Broward to stay remote

Schools will be online until at least October

Broward schools will teach students remotely until at least October, and then the district will reassess if conditions are safe to reopen campuses, according to a proposed district plan.

School district officials said they are taking steps to be able to quickly pivot to in-person learning when needed even as

COVID-19 remains a major threat. The new school year begins

Aug. 19 with distance learning.

Steps include securing personal protection equipment and social distancing signs, sanitizing schools and buses and hiring extra bus drivers that will be needed as fewer students will be able to travel on each bus.

The district plans to reassess around Oct. 1 whether it’s safe to make plans for reopening. The district will look at two weeks of metrics, such as the prevalence of the virus, the county’s ability to manage the spread and the capacity of health providers, according to a reopening plan the School Board is expected to vote on Tuesday.

Although Broward schools haven’t identified a specific threshold for when it’s safe to reopen, officials have said they’re looking for the daily rate of COVID-19 infections to get down to about 5%. In the past week, Broward’s positivity rate has averaged 9.3%.

“We’re not going to do it until we can create a type of safety environment— I don’t want to say a safe environment because there’s no such environment that’s going to be 100% safe,” Superintendent Robert Runcie said. “If we’re waiting for that, we’ll never bring kids back.”

Runcie said he’d love to be where New York is now, as cases have dropped dramatically and only about 1% of those tested are positive.

“It’s a shame we squandered our opportunity here in the state of Florida and we’re in this awful position where we can’t bring our kids back to school,” Runcie said.

The reluctance of Broward and other South Florida districts to return students to campus comes despite pressure from

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran to offer in-person learning for parents who want it.

DeSantis reiterated that message Monday at an education roundtable at Winthrop College Prep Academy in Hillsborough County.

“When you don’t offer any in-person, then you’re denying those parents. And I would be willing to bet you probably have a lot of parents that really want the in-person more than anything,” DeSantis said. “That would be denying a huge swath of parents, the ability to make a meaningful choice.”

He said he doesn’t see the virus as a major threat to children.

“I don’t think anyone would dispute at this point, as a medical matter, this is low-risk for school-aged children,” DeSantis said. “This is less risk, as the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] pointed out, than the seasonal influenza. And I also think it’s pretty clear that the schoolchildren are not the drivers of community spread.”

Runcie disagreed. He said there are 89,000 children in the school district with underlying health conditions such as asthma, diabetes or hypertension.

“We hear children are immune, they won’t get sick,” Runcie said. “There’s a risk out there we haven’t seen. We’re not trying to experiment with any of our kids.”

The district initially proposed bringing back students with disabilities who attend schools that focus on special education when school resumes. But that plan was postponed until at least Aug. 31.

The district will decide next week if that’s possible or if it needs to be delayed further, Chief Academic Officer Dan Gohl said.

He said based on recent figures that show a nearly 18% positivity rate for juveniles, he doubts they’ll be able to bring those students back Aug. 31.

The district won’t force any students or teachers to return.

Runcie