First day of school in Arizona is being delayed

PHOENIX – Arizona schools will delay reopening for in-person classes this year until at least Aug. 17 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Doug Ducey announced Monday.

“We also want to bring as much certainty as possible for Arizona schools,” Ducey said. “We’ll continuously reevaluate this target date.”

The state’s schools usually open in early August, long before Labor Day. But a spike in COVID-19 cases in Arizona has made 2020 an unusual year: Schools are facing difficult decisions in reopening, including whether to offer in-person classes at all.

The state has more than 74,000 confirmed cases, with more than 3,000 new cases reported on five of the past seven days.

People younger than 20 make up about 11% of the cases.

The announcement means schools will not be able to hold in-person classes until mid-August, but schools could offer online instruction before the reopening date, Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman wrote on Twitter.

Ducey announced extra funding for K-12 schools last week to help with pandemic-related issues, but teachers and other school leaders criticized the move because it prevented schools from delaying start dates past early August.

In an interview with The Arizona Republic, Hoffman said she’d heard escalating concerns about reopening from parents and educators the past few weeks.

“We were hopeful that schools could reopen and that with mitigation strategies that our schools could still offer inperson instruction,” she said. “But more recently, it’s become more clear that’s not advised.”

Hoffman said she’s sad that some students this year could miss out on the hallmarks of school, like group science projects and trying out new instruments in music class.

“We’re going to see a lot more online learning than than we saw before,” she said.

School districts in metro Phoenix began pushing start dates even before the governor’s announcement.

Many schools are still finalizing their plans for reopening. The proposals that have emerged vary widely, although many offer parents and students the option of in-person or online classes, or a combination of the two.

Hoffman said she’s confident some districts and charters will be able to restart distance learning. But she’s concerned that rural schools and schools on the Navajo Nation may face steeper hurdles in reopening online.

Some schools have announced that students will be required to wear masks.

The Arizona Department of Education released a roadmap for schools. But the document didn’t require schools to implement anything. It instead offered broad suggestions.

Education leaders are also worried about a worsening teacher shortage, particularly if not all teachers return to the classroom.

An Expect More Arizona survey of educators in late May found that 18% of those surveyed said they weren’t sure if they’d return to the classroom at the beginning of the school year, while 3% said they were not planning to return.

“That’s going to be one of our biggest challenges is finding ways to have adequate staff,” Hoffman said. “It’s just very scary for people. Our high schools, you have thousands of people in one building.”

The governor’s announcement comes on the heels of a plan announced last week to divvy up $269 million in federal funding to schools to fill in funding gaps created by the pandemic.

About $200 million will go toward a grant program designed to hold schools harmless for in-person or overall enrollment declines. Schools will not lose more than 2% of the funding amount they received last school year.