SCS waits on return to schools
Upward trend of coronavirus cases prompts delay for district timeline
Shelby County Schools students won’t be returning this January after all.
Instead, in a postponed timeline, Tennessee’s largest district aims to have students back in class no earlier than the start of the second semester, which begins in February. SCS remains the only district in the state to have not reopened buildings to any students since shuttering in March. The worsening community conditions are not conducive to reopening, the district said.
“Unfortunately, in the last few weeks, we have seen an upward trend of coronavirus cases in Shelby County. Due to this increase in cases, the board and I agree that we will need to delay our gradual reopening of schools,” Superintendent Joris Ray said in a video announcement.
Under the new timeline, preschoolers and elementary schoolers would return on Feb. 8 and middle and high schoolers would return on Feb. 22, a one-month delay from the initial timeline, when preschool and elementary schoolers were set to return on Jan. 4 with the older grades to follow on Jan. 19.
The district said it will continue to monitor COVID-19 data and “will make sure families have advanced notice” about any additional changes to reentry dates. There will also be virtual town halls ahead of reopening at the district and school levels.
Based on the most recent survey results, most students and teachers weren’t planning on returning to the buildings for January when SCS planned to offer an optional reopening. Only 17% of teachers were expected to teach from the buildings, according to survey results. Of students, about a
third were expected to return, with 25% actively choosing to do so and 7% defaulting to a return since they had not indicated a learning preference by the deadline.
The learning options parents and teachers selected for the January return date will still apply for any planned February return, the district said.
‘It hits children the most’
Throughout the pandemic, Ray has consistently said he would focus on the science and data of community transmission, evidenced by decisions to close buildings early in March and later elect to go fully virtual as cases were spiking locally in July.
Across the country, worsening community conditions have prompted school districts that had been open for in-person learning to go virtual, board member Kevin Woods said.
“That alone was enough to give pause,” he said, explaining that the trend is a reflection of the larger public health message to the community to change their behaviors as the community conditions worsen.
But as other charter, private and municipal public schools have returned to buildings, Ray and the SCS have stood out.
Some medical experts in Shelby County have pointed toward data showing that transmission within schools, when they are following protocols, is not happening at the rate feared at the beginning of the pandemic, and that most cases of school-age children are being contracted outside school buildings. Board member Althea Greene doesn’t think potential unknowns are worth risking.
“I just don’t think that we need to gamble with children. I don’t think we need to take the risk to see...that’s not something that I think we want to risk as a district,” Greene said. “We don’t want to play with that and see what’s going to happen.”
As board members Miska Clay Bibbs and Stephanie Love put it, there are well-founded reasons for the skepticism and precautions. The stakes for many SCS children are high when it comes to COVID-19, they say.
“When they get it and they take it back home, and they’re in a multigenerational home, then other people will get it, which will then cause a different effect in the household. Most of our children live in poverty. They don’t have access to the best health care,” said Clay Bibbs. “So it’s multiple implications other than just about being in the school building every day.”
And it’s a different conversation, she explained, if the larger conversation shifts to changing the county’s socio-economic infrastructure, addressing those lacking affordable health care, affordable and fair housing and access to jobs with living wages.
“To me, that’s what the pandemic has revealed in a more telling way. And it hits children the most, because education in the building itself has been more of an issue,” Clay Bibbs said. “Education is happening, it’s just not happening in the same way.”
Love recognizes there are challenges to virtual learning, with some students who aren’t logging on regularly. She’s advocating for more funding for teachers and increased support staff to help students and families directly.
“A district being 100% virtual is something we’ve never had to endure before. So this is the baseline,” she said. “As it relates to doing something better, of course, always pushing the district to take the challenges that we have and work to improve them with the understanding of knowing that everything is not going to be perfect.”
There are ways community partners to the district and government can help make that experience better, she said.
She pointed, for example, to the state’s $741 million of unused Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds. Issues facing many SCS families aren’t necessarily ones a school district can solve, before or during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As a school district, we don’t create homeless shelters. But we have families that need it,” she said.