Gov. Cooper’s schools plan may not work for districts with high COVID-19 rates

At this point, how states decide to respond to the pandemic should be easy: Listen to what President Trump says and do the opposite.

Following that contrary formula would have put the country – and certainly states with Republican governors who kowtowed to Trump – in much better shape with COVID-19. The shutdowns would have come earlier and lasted longer, masks would have been universal and testing and contact tracing would be much further along.

Now Trump is demanding all public schools reopen this fall with in-person classes, but in school districts across the country where infections are rising – including Los Angeles, San Diego, Atlanta and Oregon – leaders have decided the president again doesn’t know best.

In North Carolina, Gov. Roy Cooper has resisted the president’s wrongheaded calls to “liberate” the state by opening bars or to hold the Republican National Convention in Charlotte without strict social distancing. But this week he gave in a bit. He recommended that schools reopen with a blend of in-person and remote classes.

It was a sensible split-the-difference choice. It allows parents who fear exposing their children and themselves to the virus to opt for having their children take classes remotely. Others, who for reasons of work or domestic sanity need their children to go to school, can have them attend classes on a staggered schedule that will allow ample space for social distancing.

Flexibility in school attendance is needed in a state where some counties are hotspots for COVID-19 and others are barely touched. But suggesting that all school districts have an option of limited in-person classes becomes a problem in urban districts where the infection rate has spiked and in rural counties where meatpacking and poultry processing operations have fueled a high number of COVID-19 cases per capita.

Eric Houck, a former public school teacher and now an associate professor of Educational Leadership and Policy in the UNC School of Education, said Cooper would have been more helpful to local school leaders if he recommended all-remote instruction – with waivers for districts that show low or dropping rates of infection. Instead, the governor recommend limited in-person classes so long as infection rates don’t spike further.

“There should have been waivers for face-to-face (instruction). That would have given local officials a little more cover” to take a more cautious approach, Houck said. “Now they are swimming upstream if they want to do something other than what the governor normed for people.”

Even without a spike in rates, the push for some semblance of normal schooling faces two major hurdles in areas with high infection rates.

First, a growing number of teachers are resisting going back into the classroom. Many of them are worried because of their age, or they or a relative they live with has a compromised immune system. No amount of cajoling is going to get them back in front of students.

Second, the districts are not ready and can’t be ready for the convolutions of scheduling and the variety of things that could go wrong once children are back in school buildings. What if a teacher tests positive? What if a student does? Are there enough substitute teachers? How do you keep fifth-graders socially distanced? If schools have to abruptly close, then what?

Cooper deserves credit for trying to satisfy parents, teachers and business leaders who are divided on how to approach this school year. And local school officials are making a game effort to draw up hybrid plans. But faced with a high level of teacher resistance and daunting logistics, a simple “let’s wait” on in-person classes where infections are high would avoid a lot of angst in a year already much too full of it.

This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 10:46 AM.