PASS — OR FAIL?
DELCO SCHOOL DISTRICTS MULL OPTIONS FOR REOPENING
As cases of coronavirus rise nationally, including in Pennsylvania, “Back to School” takes on a different meaning.
“It’s difficult enough to open a school year,” said Upper Darby superintendent Dan McGarry. “Now it’s even more complex.”
Local school district administrators have found that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to safely open schools that were shut down in March do to the pandemic, especially when you’re dealing with an area as densely populated as Delaware County, which has 15 public school districts plus a number of private and parochial schools. Each plan has to be approved by each school entity’s governing body (school board, Board of Directors or Trustees) and then submitted to the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE).
Each local school agency has to devise a plan that fits its specific community based on information from a number of sources.
“Right now we’re following guidance from the governor’s office, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Pennsylvania Department of Health and for Delaware County, the Chester County Department of Health is our health authority,” Garnet Valley Superintendent Marc Bertrando said. “A lot of our face-toface discussions and boots on the ground detail direction are coming from the Chester County Department of Health.”
The sheer volume of information is mind-numbing, even for highly educated individuals as superintendents, many of whom hold doctorate degrees. They’re not doing it alone. Many have designed teams that include faculty, staff, students and parents to weed through the vast amount of information.
In May, the federal Centers for Disease Control dedicated 15 pages as part of its interim guidance for schools and day camps.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education released a 13-page preliminary guidance for phased reopening for Pre-K to 12 schools on June 3. Those guidelines are expected to be updated this week, according to several superintendents.
“We may be highly educated, but we’re not medical professionals,” McGarry said. “What I’ve learned in my conversations is that this is an ever-changing virus and ever-changing information so we’re not sure that they even know the facts on how to handle it and we’re obligated to open up schools and educate kids. It’s just another example of what public schools do.”
— Upper Darby superintendent Dan McGarry
The American Academy of Pediatrics released an 11-page and nearly 6,000-word document on June 25 for guidance to reopening schools.
“We may be highly educated, but we’re not medical professionals,” McGarry said. “What I’ve learned in my conversations is that this is an ever-changing virus and ever-changing information so we’re not sure that they even know the facts on how to handle it and we’re obligated to open up schools and educate kids. It’s just another example of what public schools do.”
The plans have to be flexible with the changing nature of the virus. Fulltime, in-person instruction is the ideal model, but schools and school districts have to be ready if the situation changes and a return to remote learning is necessary. Garnet Valley superintendent Marc Bertrando likened the process to a quarterback following an NFL playbook with one major exception.
“We’re writing it as we go,” he said.
To navigate through this ever changing landscape, the superintendents from the 15 school districts in Delaware County have been meeting with representatives from the Chester County Department of Health and the Delaware County Intermediate Unit via zoom on a weekly basis for several months to disseminate the information and to exchange ideas.
“The superintendent’s meetings have been very helpful,” said Chichester Superintendent Dan Nerelli. “I think we’re all frustrated that everything has been left up to, not that people aren’t acceptable to talking, but it always the LEA’s (Local Education Agencies) decision and the pressure is to get the schools open because people know that if schools aren’t open it makes it that much harder for businesses to operate.”
Almost every school district has sent out surveys or held town halls via Zoom to see which way
only the community wants to go in terms of schools reopening. There are three basic options: A return to full, in-person instruction; a hybrid plan that combines inperson instruction with remote learning or full remote instruction.
One of the four plans Upper Darby intends to send to its school board calls a staggered approach called cohorts where groups of students receive a combination in-person and remote learning in two shifts, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The number of cohorts or groups varies at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Upper Darby has two cohorts at the elementary school level, four for middle school and three for high school.
“Our game plan at the elementary level is to get our elementary students as much as we can inperson, in particular our kindergarten students,” McGarry said. “Even with 5-to-6 feet of social distancing, we’ll be able to get our kindergarten program in for 80 percent of what they would normally do a comparable school setting.”
Most of the school districts in the county are in the final planning stages and expect to have plans to their respective school boards in the coming weeks. Many administrators will present a number of plans and it will be up to the school board or board of directors to choose which plan best fits that individual local education agency.
All of this is up to the school districts to decide. The Ridley School Board approved its reopening plan last Tuesday. The plan, which can be found the eBackpack link on the school district website (ridleysd.org) has targeted early August to be at “100 percent workplace operations,” which would indicate a return to full in-person instruction. Classes are expected to start on Sept. 1
Interboro expects to present its plans to the school board Tuesday or Wednesday. Upper Darby will send its plans to the school board on July 13, while Wallingford-Swarthmore will do so July 20. Haverford’s plan will be up for approval on July 23, Rose TreeMedia on July 25, Springfeld and William Penn on July 27, while Chichester and Garnet Valley will present its plans on July 28. PennDelco’s plan is expected to go before the school board in late July or early August.
Kenneth Gavin, a spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, wrote in an email that Catholic schools throughout the fivecounty area “will open on time in September, complete plans have not been finalized.”
Plans are to be posted on each school districts website as well
“We’re writing it as we go”
as its social media pages. Most plans concentrate on four areas of safety: Social distancing, masking, hygiene and screening (monitoring student and staff health).
Social distancing guidelines vary from 3-6 feet. That’s not easy in the age of cooperation learning, where tables have replaced the traditional rows of individual desks in many classrooms. A typical classroom of 30 may have to be reduced to between nine-14 students to accommodate social distancing guidelines. Staying socially distant on buses and in common areas like hallways and cafeterias also must be worked out.
Last week, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf announced that masks must be worn at all times if a school cannot adhere to social distancing guidelines. Trying to get students, especially younger students in elementary school, will be a challenge.
“I’m happy when I get to my office and I’m able to take my mask off,” Nerelli said. “I’m not one of those individuals that are comfortable wearing it all the time. Maybe I’m just not used to it yet.”
Cleaning is critical to limit the spread of the airborne virus. Students will be encouraged to wash their hands constantly, either with soap and water and hand sanitizer. High touch areas, basically every part of a school building as well as busses, will have to be cleaned and disinfected daily.
Screening several thousand students per day may be next to impossible. McGarry said his district plans to start with screening, but it may become untenable. Most of the plans call for selfscreening by families and staff.
All of these guidelines and recommendations come at a cost. More teachers may have to be hired to accommodate smaller classes and online learning. The custodial staffs may have to be increased to make sure the buildings and buses are safe. More buses may have to be added or more trips may have to be made to adhere to the two-student per seat and six-foot social distancing guidelines.
The AASA, the School Superintendents Association, and the Association of School Business Officials, estimates the cost of reopening for a mid-sized school district would be $486 per pupil. A midsized school district is described with 3,659 students, eight buildings, 183 classrooms, 329 staff members and 40 buses transporting at 25 percent capacity or
915 students to comply with social distancing regulations.
That’s an extra $1.7 million to the average district. The cost will be much greater for a school district like Upper Darby, the largest in the county and ninth-biggest in the state with between 12,500 and
13,000 students.
Absorbing those added cost will be difficult without state or federal help. Some money has been set aside for that. Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, $13.5 billion has been set aside for K-12 education through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. That’s less than one percent of the roughly $2 trillion stimulus package that was signed into law on March 27.
The funds are distributed from the state level and at least 90 percent of those funds must be allocated to school districts. State distribution is based on states’ and school districts’ proportional share of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I money for the most recent fiscal year and will be dispersed as sub grants to the local educational agencies.
The Pennsylvania Department of Education received $523.8 million in one-time emergency funds from the CARES Act in May. Another $3 billion in emergency education block grants have been set aside by the U.S. Department of Education. There are 500 public school districts in the Commonwealth.
“We’re making an effort to try to go one-to-one, which is a huge financial obligation, but we owe it to our public,” McGarry said. “We got through that first part, from March to the end of the school year. No matter what, our kids and our public are going to expect a much better opportunity than they had the second half of last year. Most superintendents feel the same way. It’s just how each one of us can deliver that the best way we can.”