A year later, thousands of Wake elementary students will now get daily in-person classes
Thousands of Wake County elementary school students will begin receiving daily in-person classes next week for the first time in a year.
The Wake County school board voted 8-1 on Tuesday to switch fourth- and fifth-grade students from a hybrid of in-person and online courses to five days a week of in-person classes. The change, which will not affect students in the Virtual Academy program, will begin on Monday, March 15.
The older elementary students will join K-3 students, pre-K students and special-education students in regional programs who already get daily in-person instruction. Next week, Superintendent Cathy Moore will present a plan for increasing the amount of in-person instruction given to middle school and high school students.
“It will be awhile before we see normal as we call it in schools again,” Moore told the board. “But we can begin to safely return more students to in-person instruction in the coming days and weeks.”
The vote comes as pressure has intensified over the past month in Wake County and throughout North Carolina to get more students back into class on a regular basis On Tuesday, Senate leader Phil Berger said lawmakers were close to reaching a deal with Gov. Roy Cooper on school reopening legislation.
Safe for daily classes?
In Wake County, Moore cited multiple reasons for bringing fourth and fifth grades back for daily classes including:
▪ Guidance from Cooper and the State Board of Education to increase in-person schooling, including providing students with daily in-person instruction as much as possible.
▪ COVID-19 rates have dropped to mid-November levels.
▪ About 5,800 district employees have received at least their first dose of the COVID vaccine. As of Tuesday, 83% of the 10,300 district employees who took a vaccination survey said they received a shot or had scheduled an appointment for a shot.
Moore also said the number of confirmed secondary transmission of COVID cases in Wake schools “is incredibly low.”
But board member Jim Martin, the lone “no” vote, accused Moore of making “a wishful statement and not a factual statement.” Martin questioned the validity of there not being many cases of in-school transmission, saying they don’t know the causes for many of the cases.
Martin said it is the wrong time to loosen restrictions, citing how elementary schools will not be able to meet the 6 feet of social distancing recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said COVID rates still remain too high in Wake County.
“The decision we’re making tonight, if this vote passes, is a decision to prolong the pandemic, at the short expense of a few more people sitting in a classroom like this, not regular in-person instruction, still sitting in front of computers,” Martin said. “We’re prolonging the pandemic for little to no value.”
Heated board debate
Martin’s exchanges with staff and other board members led to heated arguments during the meeting. Board chairman Keith Sutton told Martin they didn’t want to be “lectured to” by him.
Board member Chris Heagarty said no health official he has talked to shares Martin’s opinion.
“You cannot take numbers that are irrelevant and out of context and use them as scare tactics to try to keep our kids out of the schools,” Heagarty said.
Martin argued that he’s not calling for keeping students fully remote.
Heagarty cited how pediatricians have told him about the anxiety, obesity and mental health issues that students are facing from being isolated during remote learning. He said students will be safer from COVID-19 in school than in the community.
“There are steps to mitigate risk,” Heagarty said. “But we have to balance that with the risks to the mental and physical health of our students.
“The medical professionals and the heath officials are telling us that this is a move that we should make.”
Minimal social distancing to be used
The board’s vote will likely be a welcome change for Wake fourth- and fifth-grade students who’ve had mostly online classes over the past year. Those students haven’t had five days a week of in-person classes since mid-March 2020.
Fourth- and fifth-grade students returned to campus in November on a rotation of one week of in-person classes and two weeks of online classes.
Wake had been set to switch fourth- and fifth-grade students back to daily in-person classes in January. But the board voted to keep students on the rotation system due to concerns about how classes could have 30 or more students in them if all the students came back at once.
Wake school leaders say they can safely have all elementary school grades on campus for daily in-person instruction.
The ABC Science Collaborative, a group formed by Duke University to advise on school reopening issues, says schools can safely operate with 3 feet of social distancing as long as they follow proper safety protocols such as requiring face masking.
Moore said about 20 elementary schools need additional furniture for their fourth- and fifth-grade classes to provide some social distancing. Schools are having to move away from the use of large group tables toward smaller tables and individual desks.
Wake has launched a marketing campaign to recruit more substitute teachers to keep schools staffed. If needed, Moore said that central-office staff will sub at schools.
With class sizes being larger than expected, board member Monika Johnson-Hostler said the district should accommodate families who now want to switch to all-virtual instruction.
Middle and high schools wait for details
Tuesday’s vote means middle school and high school students remain the only group in Wake who will not receive daily in-person classes. While middle school students have had some in-person classes since November, high school students didn’t resume face-to-face classes until February.
Wake school leaders say they can’t yet resume daily in-person classes for middle schools and high schools due to state rules requiring them to provide at least 6 feet of social distancing in classrooms. That distancing requirement isn’t in place for elementary schools.
School leaders say they’re looking at options such as having two of the three groups in classrooms at the same time. The options used are expected to vary by secondary school.
This story was originally published March 9, 2021 at 7:03 PM.
