel, they have said no more learning for the rest of the year,” Raimondo said. “But I’m not willing to throw in the towel because I think some learning is better than no learning.”
But Raimondo’s strongest admonition on the rollout of distance learning was directed not at educators, but students. She said the upcoming two weeks mean school buildings are closed, but school is still in session. After two weeks, the governor said, the players in the at-home learning plan will surely have learned what’s working, what’s not, and make adjustments if necessary.
Now is the time, she said, for families to create a structured environment that’s conducive to learning and be prepared to do classwork.
“This is not two weeks of vacation,” she said. “This is learning from home, spending as much effort as if you were in school.”
Ultimately, she said, the learn-at-home plan is designed to keep classrooms alive for the year, protect students and staff, and to slow down the spread of the virus so a peak of infection doesn’t overwhelm the health care infrastructure at at once.
“We’re going to learn a lot in the next two weeks,” she said. “This is the right step to take at this point in time to have some semblance of continuity in education.”