Over 40K students return to campuses
Most local districts report at least half of kids are back in class
Despite surging numbers of COVID-19 infections across Greater Houston, more than 40,000 students chose to go back to in-person classes this spring, slowly edging some districts closer to prepandemic enrollments at the beginning of the second semester of the 2020-21 school year.
Current Texas Education Agency guidelines require districts that offer remote instruction to give parents the choice of whether to send their students to campuses or have them learn at home every grading period.
Of 16 Houston-area districts that responded to a Houston Chronicle request for attendance data for the third grading period, all but Fort Bend and Alief ISDs reported more than half their students are back on campuses. Nine had more than two-thirds of students back in their classrooms, including Dickinson ISD with 93 percent of students and Friendswood ISD with 90 percent.
Ten districts shared placement data for the first three grading periods, all showing that more parents opted to send their students back for in-person instruction each time they were given the choice.
In Houston ISD, 43 percent of students were learning in person and 56 percent were learning virtually as of December.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 infections in Greater Houston soon could surpass the spike seen here last summer. The Texas Medical Center’s intensive care unit beds re
main filled beyond its Phase I capacity, with 41 percent of all ICU patients being treated for the virus; there were nearly 50,000 active cases in Harris County on Sunday, according to county data.
In schools, active case counts in January have been higher than at any point in 2020. There were 577 active COVID-19 cases in Houston ISD as of Friday, 89 in Dickinson ISD and 39 in Friendswood ISD. Across the 16 districts that responded to the Chronicle’s request for data, a combined 3,381 active cases were logged on the districts’ COVID-19 dashboards on Friday.
Dr. Carlin Barnes, a Houstonbased adolescent psychiatrist who has written about sending students back to school for Psychology Today magazine, said while the surge likely is leading some families to keep their kids away from schools, the distribution of vaccines may have given others more comfort that an end to the pandemic is in sight. At the same time, she said, parents must consider their children’s academic needs, as data has shown virtual learners have struggled academically much more than peers who returned to campuses.
“A lot of parents, they’re worried about their own health as well as their kids, but at the same time their kids’ educational needs are not being met by the virtual learning model,” Barnes said.
Parents’ decision
Scott Oliver’s decision to send his 11-year-old son, William, back to Glenn York Elementary in Alvin ISD was made easier by the younger Oliver’s struggles to stay on task at home. He decided to send his third-grader, Lauren, back at the same time His eldest, 15-yearold Hailey, did not feel comfortable starting her freshman classes in-person at Shadow Creek High until this month.
All his kids have done better since returning, but his son’s class has had to quarantine twice due to infections.
“There isn’t a right or wrong answer whether to learn virtual or inperson,” Oliver said. “But for my kids, going back was a good thing for them, even though we’re still having to deal with cases and things like that.”
The shift back to in-person instruction is not as pronounced in districts that serve higher rates of students from lower-income households and students of color. Locally, Aldine, Alief, Sheldon and Spring ISDs tended to have more families opt to keep their students home during the third grading period than districts in more affluent and whiter neighborhoods.
Barnes said that is not surprising, considering lower-income families often live in multigenerational households, and federal data shows Black and Hispanic people are 2.8 times more likely to die of the virus than white people. Additionally, Barnes said, Black and Hispanic families tend to have less access to health care and greater distrust of COVID-19 vaccines.
Others, including schools in Dickinson ISD, are almost as full as they were before the pandemic prompted all Texas schools to close last March.
About 94 percent of students are back at Calder Road Elementary, said Principal Sophia Acevedo, after starting the year last September with about half of the kids learning from home. She attributes the increase of on-campus students to a mix of parental fatigue, kids asking to come back and families feeling safer sending young students back to school.
All students are required to wear masks, wash their hands at regular times, use hand sanitizer between subjects, limit interactions between classes and stand farther apart when in lines. Even with those precautions, Acevedo said, it is hard to maintain social distancing with so many students in the halls. Administrators created extra lunch periods and blocked off tables in the cafeteria, the music room was moved to the science lab so there would be more space and ventilation, and students no longer gather on the carpet for story time.
“We focus on what we can do, but we can’t really social distance with so many back,” Acevedo said. “In class, we can’t guarantee 6 feet, but we can make sure they’re wearing masks and handwashing.”
Rising cases
Maria Rivera, who is co-leading the Harris County Health Department’s school advisory group during the pandemic, said the advisory group’s recommendation still is that school buildings remain closed until, among other things, the COVID-19 positivity rate for tests dips below at least 5 percent.
Because the Texas Education Agency has told districts they must offer five days a week of in-person instruction to receive state funding, Rivera said her team has told districts to focus on preventing kids from mingling with other classes, keeping things clean, keeping as much distance as possible and doing as much contact tracing as they can. Still, those measures may not prevent more infections.
“As more kids join the classroom, we’ve seen more cases arise in the classroom setting,” Rivera said. “All these safety measures to decrease transmission — it’s just not possible when you have 30 kids in a classroom.”
There currently are 14 students in Yadira Sesher’s third-grade bilingual classroom at Calder Road Elementary, and only one is a student learning online. Twelve came back for in-person classes as soon as they could, including 9-year-old Isideo Lopez.
He said he missed his friends, and even though he is frustrated he has to stay farther away from his classmates, he is glad to see more come back each grading period. He figures they were struggling like he was.
“I didn’t like it at home,” he said. “My mom told me I was learning, but I get it a lot more here.”