Montco plans for schools reopening
Commissioner says no guarantee schools will be free of COVID-19
While Montgomery County’s school administrators prepare for the upcoming academic year and determine if there will be in-person instruction, officials warned parents there’s no guarantee schools will be free of COVID-19 cases.
“I want families to start to really understand that there is no way possible to guarantee that any school will be free of the coronavirus. In fact, I think everybody needs to start to sort of let it sink in that there will be coronavirus cases in our schools throughout this school year,” county Commissioners’ Chairwoman Dr. Valerie Arkoosh warned during a news briefing Wednesday. “We know how contagious this virus is and so there’s no way that anybody can say that there will be no cases.
“The goal is to make that situation as limited as possible and keep those schools as safe as possible while getting the benefit of in-person education and we know, particularly for younger students, how critically important that is.”
For several weeks, Arkoosh said, members of the county’s Office of Public Health, in conjunction with the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, have been having regular meetings with school superintendents in the county.
“We have been working collaboratively with them to develop guidance for our school openings. The superintendents have been real heroes in this work,” Arkoosh said, adding that county guidance could be released as early as today.
County officials had expected that the state Department of Education and the Department of Health would release concrete school reopening guidance.
“We were hoping that we could see that before we released ours but I have yet to see that guidance. It has not been released, so we are going to release ours by the end of this week, regardless,” Arkoosh said.
School board members in districts countywide have been gathering input from parents as districts prepare to safely reopen schools that were shut down in March due to the pandemic.
School administrators have had to consider implementing policies that adhere to social distancing and mask wearing guidelines and the spacing out of desks.
“I can tell you that our schools are doing everything they can to make the situation within each school as safe as possible and that will look different, even from classroom to classroom at some schools, depending on how many children are physically present in a class and how big individual classrooms are,” Arkoosh explained.
“They are working so hard to make their schools as safe as possible and it is a real challenge across the board. Every school district has schools with classrooms that are very tight and it’s going to be very challenging in some of those rooms,” Arkoosh added.
Arkoosh said superintendents are being “innovative” with plans.
“They are using gymnasiums and auditoriums and all kinds of alternate spaces. They have cleaned out classrooms so they can keep desks as far apart as possible. They’re doing
a lot of things,” Arkoosh said.
Essentially, each local school district has to devise a plan that fits its specific community based on information from a number of sources.
During a meeting earlier this week, Wissahickon School Board members discussed various reopening options, including the possibility of having a camera in the classroom for remote instruction.
Two-thirds of Pottsgrove School District parents responded to a district survey last month, indicating they would return their children to school in the fall, despite coronavirus fears. The survey results also showed that the older the students are, the more willing their parents are to have them return to school, at least part-time.
Nevertheless, the majority of those responding also want to be assured proper safety guidelines are in place. Pottsgrove parents appeared evenly split about providing their own transportation to school and putting their children on a bus.
“I just think that every family is going to have to consider their personal circumstances,” Arkoosh said. “So, families will need to consider the health of their children and whether or not their children have any underlying conditions that might make exposure to the coronavirus a more serious situation. They’ll want to look at the situation in their own homes and who’s living in that home if they have an elderly relative that lives with them that could be at risk.
“This is going to be a balancing act for every one of our families and each family will have decide what is best for their own family,” Arkoosh added.