This year isn’t old school
Millington Municipal Schools among first area districts to resume in-person classes
First day of school emotions ran the gamut for returning second graders in one Millington Elementary School classroom Monday. A poster board in the classroom listed scared, mad, ecstatic, nervous, happy and freaked out. In the neighboring classroom, no more than a dozen students sat in socially distanced desks as the teacher quizzed them on a video about how to best wash their hands.
“Does anybody know a song that might last for 20 seconds?” the teacher asked the class.
It’s undoubtedly a different kind of first day of school.
Just over half of the district’s students decided to return in person for the new school year, the district’s Superintendent Bo Griffin said Monday. And of those, only half are in the classroom on a given day.
The district offered families the option to do virtual learning — chosen by 43% of families — or its hybrid in-person learning model, where most students come to school two days each week. Prekindergarten through second graders come to school Monday-thursday, and all students, with exceptions for those with special medical or learning needs, learn virtually on Fridays.
“We know that in-person education is the best; there’s hundreds of studies out there that proves that. We also know that this is a pandemic, and this is scary. We know it’s scary for adults, and it’s scary for our kids,” Griffin said.
Millington Municipal Schools, one of seven public school districts in Shelby County, was one of the first to return Monday, along with Lakeland School System. The six municipal districts teach several thousand students across a handful of schools — Millington has 2,500 students across four — making them more nimble to potential rolling closures than Shelby County Schools, whose 100,000 students will begin the school year virtually on Aug. 31.
As Griffin pointed out, Millington’s 38053 zip code has one of the lowest COVID-19 case rates per 100,000, according to Shelby County Health Department data. No reported cases of COVID-19 or required quarantines prevented anyone from attending the first day of school, Griffin said, and there have not been any reported cases among the district’s teachers, he said.
“We’re very fortunate for that,” Griffin said.
The school is not doing temperature checks at the building, but asking families to be proactive by checking their children for symptoms before sending them to school, he said. Each school is equipped with its own school nurse who will also be able to evaluate any student who displays symptoms.
“I know that mask is not popular and it gets hot, especially right now since the heat...but it’s something we’ve gotta do. It’s going to take every one of us,” Griffin said.
On Monday, first- and second-graders at the school were lined up in the hallway in their reduced class sizes, usually standing on sticker spacers along the floor. The school provided masks to students who didn’t have them, Griffin said, but many appeared to style their own as part of their back-toschool outfits: There were polka dots and leopard print, and some that looked like animal faces.
As districts have weighed whether to return to class, the presence of the virus in the community and the adherence to suggested health and safety protocols have emerged as two of the most important factors in what districts should expect if they move forward with in-person learning.
In Memphis, Dr. Jon Mccullers, pediatrician-in-chief at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital and local advisor on COVID-19, has said that current conditions mean individualized decisions for both families and districts.
A task force at the pediatric hospital created a set of localized guidance for schools, in an effort to bring home sometimes competing national guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Students should wear masks and socially distance, the guidance said. And, per the guidance, families of students should be made aware of any reported cases of COVID-19 at the school. (Griffin said Millington would be following Shelby County Health Department protocol and provide information for contact tracing, but did not confirm that all families would be made aware of cases reported in the school.)
Last week, photos circulated online of students walking through the crowded hallway of a Georgia high school that did not require its students wear masks, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The students began the second week of school online after the principal informed parents of a reported nine cases of COVID-19 among students and staff during the first week of school, the AJC reported.
Education and health professionals that have pushed for school reopenings say schools with proper safety protocols in place provide better instruction for many students and also provide sometimes invaluable services for a child’s physical and mental health.
Additionally, a new study from South Korea suggests that children up to age 10 spread the virus at lower rates than their 10 to 19-year-old counterparts, who appear to spread the virus at the same rate as adults. Studies also continue to show that most pediatric cases of COVID-19 are asymptomatic or mild. A new CDC study shows though, that of the children who do require hospitalization — about 8 in 100,000 compared to 164.5 per 100,000 for adults— one-third are admitted to the intensive care unit.
In Millington, literacy rates are the reason for the district’s youngest students having the most in-person learning time, Griffin said, noting that teaching students to read through a virtual school setting would be difficult.
A successful first day back means that the campus can get the new routine down, but it also means what it means every other day, Griffin said.
“My number one job is to get them here safe, to feed them and to get them home safely. And in between there, just trying to make sure that we make them better people every day. That’s the most important thing,” Griffin said. “It’s not just about education, it’s about their social wellness, it’s about their social well being and their mental health as well.”
Laura Testino covers education and children’s issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino