Panel: Hold off on some campuses

Middle, high school openings would be delayed under proposal

Orange County’s elementary schools should open as scheduled Aug. 21, but its middle and high schools should open 10 days later, if possible, the district’s medical advisory committee recommended Friday.

The group, which includes pediatricians and infectious disease specialists, acknowledged that staggering start times so older students started Aug. 31 might not be doable and that all of the county’s public school

campuses might need to open as planned next Friday.

“It may not be feasible, but we as medical providers should offer what we believe is the best advice,” said Dr. Annette Nielsen, with Tree House Pediatrics in Orlando, during online meeting.

The group said it also wants face covering requirements enforced and school staff trained in how to use personal protective equipment.

The Orange County School Board is to meet Monday to discuss the medical group’s recommendations for how to open schools.

Orange’s 212,000 students started school Monday with online lessons. About 30 percent are expected back on campus when in-person lessons start, while the rest plan to continue to study from home.

Delaying middle and high school students’ return to campuses could give community spread of the coronavirus time to decline, and school administrators time, with a smaller group, to learn how to manage school operations amidst concerns about COVID-19, doctors on the panel said.

Younger children also are less likely to spread the virus, making their return less risky, they said.

Dr. Akinyemi Ajayi, a pediatric pulmonologist in Winter Park, said some European and Asian countries have successfully used staggered-return strategies as they opened their schools.

“It may not be possible,” he said, but it is worth considering.

At Friday’s meeting, school board members also asked the group to weigh in at upcoming meetings on how sports can resume, how much space should be maintained between students in classrooms and whether there should be thermometers in every classroom, among other issues.

Some members of the group, at their meeting Wednesday, raised questions about whether it was safe to open campuses Aug. 21.

But Friday, several said there also were risks to not opening, both to the children who need the in-person instruction and the social services schools provide and to the district, whose budget could take a hit if campuses don’t open in August.

Superintendent Barbara Jenkins reminded the group that Florida’s school reopening order requires campuses open for face-to-face lessons in

August and failing to follow that “really does have financial penalties.”

George Ralls, the chief medical officer for Orlando Health, said schools must, with medical advice, figure out how to “absorb the impact” of the coronavirus pandemic in coming months and years.

Keeping children off campus won’t necessarily solve the community health problem, he said.

“If kids are not in school, what do we think they’re going to be doing?” he asked.

In his neighborhood this summer, he said he saw plenty of children playing together and that will likely continue if their schools aren’t open. “It’s not a zero risk scenario to have kids at home.”

Following Friday’s nearly two-hour meeting, Dr. Vincent Hsu, the group’s chair, sent the school board a written statement with the group’s recommendations. Schools should allow only “rare exceptions” to face mask rules, work toward “access to timely testing and contact tracing” and implement “appropriate measures for the safety of staff,” it said.

“We understand the decisions are not resting with us, obviously,” he said at the meeting.