Education leaders: Delay in-person school until Oct. 1

More than 60 school board members from districts across the state have signed onto a letter asking Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to delay the reopening of in-person schooling until October.

Ducey ordered a delay to the start of in-person lessons until Aug. 17.

“A lot of school staff are coming to us saying, ‘We’re afraid of going back to school,’” Adam Lopez Falk, a school board member in the Alhambra Unified School District, said. “Kicking it to the 17th isn’t going to do much for a lot of us.”

Save Our Schools Arizona, an education advocacy organization, joined in the calls to delay in-person class until October.

The rising calls to delay in-person schooling come as President Donald Trump spearheads a campaign to reopen schools across the United States on time. But in Arizona, concern over a high number of COVID-19 cases still has officials worried that schools will not be able to open safely.

Ducey, when asked about the letter in a press conference on Thursday said school would not open until it is safe to do so, but did not give any specific date.

“It’s going to happen when it’s safe,” he said.

What board members want

In the letter to Ducey, school board members outline several demands:

Close school buildings and classrooms statewide until Oct. 1.

Only reopen in October if data suggests it is safe to do so.

Develop agreed-upon protocol for in-person classes.

Fund distance learning at the same level as inperson instruction, without requiring in-person classes every day of the week.

Allow schools flexibility in the number of instructional days they have to offer.

Suspend state testing for the 2020-2021 school

year

Ask the Arizona Department of Education to continue to-go meals for students while schools are closed.

Teachers have increasingly expressed concerns over safety. While the state and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines on reopening, many have said the guidelines are not feasible. Reducing class sizes, for example, would be near-impossible unless fewer students attended class in-person.

Several school districts have adopted four-day weeks to use one day of the week as a “disinfecting” day. Some are offering hybrid options, where students can attend class in-person only on specific days.

But educators are still uncomfortable spending long days with students as cases spike.

“October 1 is aspirational, but it at least gives us an additional month and a half to start seeing a downward trend in cases and have more of an opportunity for schools to get some of that infrastructure in place that they need,” Falk said.