Wake students may not resume in-person classes next week. Leader recommends delay.
UPDATE: Wake County school board voted to delay the return to in-person instruction.
Wake County school administrators are recommending that students don’t return to in-person instruction until at least mid-February due to rising COVID-19 numbers.
Wake County students are in the midst of a two-week COVID-19 pause from in-person instruction. That pause is supposed to end this week. But Superintendent Cathy Moore is recommending that all of Wake’s 157,000 students remain in remote instruction and that administrators review the situation in mid-February to determine next steps.
Moore is citing concerns raised by the Wake County Division of Principals and Assistant Principals and from school employees in a Wake NCAE survey. She’s also noting how several neighboring districts, including Chapel Hill and Durham and Orange counties, have paused in-person classes.
The school board will vote on the recommendation Thursday.
“We’ve said that we’re looking at the data as we move forward,” school board vice chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey said in an interview Wednesday. “I’ve got a lot of emails with varying opinions and varying scientific advice.
“It’s hard. I’m parenting three children through virtual school that are in elementary schools and it’s not easy, and I have a degree in teaching.”
Some parents are lobbying the board to continue with a plan that would have all grade levels resume in-person instruction next week for the first time since mid-March. This includes high school students who have only had online classes for the past 10 months.
Starting Jan. 20, Wake had planned daily in-person classes for elementary school students and a mix of in-person and online classes for middle school and high school students. Only the 77,284 students in the Virtual Academy were scheduled to not have any in-person classes next semester.
The school district urged all employees to get tested for COVID this week. The district also emailed school volunteers this week encouraging them to become substitute teachers to help have enough staff for in-person classes.
“We took the pause in the hope that community spread would go down and that we would be able to fill substitute positions so that we can have adequate staffing upon a return to school,” Mahaffey said.
NCAE wants to stay with remote learning
Wake NCAE wants North Carolina’s largest school district to continue with remote instruction until either school employees are vaccinated for COVID-19 or the county’s two-week rolling average for positive cases drops below 5%.
It’s unclear when school employees will get vaccinated. The rate of positive COVID tests has been above 10% in Wake since Thursday.
Wake NCAE met virtually with Mahaffey and several other board members on Monday.
“We all want to be in the classroom with our students,” Lee Quinn, a teacher at Broughton High School in Raleigh, said in an interview Wednesday. “But we realize we’d be jeopardizing their safety and our safety.”
Quinn pointed to a weekend Wake NCAE online survey that drew responses from more than 4,000 Wake County school employees. More than 70% of the responses came from non-NCAE members, he said.
The survey results, Quinn said, show that 87% of respondents don’t feel safe returning to school buildings at this time. He said a similar percentage also don’t feel the safety protocols that the district have in place are adequate.
Wake NCAE had unsuccessfully urged the school board in October to delay the resumption of in-person learning.
But in the presentation for Thursday’s board meeting, Moore cites how community spread for COVID-19 remains substantial and how the percentage of positive cases has increased.
The registration window for the Virtual Academy closed last month. But Moore says Wake has seen an increase in Virtual Academy enrollment requests since then.
Some teachers are hoping, at the minimum, to get the board to back away from bringing back fourth- and fifth-grade classes for daily in-person classes for the first time since March. Those students returned to campus in November under a rotation of one week of in-person classes and two weeks of online courses.
There are no class-size limits for fourth and fifth grades so more than 30 students could be in some classrooms if they return for daily in-person classes.
Moore was asked to report back on what it would take to bring fourth and fifth-graders back daily while keeping class sizes to 20 or less. She says it would take 140 additional teachers and lead to larger classes for Virtual Academy students.
Moore said that returning fourth and fifth grades to the rotation plan would mean disrupting school schedules that have already been built for next semester.
Group says schools can safely reopen
Wake is also hearing from some parents who say the district should stick with the plan to bring students back next week. Advocates point to the research from the ABC Science Collaborative, a group formed by Duke University, which is advising school districts on how to deal with the pandemic.
The ABC Science Collaborative studied 11 North Carolina school districts during the first two months of the school year and found no cases of student-to-adult transmission of COVID-19 and only 32 cases of secondary transmission. The ABC Science Collaborative is telling districts they can safely reopen if hey follow safety protocols.
“Cases in the community will mean some cases in schools, but it does not necessarily have to mean that there is secondary transmission or spread within schools, which is the gold standard for how schools are actually doing,” Dr. Kanecia Zimmerman, co-lead of the ABC Science Collaborative, told the Johnston County school board on Tuesday.
After the presentation, the Johnston County school board voted down a plan to extend remote learning for all students through March 12. But the board did agree to extend remote learning to Feb. 1 and switch elementary students from daily in-person classes to twice a week.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper cited the ABC study on Tuesday to explain why he’s not imposing tighter rules around school reopening.
“It is the obligation and responsibility of elected officials to support science, facts and data shared by ABC Collaborative as none of the BOE members have the qualifications to dispute what is being shared by the Duke University experts,” Wake County Families and Teachers to Safely Reopen School says in an online petition.
School study disputed
Critics say school districts shouldn’t rely on the ABC study to justify returning to in-person instruction.
Quinn, the Broughton teacher, noted that the study looked at conditions in those 11 school districts between August and October when the number of COVID cases and the positive test rate were both much lower. At least one of the districts in the ABC study has switched to online-only classes.
“It would be irresponsible to make a decision now based on that data when we know the virus was impacting us the least,” Quinn said.
Dr. Shannon Aymes also notes that the ABC study found that COVID transmission occurred in schools when face coverings were not being worn, such as during meals. The study’s authors recommend eating outdoors when possible.
But Aymes, an internist from Apex trained in public health, said students likely won’t be eating outdoors in the winter. Instead, she said many Wake County students and teachers will eat meals in classrooms that are not well ventilated with masks off.
Aymes, the wife of a Wake County teacher, said Wake’s 20,000 school employees have valid reasons to be worried about the health risks.
“If it’s not safe to go to your grocery store without a mask, why is it safe to go to school and take off your mask during lunch?” she said.
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 3:58 PM with the headline "Wake students may not resume in-person classes next week. Leader recommends delay.."
