Orange County will bring back teachers next month. Some students will have to wait.
The Orange County Schools system will reopen schools for its pre-K students and those in separate exceptional children’s classes Oct. 27, but the rest of the district’s over 7,500 students will have to wait until next year.
The board voted Tuesday night after more than five hours of discussion to keep K-12 students in remote learning until the second semester, which begins Jan. 25. Students would return at that time to a Plan B model that combines online and in-person learning.
The plan would split students into two groups based on their last names and put them on alternating schedules. One group would meet in person Monday through Thursday and online on Friday for the first week, while the other group would meet online all week.
Schools that want to offer hands-on labs and classes could do that for small groups before the January reopening, the board said.
“I’ve never had a decision where I have lost weeks of sleep about what the right thing to do is,” board Chair Hillary MacKenzie said. “I know so many families are struggling, and I take it all so seriously, and I also just feel like we can’t lose 20% of our workforce and we can’t put this level of change on our teachers right now.”
About 15% of the teachers and staff recently surveyed said they would not return to class under Plan B. Another 60% said they would return.
Roughly 55% of the families who responded to a separate survey also supported Plan B instruction.
Board member Sarah Smylie, who voted against a January return, cited a lack of trust in the plan, the risk of bringing larger groups of students and staff together, especially to the middle and high schools, and concerns about school ventilation systems.
The district has been following Plan C — all online classes — since returning to school Aug. 17 and consulting with the ABC Science Collaborative — a medical and research group working with 50 school districts statewide.
The district’s Metrics Monitoring Task Force also reviewed local health data, voting last week to recommend that the district stay in remote-only learning.
COVID data, slow return
On Monday, the board met for over two hours to hear from health professionals and district staff about steps for a safe return.
Rebecca Crawford, with the Orange County Health Department, said Monday the county’s number of confirmed positive coronavirus tests steadily declined through Sept. 20. The percentage of positive tests, emergency-room visits for COVID-19 symptoms and hospitalizations also are declining, she said.
Orange County had 2,675 positive cases as of Tuesday afternoon. Roughly 47% of those cases are among those ages 18-24, while only 7% involved those under age 18, the data showed.
Danny Benjamin, a collaborative co-chair and and deputy director of the Duke Clinical Research Institute, stressed at both meetings the importance of consistently using face masks, along with physical distancing and good hand hygiene.
He and Ashley Ward, senior policy associate with Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Studies, also urged the district to return to class gradually, pausing at least four weeks after each step to work out the bugs. It will be a long time — at least the end of 2021 — before a vaccine is available for young children, Benjamin said.
Orange County students and staff would have their temperatures taken daily when they return to class, wear masks, and wash or sanitize their hands before entering the building. Classroom capacity would be limited to 50%, and lunch would in class or outside.
The Health Department would work with the district to do contact tracing, support school nurses and determine the best course of action if students or staff get sick, Orange County Health Director Quintana Stewart told the board Tuesday.
“From the Health Department standpoint, we wouldn’t overreact and shut everything down, because you know the implications of that and how disruptive that would be,” Stewart said. “We would stick to the science and really define and figure out on a case-by-case basis who are those close contacts and who has potentially been exposed.”
Teachers returning soon
Felder came to Tuesday’s meeting with three new options for returning to school, starting in either October or November. The board left most of her suggestions on the table, and Felder appeared visibly frustrated late Tuesday as she pushed to at least bring teachers back to school to set up classrooms and learn safety protocols, “because I don’t know when we’ll all ever get comfortable enough.”
“If we’ve got to go back to the drawing board based on your feedback, we can do that. If we need to push back some more, we can do that as well,” Felder said. “But these children only get one shot, and for too many of them, that shot is not a good one right now. That’s what I’m losing sleep over.”
The board supported Felder’s bid to bring back teachers by mid-November and also to let them bring their school-age children. The district will provide those students with learning lab space, and teachers with health concerns can seek special accommodations.
Board member Brenda Stephens urged district staff to ensure teachers have time “for nurturing their own mental health and wellness.”
“Ignoring teachers who need these opportunities by asking them to do more — and we are asking them to do more — is going to compound the challenges that they’re already facing, and that is concerning to me,” Stephens said.
Wake County’s school board also voted on a return to in-person classes Tuesday. The district will return elementary and middle school students to in-person classes in October and November. High school students will stay with online classes until January.
In Chatham County, the school board voted to start hybrid classes Oct. 19 for exceptional children, pre-K and K-2 students. All other students will remain in virtual classes until the end of the semester on Jan. 15. The board also voted to restart extracurricular activities.
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School Board will talk about a potential change in virtual classes Thursday
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This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 7:55 AM.
