San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Reopenings of schools vary by district
MetroHealth updates its advice as coronavirus stats improve
The green light issued by theMetropolitanHealthDistrict lastweek did nothing to change the scattershot differences in the pace and scale of school reopenings in Bexar County.
Some public school districts already had returned more students to classrooms than health officials recommended. Others have set their own, tougher thresholds for coronavirus transmission in the community.
The mostly large percentages of parents who remain unconvinced that classroom instruction can be done safely also varies from district to district, but some officials report a loosening of that fear in surveys taken after the school year began.
The change in Metro Health’s guidance for schools came Monday.
For weeks, the agency had deemed the risk “moderate,” recommending a limit of six students per classroom and no more than 25 percent of building occupancy.
Now, it is “low,” which sets no limit on numbers as long as students practice social distancing, wash hands and wear masks during “high-contact activities.”
At Alamo Heights ISD, Metro Health’s new risk assessment had no effect on the district’s plans to bring back students.
By Sept. 21, all students whose parents in an initial survey said they wanted them in school were back — about 64 percent of the district’s 4,800 students, expected tojumpto74 percent Oct. 19, when a follow-up opportunity takes effect, district spokeswoman Patti Pawlik-Perales said.
In-person class sizes currently range from seven to 20 students, depending on the grade level, she said.
Some school systems
have set a higher bar for reopening thanMetroHealth, using the same metrics — particularly the percentage of people being tested in Bexar County who are found to have the coronavirus.
Metro Health had been waiting for that metric to fall below 5 percent positivity before telling schools they could fully reopen, and it hit 4.9 percent in the week ending Oct. 3.
San Antonio ISD, though, only will increase thenumberof returning students — currently at 25 percent of enrollment — to 50 percent if the infection rate stays below 5 percent through a second week.
SAISD has many smaller, older schools, with varying classroom capacities, and “in every circumstance, we have only allowed the number of students for which we can ensure social distancing measures,” Vanessa Barry, district spokeswoman, said in an email.
Mike Villarreal, director of the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Urban Education Institute, said he usually thinks the fragmentation of local public education — with 16 traditional school districts and dozens more charter schools — has negative effects, but in this case, he said, districts can learn from each other’s varied approaches to reopening.
Education leaders believe students from low-income families need classroomlearning the most, because of their home environments and internet resources. But wealthier families, in general, seem to have a higher risk tolerance for sending their children back to schools, perhaps because the pandemic has had less effect on their health and economic security, Villarreal said
“How you respond to the pandemic has also been politicized, so one’s politics seem to matter in terms of how you judge the science on the coronavirus,” he said. “The schools are the core of our community, but they can’t provide all the supports that our families need.”
A step back
In a late August survey, only 26 percent of SAISD parents requested in-person instruction for their children, but the district now is contacting the rest to see if their wishes have changed, Superintendent PedroMartinez said Friday in a message to staff.
As with many school districts, virtual learning will continue all school year for families that want it.
Many school districts have reported declines in prekindergarten and kindergarten enrollment because families arewaiting for inperson learning.
Martinez said SAISD is actively reaching out to those families, hoping that “as the local health data improves and our student occupancy increases, our youngest learners will return to school.”
But onWednesday, even as other
districts celebrated various “firsts” inthe effort to reopen campuses, Southside ISD took a step back, abruptly closing a pre-K and kindergarten school that had welcomed some returning students Sept. 28.
When 14 students at the Menchaca Early Childhood Center reported feeling flu-like symptoms Tuesday, the district began tracing their contacts with others in classes and on buses, consulted with Metro Health and decided that shutting down the school would be the safest option, Superintendent Rolando Ramirez said.
Ramirez said there have been no positive results so far from those who got tested since the school was closed. It will reopen Oct. 19.
“It’s one of those things that you come back and you meet with your team and ask, ‘Did we do the right thing?’ Some people say we’re exaggerating, but I think we need to (act like) they’re our own children,” he said.
The district still is allowing students to return to other schools, with about half its enrollment expected in classrooms this Tuesday, Ramirez said.
South San Antonio ISD became the last local district to welcome any of its students back to classrooms last week, bringing in 2,050, including those who are learning English and those with low grades, attendance issues, special education needs or internet connection challenges.
That’s about 25 percent of total enrollment, but starting Oct. 19, district leaders will allow it for up to half. They’ve been monitoring Metro Health updates, Teresa Servellon, chief academic officer, told sometimes skeptical trustees at a meeting Sept. 22. She tried to assure the board that classrooms would be adequately sanitized between class changes.
After three weeks of having higher-needs students back in
classrooms, Judson ISD allowed all children to return Sept. 28. Officials expected almost half of its roughly 23,000 students to come back, but only about 9,100 did, said Nicole Taguinod, Judson ISD’s director of communications.
“They’re kind of trickling in,” she said. “Parents who originally said they wanted face-to-face are kind of waiting to see what happens.”
Taguinod noted that Metro
Health’s risk designation is based on data from Bexar County, and Judson ISD has schools just northeast of the county line.
The district is asking parents to commit to having their children learn remotely or in person for nine-week periods, but also is allowing them to change their mind.
Optimism, uncertainty
Superintendent Brian Woods told theNorthside ISD board Tuesday
that he had been checking MetroHealth’s dashboard at 7 a.m. every Monday to see its updated guidance to schools.
As of lastweek, all theNorthside students whose parents initially asked that they return to classrooms were back — about 30,000 of them, or 29 percent of the district’s enrollment.
At the end of September, however, the district gave parents the option to change course, and more opted for classroom learning. They’ll bring the total to 44,000, or about 43 percent of enrollment, on Oct. 19.
Trustees were pleased at the increase, though some worried about the district’s ability to accommodate them. Woods said a few campuses will have “north of 70 percent” of their enrollments back, which would make it “extremely challenging” to provide room for more.
In the sole district in Bexar County testing students and staff for the coronavirus, Somerset ISD leaders expect to be able to accommodate everyone whowants to return to school by the end of October, Superintendent Saul Hinojosa said.
By Monday, Somerset had tested nearly 1,000 students and staff. Two students turned out to bepositive, and if theweekly tests hadn’t occurred, “these students would have been in our classrooms and potentially infecting others,” Hinojosa said.
Somerset is a demonstration site for Community Labs, a local nonprofit started last month that aims to provide thousands of rapid tests to asymptomatic pocket populations.
North East ISD last week brought 38 percent of its roughly 64,000 students back to campuses, spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor said. The willingness of parents toopt for in-person learning is constantly changing but now stands at about 44 percent, Chancellor said.
“At the majority of our schools, everybody who wants to be in, is in, at this point,” she said.
NEISD’s next phase, with a maximum of 20 students per classroom, begins Oct. 19. The timeline was set beforeMetroHealth issued its new guidance but it was based onMetroHealth statistics— the improved positivity and case doubling rates in Bexar County — as well as the virus caseload in the district itself.
“For some, the transition seems to be happening too quickly and for others too slowly,” Steven Magadance, the principal of NEISD’s International School of the Americas, saidOct. 4 in hisweekly letter to parents.
Campus reopenings were a struggle across the district and “the results of any misstep we makenowduring thisundertaking may or may not manifest for 14 or more days in the future,” he cautioned. “There is absolutely no way to know or plan for every detail.”