Bethlehem Area, Northampton Area opt to go remote
Districts hit by COVID-19 surge; others considering break from in-person learning
Lehigh Valley school districts are weighing whether to go fully remote after a surge in coronavirus cases following Thanksgiving break.
By Wednesday evening, Bethlehem Area and Northampton Area school districts made the call to go fully online for the next couple of weeks.
Bethlehem Area School District saw a spike of nearly 100 cases among staff and students this past week, Superintendent Joseph Roy said. On Wednesday evening, the district decided to shift from its hybrid model to all-remote learning beginning Monday and ending Jan. 12.
“We are starting to see a large number of staff either testing positive or needing to be in quarantine because they were around someone who tested positive. We are having a difficult time providing face-to-face instruction, as well as e-learning.” — Northampton Area School District Superintendent Joseph Kovalchik
There were 70 cases reported last Monday-Friday and another 24 reported this Monday. Fortunately, most of them happened over the holiday break so those who tested positive had not been in the school building for the last two weeks.
“Things have picked up drastically,” Roy said, explaining that the district had been seeing about 10 cases a day before the Thanksgiving break. “It’s like a surge on top of a surge.”
While the number of cases in any one school building don’t require a shutdown under state guidelines, district officials are getting overwhelmed with the number of cases they have to monitor and provide contact tracing for, Roy said.
Since Nov. 30, the district has been tracking about 200 individuals. Those include people who are positive for the virus as well as those who have not tested positive, but have come into close contact with someone who did.
“They won’t be returning to the building until Jan. 12. By that point the pending cases will be past the two-week timeline,” Roy said.
In Northampton Area School District, Superintendent Joseph Kovalchik also decided Wednesday evening to revert to online learning on Monday, with students returning to the building the week of Jan. 11.
Northampton has 266 students who are quarantined, 65 of whom are awaiting COVID test results.
Northampton has been following the same type of hybrid learning system as Bethlehem.
The model divides students by last name. Those starting with the letters A-L attend in-person school Tuesdays and Thursdays. Those with last names beginning M-Z attend Wednesday and Friday.
During those days, Bethlehem’s Roy estimates about 37% of the student population is attending in-person classes, allowing for social distancing. On Mondays, all students participate in online learning.
New safety guidelines from the Pennsylvania Department of
Education recommend public schools in areas of “substantial transmission” revert to online learning for two weeks once they record a certain number of cases per school building.
Almost all of Pennsylvania falls into the substantial transmission category, which is defined as 100 new cases per 100,000 people over the past seven days.
According to the new school guidelines, a building with fewer than 500 students should close for two weeks if five or more COVID cases are reported over a 14-day period. In a school with 500-900 students, the threshold for a two-week closure is seven cases, and for those with more than 900 students, the bar is set at 11 cases.
In Bethlehem, cases are spread across the district’s buildings and no one school reached that threshold earlier in the week, which was why Roy was hoping to keep the hybrid schedule until Dec. 18, when students would switch to remote learning ahead of the holiday break, Dec. 23 to Jan. 3. Students will return to virtual learning for a week after the break, with the district hoping to restart the hybrid schedule Jan. 11, families were told in a letter posted Wednesday on the district website.
In Northampton, there have been 37 cases since Thanksgiving break. Staffing has also become a major concern, including teachers, support staff, bus drivers and technology administrators.
“We are starting to see a large number of staff either testing positive or needing to be in quarantine because they were around someone who tested positive. We are having a difficult time providing face-to-face instruction, as well as e-learning,” said Kovalchik, who did not specify the number of staff members who have tested positive.
An average of 70 staff members have been calling out per day over the last couple of weeks, the majority of them for COVID-related reasons, he said.
Roy noted there was a substitute teacher shortage across the state even before the pandemic. With more teachers calling out sick, that pool of substitutes is even shallower now.
In some schools, parents are pulling children from in-person classes. In August when school started in Northampton, Kovalchik estimates about 25% of students were taking online classes only and 75% were enrolled in the hybrid model, which includes faceto-face instruction. Now, 33% of students are online and 67% are enrolled in hybrid classes.
The shift means that some online classes are getting large and difficult to handle.
“If you are an e-learning teacher in Northampton right now, there’s a good chance you have at least 50 kids in that one class,” Kovalchik said.
Some districts, such as Saucon Valley and East Penn, tried to get ahead of the curve by keeping students out of schools after the Thanksgiving break.
Saucon Valley students returned to in-person learning Monday and East Penn students are scheduled to return next Monday.
On Tuesday, East Penn officials announced there were nine new cases among individuals associated with the district. But as of Tuesday afternoon, there were no plans to delay next week’s return.