Lesson in clarity needed before school restarts

Schools can get back to teaching and providing activities for students starting July 1 under new procedures established by the state Department of Education.

We need to see the decisionmaking processes for the districts and for the state laid out first.

State education officials have released the Process to Reopen Pennsylvania — a procedure that requires schools to develop health and safety plans, implement guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state Health Department and appoint pandemic coordinators.

This is how schools that have not seen students walk through the doors since March 13 will get back to business as we emerge from one phase of the coronavirus pandemic and warily eye a future where another phase could bloom.

The proposed steps are good ideas. Schools have health and safety plans for things such as mass casualty events, fires and weather emergencies. A disease that can shut the doors for months seems like it is at least equivalent.

But what we need to see gamed out are the decisionmaking processes — for the schools and for the state.

Three months into active pandemic operations, with counties emerging from tight red-zone quarantines to the less-restrictive yellow and approaching-normal green levels of reopening, we should have all learned a few things. Unfortunately, we won’t know what’s taken hold until test time.

And this test will definitely be a pop quiz, so everyone needs to study up.

When schools shuttered in March, it was amid confusion. No one knew for sure how easily COVID-19 would spread or what the effect would be on Pennsylvanians. The first Keystone State death wouldn’t be confirmed for another five days. There was — and for many, there still is — a push and pull between doing all that could be done and thinking the reaction is much ado about nothing.

That was three months ago. Now there are 5,742 Pennsylvania

deaths, and that was with social distancing, masks and the closing of nonessential businesses.

Shutting the schools was done badly by the state — a last-minute announcement that caught school districts, which had been told to make their own plans, totally offguard.

If not every district has been pleased with the outcome, that says more about Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration than it does about the schools’ implementation.

But no one has that kind of cover for a potential second round. The Department of Education should have a better idea of what needs to be required across the board and what doesn’t. The governor should have a better handle on when decisions need to be made and how to communicate effectively.

And the school districts have an entire grading period of data on where the plans got an A and where they need some remedial work. It’s up to them to make plans now that will work for their students, families and staff to do the job of educating kids whether they are in a classroom or at home or making changes along the way.

Most kids won’t have to sharpen a pencil or crack a book until late this summer, so, now is the time to make plans for what happens if everything goes right — and what happens if predictions for a fresh bout of the virus hits. Programming note: A second wave would likely coincide with flu season.

This is Pennsylvania. We know how to deal with lastminute morning audibles due to snow or flooding. This is just one more contingency to figure into the planning, albeit a pretty significant one.