Where is the “Safe” in “Safely Reopening Schools”

The North Carolina General Assembly recently created (and look likely to pass) SB37, “In-Person Learning Choice for Families.”

Essentially, schools in NC would have to offer both in-person and remote learning.

Early this week, Governor Cooper and NCDHHS Secretary Dr. Mandy Cohen held a press conference encouraging school districts to reopen for in-person learning. I love Cooper, I have a major crush on Mandy Cohen, and I still think they’re wrong. Or at best, skipping a few important details.

Both sides of the will-they-or-won’t-they equation have created a straw man argument in place of really hearing what is being asked. If you don’t want students back in-person right now, then you must not care about child mental health, special needs children, minorities, or working parents. If you don’t want virtual for the rest of the year, you are nothing short of a murderer of teachers.

There are districts in various configurations of Plan B* and there are districts already back in Plan A. And then, like my district, some have opted to remain remote for the rest of the school year.

Of those that went to Plan B, some have already had to shift back to plan C, at least temporarily. For some districts, Plans A and B have worked just fine. One size does not fit all. Different counties have varying infection rates and schools run the gamut on physical space limitations.

To be very clear, I am not advocating one way or another as far as the reopening of schools. That’s my point, really. If the legislature is going to force everyone into the same mold, they’re going to need to make it safe and feasible across the board with a comprehensive plan of what each school needs to reopen in a safe way.

We are fighting the wrong people

The government (state and federal, mostly) is sitting back watching us fight and then putting their metaphorical dogs in like rescue animals, not the guard dogs they really are. They are pretending to care about equity and student mental health without doing anything about the foundational issues that they created. If they can pit us against each other, maybe we won’t notice.

I’ve preached before that there are no good answers to the school conundrum. But the fact is, there could be better answers if the government cared about solving the underlying issues of in-person pandemic learning. But then they might have to admit they have been throwing students, teachers, and parents under the school bus for decades. North Carolina, specifically, ranks near the bottom of expenditures per student.

Virtual learning is a shit show

Virtual learning is not working for my family. I don’t want schools to reopen statewide right now. I support the safe reopening of schools. I am worried about the mental health of damn near everyone. I am worried about people getting sick. All of these statements are true simultaneously.

At best, governments are briefly passing by the word “safe” and then moving on without specifically addressing it. They say they support the safe reopening of schools but give no information on what they have done to create a safety plan that is attainable.

First, the state needs to recognize that the needs vary by county, district, and school. I suspect you’ll find a whole lot of racial disparity falling along the same lines. Saying broadly, “You’ve gotta reopen” simply punts responsibility elsewhere.

2020 candidate for state school superintendent Jen Mangrum agrees — if only we had elected her.

Then there are the more tangible action items:

• Are school employees at the top of the vaccination list?
• Are school employees getting extra PTO for quarantine periods? Are they still having to pay for their own substitutes?
• What are you going to do about schools with inadequate HVAC and air circulation? Opening windows might help some, of course, except this is North Carolina and we have four seasons, two of which are not conducive to open windows. And that’s if all the windows even opened.
• How will you make room for students to return and social distance in schools with smaller classrooms?
• How will specials be provided without the specials teachers having to create exposures across classrooms? Same question for EC pull-out services.
• Are you providing plenty of PPE and cleaning supplies for teachers, and child-sized masks for children?
• Do you have guidelines and best practices written for dealing with children who break the “rules” of the pandemic? Have you addressed the likelihood that brown and black students will be disproportionately punished for noncompliance? And if you have ideas on that front… why aren’t we already doing these things all the time?
• How will you keep virtual learning at the current quality (or better) while also expecting teachers to teach in person?
• Do you have ideas to help working parents in the case of sudden school closures due to exposure? Currently, many districts have learning centers set up as a stop-gap for parents unable to be home with their children during the day. But you can’t utilize that if you’re talking about actual exposure.
• You’ve got to wave in-person high-stakes testing requirements for students who remain virtual. Better yet, you could wave standardized testing for the year across the board since you’re very concerned about being fair.

Special needs kids and minority groups are not your pawns

Think carefully about your sudden dedication to equity – you haven’t magically discovered a conscience – you’re weaponizing equity to create the outcome you want. Don’t use black and brown students as convenient excuses while they are also being affected by COVID at higher rates. Doing that, without also mitigating risk to the fullest extent possible, is just treating PoCs as expendable for your agenda.

Currently, SB37 says children with IEPs or 504 plans will go back under Plan A – with minimal social distancing; or parents can choose Plan C and remain virtual. Do parents with EC kids get to choose plan B? Otherwise, this feels a lot like an attempt to use EC children as tools to squish as many students as possible into classrooms while still looking like caring officials. And if we complain, I assume we will be hit with, “well, you can always choose plan C.” Some parents might feel their situation necessitates full-time in-person learning at the cost of less social distancing, and I get that. But don’t take away the choice of Plan B – because my EC kid is not your faux-compassionate shoehorn-shaped game piece.

Let’s also take a second to think about your sudden concern over the mental health of children. This situation would be a mental health crisis no matter what — but you know what might have helped? Setting up a system that nurtures student mental health in the first place. We are all struggling, but as an adult, I can tell you with absolute certainty, I am struggling far less than I would be if I hadn’t spent a billion years in therapy to figure out how to cope when shit hits the fan.

To bring this all together, we have a huge deficit of school psychologists and nurses. Many psychologists and nurses cover 2-3 entire schools. How about along with talk of bringing students back, we also talk about funding more positions of the people who can help.

We cannot let the emergency make us blind to how we arrived here. And we cannot let keeping schools closed be any more of an excuse to continue to ignore these issues than opening them. If we are not going to open schools we need to do a million percent better at making sure kids are getting what they need while at home. The differences from county to county are stark. Durham County, my home, is making sure all children have access to hotspots, computers, and lunches (hot and cold). They have opened learning centers for children who have nowhere else to be during the day. We are more prepared to remain remote than some other counties (though there is still so much room for improvement) – though whether that is the correct decision is not my point here and now.

Trickledown safetynomics doesn’t work

To our government officials: You cannot expect schools to reopen safely, or function well remotely, without providing the tools needed. You cannot just say what the ideal situations would look like and not put your money where your expectations are. Passing the buck lets you conveniently ignore the mess you have created by underfunding schools and devaluing public education. Until you can truly and compassionately understand the ways you have created this quagmire and take steps to resolve it, there will be no “safe” reopening of schools. At least not in the era of COVID-19.

Quit throwing blame-spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

This. Is. On. You.

*North Carolina’s options are Plan A – full-time in-person with minimal social distancing; Plan B – Hybrid model; Plan C – Virtual only