SFPS releases overview of plan for reopening
Survey of students, parents and staff still underway
Some Santa Fe teachers and parents aren’t so sure it will be safe by August to return to classrooms amid an ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic that forced schools to close their doors this spring.
“Schools check all the boxes necessary for viral transmission. Transmission is especially aggressive indoors when several people are in the same space for a sustained amount of time, sharing the same air, said Reid Burgess, a science teacher at Capital High School, during a school board meeting Tuesday night. “As we’ve seen with health care workers, masks only go so far.
“The risk of COVID-19 that drove school closures in March have only intensified,” Burgess added. “There are now more infections.”
Burgess was one of about a dozen teachers and parents who submitted public comments to the board opposing a return to campus when the new school year starts.
Santa Fe Public Schools on Tuesday released an overview of its plan to reopen schools, which prioritizes face-to-face instruction for students in kindergarten through third grade, as well as students with disabilities. But it is awaiting the results of a teacher and parent survey on preferences before it finalizes the plan.
The New Mexico Public Education Department is requiring all districts to submit their plans for reopening schools by July 15. The department has issued guidelines calling for a hybrid model, combining in-person class time with online classes, and a contingency plan for returning to an all distance-learning format if an outbreak occurs.
The department’s guidelines require
schools to open at 50 percent capacity or less to ensure students and staff can maintain 6 feet of social distancing. It recommends half the students attend classes on campus Mondays and Tuesdays, a closure for cleaning Wednesdays and a reopening for the other half of the student body Thursdays and Fridays.
Santa Fe Superintendent Veronica García cited the old adage that says you can’t please everybody all the time. She hopes to prove it wrong in the next school year.
“My goal is to really please everyone and make everyone happy,” García said at the virtual board meeting. “What I mean by that is I hope we can match up the parents who really don’t want their children to come back to school and the faculty and staff that have medical issues or major concerns about coming back.”
For some children of essential workers, learning from home isn’t a viable option, she added.
“We can work out a system that does meet everyone’s needs. There are some families that have to come back to school,” García said. “Having children at home would be very, very difficult for them because they have jobs they have to go to.”
Depending on the level of demand for students to return to the classroom full time, the district is exploring the possibility of converting libraries, gymnasiums, cafeterias, churches, community centers and nonprofit spaces into classrooms to allow more room for students to spread out, García said.
The district will accommodate parents who wish to keep their children at home, learning remotely full time, she added.
The plan presented Tuesday includes hiring an additional 47 custodians for school sites and building Plexiglas screens around teachers’ desks.
Messages from dozens of teachers on the comment section of the meeting’s YouTube livestream raise questions, however, of whether too many educators will oppose returning to campus to create the perfect match-up García envisions.
Other teachers and parents addressed García and the school board directly by submitting their comments.
“It would be just a matter of time before we see COVID cases in the schools. This puts all of us at risk,” said Gail Ansheles, a kindergarten teacher at El Dorado Community School.
“I’m a teacher and love my classroom and students,” she said, “but I will not expose myself or my family to this. I believe the only safe option is to begin the school year with remote learning until we have a proven and safe vaccine for all. When the number of new cases in New Mexico is zero, then we can think about going back to the classrooms.”
Grace Mayer, president of the National Education Association-Santa Fe, said she thought the district should have waited for the results of the survey before going public with its plan to reopen schools.
“I think this presentation was premature, and the survey should have been tallied first,” Mayer said. “We should have worked more collaboratively on this plan. You can notice that didn’t happen.”
In a text message after the meeting, García said teachers could face the loss of their jobs if they refuse to return to the classroom without securing an approval for a leave of absence.
“If they don’t have a medical exemption according to [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines, it would be considered job abandonment if they didn’t show up to their assignment without requesting an official leave of absence,” she said.