Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
TEXAS, California cautious on schools.
Insistence on classroom learning seen as too risky as virus cases surge
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas on Friday gave public schools permission to keep campuses closed for more than 5 million students well into the fall as districts across the country struggle to make final plans on whether and how to open schools for the 2020-21 academic year
California also issued strict guidance that makes it unlikely that many schools will resume in-person instruction this fall, raising the likelihood of empty classrooms in the country’s two biggest states despite President Donald Trump’s insistence that schools welcome back students at the start of the school year.
Education leaders in Houston; Atlanta; Nashville, Tenn.; Arlington, Va.; and Broward County, Fla., also said this week that they planned to open the academic year online.
And leaders of Chicago’s public school system, the nation’s third-largest district after New York and Los Angeles, said Friday that they are planning for a mix of in-person and online classes. But they stressed that the announcement was a tentative framework, with a final plan expected in August.
New York City schools are also planning an in-person and online mix.
The changes in Texas were announced hours before the state set a daily record for virus deaths, with 174, and reported more than 10,000 confirmed new cases for a fourth consecutive day. It also follows a backlash from teachers and parents who criticized Texas’ earlier timeline that had students returning to classrooms by August or September as rushed and reckless.
Under the new guidelines, Texas schools could hold online-only instruction for up to the first eight weeks of the school year, potentially pushing a return to campus in some cities to November. That includes Dallas and Houston, where school leaders concerned about the surge of covid-19 cases have postponed the first day of classes until after Labor Day.
“The health & safety of students, teachers & parents is the top priority,” Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted shortly after the announcement.
Trump and his administration have stressed that schools should fully reopen right from the start, calling for new guidance from federal health officials and criticizing schools that want to bring students back for only a few days a week.
On Friday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention postponed new guidance after Trump’s criticism that the agency’s proposed school reopening guidelines were “very tough and expensive.” A copy of the draft rules to which Trump apparently objected, outlined in a document obtained by The New York Times and marked “For Internal Use Only,” warned that fully reopening schools remained “the highest risk” for spreading the virus.
But without being able to send their children to school, parents must shoulder huge burdens, which affects their ability to work. Tens of millions of schoolchildren are falling behind academically, and the trends will widen socioeconomic gaps.
NO CONSENSUS
Texas’ largest teachers organization dismissed Friday’s reopening announcement as underwhelming, saying it is based on an artificial deadline.
“Educators, students and their parents need assurance that school buildings will not be reopened until it is safe to do so. Right now, with the pandemic still raging across Texas, we don’t know when that will be,” Texas State Teachers Association President Ovidia Molina said in a statement.
The Texas Education Agency said students who are not equipped for virtual learning, particularly those whose families lack reliable internet access or a computer, will still be entitled to on-campus instruction once the school year begins.
The state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton, said he doesn’t think private religious schools need to comply with local public health orders prohibiting in-person classes as several cities have
already done. He cited “constitutional and statutory protections unique to religious individuals and communities at all times, even during the covid-19 pandemic.”
Abbott said Thursday that Texas could be seeing signs that the spread was slowing after hospitalizations quadrupled in June and July, which has stretched hospitals and intensive care units to full capacity. One of the hardest-hit areas remains the Texas-Mexico border, where officials are looking at converting hotels into medical units.
It has been nearly three weeks since Texas shut down bars again, and Abbott said the leveling off of Houston hospitalization rates in recent days is encouraging.
“We’re certainly not out of the woods yet, but this could be a glimmer of hope coming if people will continue wearing face masks wherever possible,” Abbott told Houston television station KRIV.
CALIFORNIA ‘WATCHLIST’
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced new rules Friday that would force many of the state’s districts to teach remotely when school starts next month and require most of its more than 6 million students to wear masks when they do attend class.
More than half of the state’s counties, where more than 80% of its population lives, would currently not quality for schools to reopen based on their surging caseloads and hospitalization rates. The rules would also require schools that are allowed to hold in-person classes to shut down if things deteriorate in their county, or if students or teachers test positive for the virus.
“We all prefer in-classroom instruction for all the obvious reasons,” Newsom said, “but only if it can be done safely.”
The rules would force schools in counties that the state has put on a “watchlist” — based on indicators that include new infections per capita, the test positivity rate and the hospitalization rate — to teach online until conditions improve. Currently, 33 of the state’s 58 counties, including many of the most populated, are on the list.
Counties would have to be off the list for at least two weeks before their classrooms would be allowed to reopen, but the decision would still be up to local officials, the governor said.
The rules would also require teachers and staff to maintain 6 feet of physical distance with one another and children in schools that
are allowed to reopen, and mandate masks for students in third grade and up. Younger children would be encouraged but not required to wear face coverings, and all children would be encouraged to maintain 6 feet of distance.
The guidelines recommend that school employees be tested regularly for the coronavirus, something teachers across the country have been pushing for, although the CDC has said doing so is not necessary.
CHICAGO PLANS HYBRID
Under Chicago’s hybrid plan, parents would be able to opt out of in-person instruction and instead have their children learn only online. School staffers with medical needs would be able to apply for leaves of absence.
Masks would be required in school buildings and on buses, and the district has more than a million cloth coverings available for students and staff. Class sizes would be capped at 15, and most students would remain in the same classroom for much of the day, including for meals.
Pre- K classes would be in-person only, while 11th- and 12th-graders would learn only online.
“We have to be ready for any possibility,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said. “Covid-19 has been unpredictable from the start and we have a responsibility to be prepared for what the public health indicators dictate, whether that means remote learning, in-person learning or something in between.”
Jesse Sharkey, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, said nothing in the framework unveiled Friday would make the union soften its insistence on sticking to only online classes to start the fall semester.
The union’s attorney told reporters Thursday that no one can force its members to return to work in unsafe conditions. Officials haven’t threatened any specific legal steps, but they said they hope to organize members with parents and community groups against any in-classroom plans.
Experiences with summer school are test runs for how things could go in the fall if students return to school — and how schools respond to covid-19 infections reported in their communities.
In Quincy, Mass., where two summer school teachers were diagnosed with covid-19, Anthony Andronico, vice chairman of the school committee, was quoted by the Patriot Ledger as saying that those diagnoses will inform what happens in the fall in the district.
In Billings, Mont., masks were mandated for children attending summer school, and Greg Upham, superintendent of School District Two, said students returning to school in the fall will wear masks as well.
In Osseo, Wis., some staff members at Crestview Elementary School complained that the district was not following proper covid-19 procedures and walked out of the summer school program, WCCO-TV reported.
Detroit summer school began June 13, and protesters carrying signs such as “OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT GUINEA PIGS!!” blocked school buses from leaving a bus yard that day and for several days after.
AGE FACTOR UNCERTAIN
What role children play in the pandemic is the hot-button question of the summer.
The Trump administration says the science “is very clear,” but many doctors who specialize in pediatrics and infectious diseases say much of the evidence is inconclusive.
“There are still a lot of unanswered questions. That is the biggest challenge,” said Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, a pediatrics professor at the University of Florida and former CDC scientist.
Several studies suggest that children are less likely to become infected than adults and more likely to suffer only mild symptoms.
An early report from Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began last winter, found that fewer than 2% of cases were in children. Later reports suggest between 5% and 8% of U.S. cases are in kids.
The CDC says 175,374 cases have been confirmed in kids 17 and younger as of Friday, accounting for roughly 6% of all confirmed cases.
The CDC says 228 children and teens through age 17 have died from the disease in the U.S. as of Thursday, about 0.2% of the more than 139,000 Americans who have died.
One early study examining infections in children comes from a Wuhan hospital. Of 171 children treated there, most had relatively mild illness. One child died, and only three needed intensive care and ventilator treatment. Perhaps more worrisome was that 12 had X-ray evidence of pneumonia, but no other symptoms.
A CDC study involving 2,500 children, published in April, echoed those findings. About 1 in 5 infected children were hospitalized compared with 1 in 3 adults; three children died. The study lacks complete data on all the cases, but it also suggests that many infected children have no symptoms.
“We’re trying to figure out who those kids are,” Rasmussen said. “We need to figure out the impact on kids and on the rest of the community, their parents and their grandparents. If they’re transmitting a lot to each other, and then bringing it home to their families.”