SCS returns to in-person learning
Shelby County Schools are better prepared, one year later, despite delta variant surge
On Aug. 31, Shelby County Schools had its first day of school for the 2020 school year, and Superintendent Joris Ray was visiting virtual classrooms.
At that point, more than 1,300 Shelby Countians were alive who have since contracted COVID-19 and died from complications. The county was on the downward slope of its summer surge, but still reporting more than 100 new cases each day. The threat of a winter surge wasn’t yet realized.
There was no COVID-19 vaccine. Only a fraction of the district’s $775 million in federal relief money had been awarded, and largely went toward digital learning. Putting
students in schools was a virus transmission question mark, with little data for medical experts and school leaders to lean on to calculate and understand risk.
With much more funding, a vaccine, and a year of data and experience behind them, Tennessee’s largest district returned Monday, the first time students were required to be learning in classrooms since they shuttered in March 2020.
But, in many ways, the local conditions of the pandemic are worse than last year’s first virtual day, the first day of school now caught in the midst of a local surge of the much more transmissible, dominant delta variant. New state rules preclude the district from easily instituting district-wide virtual learning, or making that an option outside of its separate Memphis Virtual School, which, as of last week, enrolled only 200 students.
“We’ve learned so much from a year ago,” Ray told reporters Monday from the Bruce Elementary School cafeteria. “And we have a team that studies the data on a daily basis. And what we did in the spring and the summer helped prepare us for today.”
SCS required teachers to return in person last spring, and about a third of students opted to return. About 93% of students in grades 3-8 returned in late spring for a few days of state testing. More than 9,000 were in classes this summer.
“And as you know,” Ray continued, “the State Board of Education made a rule. And the rule was to return to inperson learning, which we’ve done. And we’ve done so safely.”
He immediately pointed to the district’s continued mask requirement, instituted in July before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its K-12 mask guidance to resemble the mask requirement suggested by the American Academy of Pediatrics. And he praised the recent county-wide mask requirement for schools, issued Friday by the Shelby County Health Department.
“We’ve returned stronger,” Ray said.
COVID-19 rules, mental health early focus for classrooms
The district is spending the first couple weeks of school with a focus on discussing school and classroom policies and procedures, as well as delving into social emotional learning, district leaders said, the sorts of lessons that help students get in touch with themselves, and understand the relationships to their world.
That kind of focus will be vital for students acclimating to the classroom after a year or year and a half learning remotely.
But SCS is anticipating deeper learning gaps, based off data collected from diagnostic tests taken last year.
In education, too, the pandemic is widening disparities, complicating recovery for historically underperforming districts like SCS in ways that it has not for districts that traditionally perform at or above expectations. For example, most students enrolled in the municipal districts in Shelby County —— demographically more affluent and whiter than SCS — learned in-person last year.
Students from families that were most likely to be dealt the greatest health and financial blows by the pandemic were also the ones most likely to already be suffering achievement gaps, a federal report from June found.
Statewide testing data released last week suggests learning loss occurred, and hurt economically disadvantaged students and students who learned remotely more than others.
Ray declined to discuss the data particulars — district-level testing data is expected Wednesday — but acknowledged a need to “close the gap.”
“I expect for us to create paths in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert,” Ray said. “We have to make the impossible possible, because our children, they deserve it.”
Return a balancing act of academic need and virus whims
Still, the district is balancing academic needs with the whims of the virus.
As experts warned earlier this summer, the delta variant is ravaging the community by infecting people who are not yet vaccinated against COVID-19, which includes many children. Children 11 and younger are not eligible for the vaccine and, in Shelby County, only 17.4% of children aged 12-17 are fully vaccinated, as of Thursday.
“The delta variant is unforgiving in terms of going after those individuals who are not vaccinated,” Dr. Manoj Jain, an infectious disease physician who has been advising local leaders throughout the pandemic, said in a recent interview.
“We have to get (children) back into school, but then also provide them with the best protection that we can,” he added, “which is vaccinate as many of them as possible, and then always also to mask and distance.”
Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital has seen an increase in children requiring hospitalization due to COVID-19 disease, Dr. Nick Hysmith, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the hospital, said recently. The hospital also reported two pediatric COVID-19 deaths recently.
Positivity rates at the hospital are climbing, and hospitals are also responding to an influx of cases of respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV.
On Thursday, 1,100 children in Shelby County were sick with coronavirus infections, representing a quarter of all active cases in the county.
And the county had more than 1,000 additional active cases — a total exceeding 6,000 — on Monday, according to the health department. The department did not respond Monday to a request for new pediatric active case data, which is not regularly reported.
SCS said it did not know Monday how many students or staff were missing the first day due to COVID-19, whether part of those active cases or out for quarantine. The district said it is collecting the data and will report it to the state at the end of the week. Though Ray said the district would report cases by school once students returned, SCS did not report by school regularly last year, and won’t report by school this year.
“At the end of the day, school is the best place for our children,” Ray said, striking a different tone than last year.
Then, the district had more freedom from the state to remain remote or, after repeated delays, conduct hybrid learning. It also lacked support from most parents in reopening — when the district offered an option to return, only a third of students came back. Even Monday, while some parents were supportive of the reopening, others were more nervous, wondering why the schools weren’t offering the now familiar virtual.
The district faced pointed threats from the state last winter to reopen, and later in April, the state board of education passed a rule preventing schools to offer both in-person and virtual learning to parents. Virtual learning could only take place in state-approved virtual schools, which usually offer only “asynchronous” or independent learning.
He stressed the district has plans in place for preventing, and, new this year, detecting cases. With a $29 million grant, the district is offering voluntary COVID-19 tests to students and staff.
Students and staff have yet to be surveyed about their vaccination status — the district has no vaccine requirements — but they may be surveyed in the future, said district spokesperson Jerica Phillips. The district has urged vaccination and coordinated with local officials to host and promote events where vaccines are available, she said.
Despite the precautions, school leaders know cases will be detected, and outbreaks are possible. Students and teachers impacted have to take excused absences or sick days.
Officials have said the district hasn’t ruled out potential school or districtwide closures, but the state board of education rule makes it much easier to close individual schools for outbreaks, Ray explained Monday.
If an entire school has to close for COVID-19 cases, he said, the district interprets the rule to allow for the school to pivot to remote learning. The rule is “explicit,” he said, in calling for the district to use stockpile days, or days often reserved for inclement weather, before closing buildings, and even then, the closure has to receive approval.
“We’re doing everything in our power to keep students safe and keep students in the classroom,” Ray said, “because when students are absent it impacts academic achievement.”
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