When will Muscogee schools return to in-person classes amid COVID? Decision announced.
The Muscogee County School District has decided when Columbus public schools will return to in-person classes amid the coronavirus pandemic.
MCSD will phase in the reopening of in-person classes, starting Sept. 14 for some students and starting Sept. 21 for all students whose families select that option. Virtual classes will continue for those who choose the online-only option.
New plan
Here’s the new plan MCSD superintendent David Lewis presented to the school board Monday night, with some members in the board room —- wearing masks and social distancing — and others joining via videoconferencing:
- Beginning on Sept. 14, students in prekindergarten through second grade in elementary school, sixth grade in middle school, ninth grade in high school and students in self-contained specialized classes may attend in-person classes if their families choose that option. Students in grades 3-5 in elementary school, grades 7-8 in middle school and grades 10-12 in high school will remain in online-only classes.
- Beginning on Sept. 21, all students may attend in-person classes if their families choose that option. The online-only classes will continue for students in families who choose the virtual learning option.
Parents and guardians have until Sept. 4 to make or change the choice for their children. As of Aug. 26, approximately 10,500 selected in-person instruction and 15,000 virtual, MCSD chief academic officer Keith Seifert told the board.
Rationale
“We want to do this in stages,” he said. “This allows for a smaller body of students coming back into the buildings to initially go into a choice model or in-person instruction. . . . We want to get the most vulnerable students in.”
While conferring with his principals advisory group, Lewis said, they told him the phased approach will allow certain students to benefit from the extra week transitioning back to in-person classes and adjusting to new routines: prekindergartners through second-graders learning to read, sixth-graders and ninth-graders getting used to new schools, and special-education and English as a Second Language students needing more personalized instruction.
With fewer students in the buildings that week, school personnel will have more time to test their coronavirus mitigation strategies and better determine the problems, Lewis told the board.
“This way,” he said, “we can identify those early on.”
Lewis said his plan is based on advice from local medical experts and the school district’s legal counsel. His medical advisers emphasized the need for children to get back to the school environment as soon as possible, he said.
Columbus reported fewer than 30 new COVID-19 cases Monday. According to the latest data release from the Georgia Department of Public Health, 5,466 coronavirus cases and 134 deaths in Columbus have been confirmed since the start of the pandemic. No new deaths were reported Monday.
On Monday, no new viral tests were reported, and Muscogee County’s test positivity rate for the past two weeks is 8.3%. Since the start of the pandemic, 11.3% of Muscogee County’s tests have been positive. The World Health Organization’s recommended test positivity percentage is 5% or less to properly track outbreaks and locate milder cases of the disease.
Responding to a question from District 7 representative Cathy Williams, Columbus Health Department director Beverley Townsend acknowledged that a recent decrease in testing could contribute to the decrease in the positivity rate.
Dr. Grant Scarborough, executive director of MercyMed of Columbus, gave the board a different perspective.
“We’ve consistently been testing about 50 to 60 people every day for weeks, so I haven’t seen the decrease in testing,” he said. “I have seen a decrease in positive results, though.”
An unnamed epidemiologist from the health department told the board, “When we start to see around the 6% or 5% (positivity rate), it’s a possibility we’re no longer seeing the severity of the virus among the population.”
She said that rate was 6.7% last week.
The local numbers of coronavirus patients hospitalized and in ICU beds also have decreased, Townsend said.
Board reaction
Because this plan is about the operations of the school district, the board doesn’t vote on it. No board member explicitly said they are against it, but one expressed his concern in stark terms.
After hearing, District 5 representative Laurie McRae say she wanted to remind the board about “the detrimental effects of children not being in school,” District 2 representative and retired teacher Mike Edmondson said, “And I would like to remind people that dead teachers can’t teach and sick students can’t learn.”
MCSD employees may file a request to telecommute. As of Monday, 302 requests were filed, 31 were approved and 86 were denied, human resources chief Arleska Castillo told the board.
Dr. Rebecca Ramey, pediatrics chief for Piedmont Columbus Regional, told the board, “The number of anxious teenagers that we’ve seen over the last few months has been much higher than usual.”
One of the major stresses, she said, is social isolation.
Dr. Kathryn Cheek of Rivertown Pediatrics told the board she also has seen an increase in anxiety and depression among children of all ages, so she supports the superintendent’s choice plan because she trusts parents to make the best decision for their children.
“I can tell you that every parent almost that I’ve spoken to, especially the younger ones, are just having a real struggle at their homes with the six hours of virtual learning with a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old over a tablet,” she said. “I just don’t think they’re getting the education they need to learn to read and listen and to see words formed from a teacher’s mouth and just have social interactions. It’s devastating what it’s doing to some children.”
Board chairwoman Pat Hugely Green of District 1 asked Cheek to clarify whether the anxiety is due to virtual learning as opposed to social isolation.
“I would say it’s a combination of all,” Cheek said.
Many of MercyMed’s patients are underprivileged, including a clinic for Fox Elementary School students. More cases of child abuse and neglect have been documented since the restrictions to mitigate the pandemic started six months ago, Scarborough said.
“My concern is really widening the gap between our poor kids, the haves and the have-nots,” he said. “The No. 1 way out of poverty is education. It’s been proven. So my plea is to give the poor kids, our kids in poverty, a chance, because this is their chance. The school is that safety net.”
Green challenged Scarborough’s linking of child abuse to poverty.
“Oh, statistically, absolutely,” he said.
Precautions
Cheek praised the school district’s precautions against spreading the virus during in-person classes.
“When I’ve been on these committees,” she said, “the details they have worked through to try to make sure these children are going to be safe is really to be commended.”
Administrators listed some of the precautions for in-person classes:
- Masks required.
- Hand sanitizing stations throughout the buildings, and every classroom will have a gallon of hand sanitizer with a pump.
- Visitors limited.
- Sneeze guards in places with public interaction.
- Paper cups at water fountains.
- More than half of MCSD’s students are expected to remain with virtual learning. That will help the school staffs enforce social distancing guidelines with fewer students in their building.
“We’re going to need everyone’s cooperation,” Lewis said. “We keep talking about grace and flexibility. We’re going to need that going forward for everyone.”
Green interjected, “The district will have grace with parents trying to make their transition and employees trying to get their documentation as well.”
Lewis replied, “When thing are reasonable, absolutely.”
Staff writer Nick Wooten contributed to this report.
This story was originally published August 31, 2020 at 6:56 PM.
