Wake schools to stay with online classes. It’s uncertain when students might return.
Wake County students will not return to in-person instruction for at least another month due to concerns about rising COVID-19 numbers in the community.
The Wake County school board voted 7-2 on Thursday to continue with remote instruction and to reassess the situation in mid-February. Many of Wake’s 157,000 students had been scheduled to resume in-person instruction next Wednesday, following what was originally called a temporary switch to remote learning due to the post-Christmas COVID spike.
Superintendent Cathy Moore pointed Thursday to how the Wake County Division of Principals and Assistant Principals recommended keeping students online through the end of the third quarter, which would run into April for many students.
Moore also cited a survey conducted by Wake NCAE in which 87% of respondents said they didn’t feel safe returning to in-person instruction at this time.
“We have to acknowledge that we have a very, very large portion of our adult professional staff, our labor pool, that are terrified,” said school board member Chris Heagarty. “These are rational, reasonable adults that are terrified about the health risks of returning to school.”
School board chairman Keith Sutton said if staff makes a recommendation on Feb. 2, they could vote on it Feb. 9 and bring students back on campus as soon as Feb. 15.
In addition to waiting for COVID data to stabilize, school leaders hope the additional time will allow them to get enough new substitute teachers. More school employees are being required to quarantine, making it harder to operate schools.
Students falling behind?
Board members Karen Carter and Roxie Cash argued Thursday that the delay will hurt students who aren’t doing well in a virtual school environment. Wake has seen both grades and attendance fall this school year.
Cash estimated, based on her experiences viewing some online classes, that as many as 30% of Wake’s students who are receiving federally subsidized meals are not connecting regularly for online classes.
“We are directly facing losing children in our school system or losing teachers in our school system,” Cash said. “I cannot believe we are at this crossroads, but it’s a question we need to come up with an answer.
“I do not believe that means going remote for an indefinite amount of time until some vaccine that’s not going to come here comes up, or something else happens that I cannot foresee.”
Carter and Cash unsuccessfully tried to pass an alternative motion Thursday to allow K-3 students to return next week for daily in-person classes.
Even as they voted to keep classes online, the board majority acknowledged it will have an impact on student learning.
“The loss of learning that has absolutely occurred is going to be, for some, something that they may never completely catch up with their peers,” said board member Heather Scott. “But what I do know is that if anyone can help students recover from it ... the teachers in the Wake County Public School System are the ones who are going to help those kids catch up.”
Middle school sports on hold
Starting Jan. 20, Wake had planned to resume daily in-person classes for elementary school students and a mix of in-person and online classes for middle school and high school students. It would have been the first time since mid-March that all grade levels were offering in-person instruction at the same time.
Next week also would have been the first time since March that high school students had any in-person classes and that fourth- and fifth-grade students had daily in-person instruction.
Only students in Wake’s Virtual Academy program had been set to receive just online classes when the spring semester starts next week for most schools.
The decision to stay in online learning won’t affect high school sports, which will continue. But in middle school, school officials said athletic skills development, conditioning and intramural options will not resume until in-person instruction resumes.
Districts pause in-person classes
Wake County, which is North Carolina’s largest school system, joined the growing list of districts across the state that are pausing in-person instruction while COVID cases are at record levels.
Durham is staying with online classes through the end of the school year. Chapel Hill-Carrboro students will stay with remote instruction through March along with most of Orange County’s students.
Most Johnston County students will stay with online classes until Feb. 1.
Also on Thursday, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board voted to not send students back for in-person classes until Feb. 15 at the earliest, the Charlotte Observer reported.
GOP wants schools reopened
State Republican legislative leaders have been highly critical of school districts not offering in-person instruction. In a news release Thursday, Sen. Deanna Ballard pointed to a study done by the ABC Science Collaborative to say that schools can safely reopen if they follow proper safety measures.
The ABC Science Collaborative, which was formed by Duke University, studied 11 North Carolina school districts and found no cases of child-to-adult transmission of COVID and only 32 cases of secondary transmission.
“The science and data show it is time to grant all parents the choice of full-time, in-person instruction,” said Ballard, a Watauga County Republican and co-chair of the Senate Education Committee.
But critics question the validity of the study because it’s based on data from August through October when COVID rates were much lower.
NCAE urges caution on school reopening
The North Carolina Association of Educators sent a letter Wednesday to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper asking him to “take immediate and significant executive action to again curb community spread of this virus until such time that infection rates are again under control.” But the letter doesn’t specify what action it wants him to take.
In Wake County, the local NCAE chapter urged the school board not to resume in-person instruction until either school employees are vaccinated for COVID-19 or the county’s two-week rolling average for positive cases drops below 5%.
“No one on this board is discounting the need for students to be in person,” said board member Christine Kushner. “None of our teachers are. But safety and health have to come first.”
It’s unclear when school employees will be vaccinated. New state vaccination guidelines announced on Thursday will put people ages 65 to 74 ahead of frontline essential workers like school employees, the News & Observer reported.
A repeated theme at Thursday’s board meeting is that the state needs to get vaccines into the hands of school employees as soon as possible.
Reaction mixed to school pause
Some school employees took to social media on Thursday to thank the board for delaying the return to in-person classes.
“And now I can breathe,” Lauren Hadley Mann, an art teacher at Underwood Elementary School in Raleigh, tweeted Thursday. “Thank you WCPSS board for listening to your staff and keeping our community, students, and families safe.
But some parents were just as vocal in condemning the board’s decision to not send students back to school.
“@WCPSS you are failing our children,” Brian Maglione, a parent, tweeted Thursday. “How can others figure this out and you can’t? Words can’t express what you have done to our children.”
Some of the anger comes from parents who need to arrange last-minute childcare arrangements due to the switch.
Ryan McAward, a parent, thanked Carter and Cash for voting to keep students in-person. He tweeted that students need to be back as soon as possible.
“Sick to my stomach every day that I watch my 4-year-old with an IEP cry during virtual learning — begging to ride the bus and see his teachers in person,” McAward tweeted.
This story was originally published January 14, 2021 at 6:38 PM.
