Georgia leaders won’t try to delay start of in-person school
ATLANTA — Georgia state leaders will not ask local schools to delay face-to-face instruction until after Labor Day.
The murky proposal pushed by Gov. Brian Kemp shot through the education community on Wednesday night after it was first reported by The Atlanta Journal-constitution. It was unclear whether the state considered mandating or was just suggesting a later start date. No written proposal was ever publicly released and state Board of Education members barely referenced it during their regular meeting Thursday, when it might have been considered.
“This week, we solicited feedback from superintendents on this idea, but the state board did not move forward with it,” Candice Broce, a spokesperson for the Republican Kemp, said in a statement. “We continue to work with educational leaders to ensure a safe and productive learning environment for all of our students in these unprecedented times.”
The governor appoints all the members of the state board, and they generally follow the governor’s lead on education policy.
A few Georgia districts are scheduled to resume face-to-face instruction as early as next week. A number of others plan to start face-to-face instruction on Aug. 3. That means teachers are scheduled to report to begin preparing in the next few days.
“I would like to think this will not come up again considering Cobb teachers are set to return Monday (and new teachers have already reported to work),” Cobb County school board member Charisse Davis wrote on her Facebook page.
Those districts are moving ahead despite the continued spread of the virus across the state and protests from many parents and teachers. The Professional Association of Georgia Educators, the state’s largest teachers’ group, advised after a nonscientific survey of 16,000 members that districts should delay the start of school. A number have done so, but not as late as the Sept. 8 date Kemp was discussing.
Many medical experts are advising against opening schools in areas such as Georgia, where transmission is high.
“When you have such surges of disease in the community, you’re basically asking for trouble if you open schools,” Tina Tan, a pediatrics professor at Northwestern University, said Thursday in an online briefing by the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
In the same briefing, Emory University Professor Wendy Armstrong described Georgia as a hot spot for the virus and said officials should wait for two weeks’ worth of declining cases, test positive rates and hospitalizations before opening. Georgia meets none of those criteria currently.
Some districts have chosen to delay the start of instruction until after Labor Day, including Bibb and Clarke counties. Clarke County announced Wednesday that all instruction will begin remotely at that point. A number of other districts have delayed the start of school by a week.