Abelated back to school
HISD students return in person for what officials call ‘year of flexibility’
When Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston ISD’s Mitchell Elementary School in 2017, Jude and Tiffany Irving faced a dilemma: tear away Grant, their kindergartnerwho has autism, from the students and staff who embraced him, or drive 30 minutes round-trip to a temporary campus in the opposite direction from their work.
“In our minds, we have found this school where it’s lovely and perfect for him,” said Jude Irving, a physical education teacher for Pasadena ISD. “All the sudden, the uncertainty came back.”
The Irvings ultimately kept
Grant with his classmates, gritting through the daily drive as HISD officialsdemolishedandrebuilt the school on Houston’s southeast side. Their patience paid off Monday, when Grant, now in third grade, and nearly 250 of his peers re-entered the bright, new, expansive Mitchell Elementary.
“I wish I could have seen his face when he walked in,” Tiffany Irving said. “You could tell he was excited for something this morning.”
While the novel coronavirus pandemic delayed and dampened back-to-school plans, HISD brought an estimated 80,000plus of its 196,000 students onto
campuses Monday for the first inperson classes in seven months, joining all of the region’s other public school districts in offering face-to-face instruction.
The return arrived as Greater Houston faces an ominous, if still slight, uptick in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, inspiring strong opinions about if and when to reopen school buildings.
For many parents, HISD’s reopening ensures their children will receive a better academic and social experience, while also allowing them to return towork during the school day. At the same time, many school staff members remain concerned about the possibility of on-campus corona virus spread, though early returns show only a handful of already-open local schools experiencing schoolbased outbreaks.
Families opting for face-to-face instruction saw extensive changes to school operations in what district officials describe as a “year of flexibility.” At Young Elementary School on the city’s south side, all students and staff wore masks while on campus, a bus driver helped riders off while donning a face shield and parents waited with their children in a socially distanced line for their temperature checks.
Dezmond Chambers, them other of Young Elementary p re kindergartner Luke, left campus disappointed that a back-to-school ritual— walking your child to his or her class on the first day — had been quashed due to COVID-19.
“I was a little sad about that because I haven’t even seen the classroom yet,” Chambers said. “Hopefully, it gets better and I’ll be able to pop in, but for now, this is what we have to do.”
Some safety measures were common across the district, including mandatory mask usage and the placement of stickers offering distance reminders throughout each campus. However, principals and other district administrators had to tailor their plans at each school, often based on students’ age and the percent of children returning to campus.
Leaders of seven high schools debuted a “hybrid” schedule, in which students choosing in-person classes will split their days between on-campus and virtual instruction.
On the district’s northeast side, Eliot Elementary School Principal Matthew Schwer focused most on working with lower grades. About half of Eliot Elementary’s 560 students chose in-person classes.
“In a regular school year, working with 3- and 4- and 5-year-olds is difficult, getting them to understand new procedures,” said Schwer, the first-year leader of the Denver Harbor campus. “Some of them have never been in school before, so we’re really focused on our younger students and making sure we’re going through the procedures on howto walk through the hallway while staying socially distant, how we sanitize when we walk into the cafeteria or a classroom, how we wash our hands.”
All of Greater Houston’s largest districts resumed in-person classes between late August and late September, often phasing in students over a few weeks. Several schools have registered more than 10 active COVID-19 cases since reopening, with Klein Oak High School reporting a region-high 38 cases lastweek, but no elementary or middle schools have reached double-digit active cases at one time.
Under Texas Education Agency guidelines, public school districts could limit access to in-person classes through their eighth week of instruction, which lands on Nov. 2 for HISD. However, Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan said she still would choose to open campuses this week regardless of state deadlines.
“People can say what they want, but we have tried to rely on the science and follow the data,” Lathan said. “If we had been in a position where we were back at 10 to 15 percent positivity rate in the city, there would have been a different type of decision made.”
While public health concerns still abound, students and HISD staff celebrated the reopening of four elementary schools — Braeburn, Kolter, Mitchell and Scarborough — rebuilt following floods from Hurricane Harvey.
Nahdra Curry, a teacher specialist in her sixth year at Mitchell Elementary, once worried whether the 425-student campus would get consolidated in the aftermath of Harvey. Instead, she now marvels at Mitchell Elementary’s larger classrooms, wide hallways, new gymnasium and unique reading nooks carved under stairways.
“If they had broken us up, that would have really hurt us even more, dealing with everything else at the time,” Curry said. “But we’re back, we’re improved and better, and we’re here.”
The Irvings have yet to step foot in Mitchell Elementary, in line with the district’s COVID-19 policies, but they expect Grant to feel at home in his new digs.
“He’s doing well in virtual school, but Iwant him to continue to mature and I don’t want him socially isolated,” Tiffany Irving said. “At the end of the day, it was important to get some normalcy back for him.”