FCS shifts to remote learning
♦ Rome reports third grade classes are quarantined at East Central.
All schools within the Floyd County School system will shift to remote learning after Friday, until Sept. 8, according to a letter from interim Superintendent Glenn White.
Since the school system has reopened there have been more than 10 positive COVID-19 tests confirmed among students and staff as well as over 350 quarantines.
“We are temporarily closing in-person learning to all Floyd County Schools effective at the end of classes (Friday). It is our hope to restart in-person classes at all of our schools on Tuesday, Sept. 8,” the statement read.
The shift to remote learning followed a decision Thursday morning — after guidance from the state — to walk back plans to designate teachers as “critical infrastructure workers” not subject to quarantine.
White had announced that teachers would be deemed essential personnel during a Wednesday evening meeting with principals.
The designation would have exempted teachers from quarantine requirements after being exposed to COVID-19 and kept them in the classroom. White said that once the state clarified its position, the school system modified its plans to comply.
“Please know that this change in scenarios for all schools is not due to a large increase in positive COVID-19 cases, but instead, because of new guidance from the governor’s office forcing FCS to change the status of essential workers,” White wrote in the statement.
“We recognize this decision still may create hardships for FCS families and is disappointing for students who want to be at school for in-person learning,” he continued. “This decision was not made lightly; it was made with the support of school board members, and was determined, as all of our quarantine decisions are made, in consideration with the DPH. At no time, has FCS knowingly allowed positive cases in our schools.”
White’s Wednesday night designation came after President Donald Trump’s administration released guidelines this week stating that teachers and school employees are essential and should not be immediately quarantined after a possible COVID-19 exposure.
Many schools that have reopened for face-to-face classes have seen multiple teachers required by public health agencies to quarantine for 14 days during an outbreak.
Those quarantines have stretched a district’s ability to keep providing in-person instruction. However, keeping teachers without symptoms in the classroom raises the risk that they will spread the respiratory illness to students and fellow employees.
White, who is also president of the Georgia High School Association, said he’s always advocated for the reopening of schools but emphasized that he wants to keep them open safely.
He also said the entire school system has not been affected uniformly. He said the Armuchee area has not been hit as hard as other areas, but they decided a systemwide closure would allow for continuity within the school system.
Rome City Schools posted 15 new quarantines on Wednesday and one new positive case of COVID-19. Those quarantine numbers do not include at least one East Central third grade class, said Superintendent Lou Byars.
Kemp evaluating
A spokesperson for Kemp said his administration is evaluating whether it wants to incorporate the federal guidance into Georgia’s legal framework, which could spur more districts to act.
“We have had some superintendents reach out to ask where the administration is on this topic,” said Candice Broce, a spokesperson for the Republican Kemp. “We’re in the soliciting-input mode.”
Critics in Georgia say the designation would ignore new health guidance issued to schools that says exposed teachers must quarantine for 14 days even if they get a negative test.
Craig Harper, director of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, a non-union association, said it would be “reckless and starkly contradicts the newest Georgia Department of Public Health guidance intended to protect student and educator health and curb spread of the virus.”
The Associated Press reported that one of the first districts to designate teachers as critical infrastructure workers was eastern Tennessee’s Greene County, on July 13.
Hillary Buckner, secretary of the county-level affiliate of the National Education
Association, told the AP that she has tried to raise the alarm, saying it’s unethical for teachers risk infecting students.
“It essentially means if we are exposed and we know we might potentially be positive, we still have to come to school and we might at that point be carriers and spreaders,” said Buckner, who teaches Spanish at Chuckey-doak High School in Afton.
Only prekindergarten and kindergarten students are currently attending class faceto-face in the 7,500-student Greene County, and they’re only going two days a week for two-and-a-half hours a day. Teachers are instructing others online from their classrooms, Buckner said, but she said the local school board could mandate a broader in-person return soon.
Coronavirus spread
Data kept by The Associated Press shows the coronavirus is spreading in Georgia faster per-capita than in any other state, while Tennessee has the seventh-fastest spread.
At least five other school districts in Tennessee have given the “essential” designation to their teachers, seeking to exempt them from quarantine orders. Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday blessed the move, with his administration citing the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency.
That agency on Tuesday issued its fourth version of who counts as a critical infrastructure worker, for the first time saying teachers should be on the list alongside doctors, police officers and meat packers.
Such workers can be permitted to keep working following COVID-19 exposure “provided they remain asymptomatic and additional precautions are implemented to protect them and the community,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states.
“The decision is the district’s,” Lee said in a Tuesday news conference. “If they make that decision, we have given them guidance that they must follow if they choose that critical infrastructure designation.”
In Georgia, Forsyth County has also designated teachers as critical infrastructure workers.
Spokesperson Jennifer Caracciolo said that means they could be told to return to classrooms, but said the 50,000-student district has yet to confront the issue and will decide on a case-bycase basis.
It’s unclear if any districts outside Georgia and Tennessee will give the designation to teachers. Some other districts in Tennessee decided against it.
Teacher unions and national school administrator groups couldn’t cite examples in other states Wednesday, but criticized the designation by the Homeland Security agency.
NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia said in a statement that the designation “has no legal merit and is more of a rhetorical gambit to give President Trump and those governors who are disregarding the advice and guidance from public health experts an excuse to force educators into unsafe schools.”