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Education Dive
Just over half of districts plan some level of in-person instruction for fall
Naaz Modan
Aug. 6, 2020
Dive Brief:
Data collected by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE)
suggests, as of the end of July, 40% of school districts that have
announced reopening plans favor full in-person instruction this fall,
and 51% of school districts with announced plans will provide in-person
learning at least partially through a hybrid model.
Rural districts are much more likely than their urban counterparts to
have announced a return to the classroom. However, a smaller portion of
rural districts have announced their reopening plans.
The data, collected from a sample of 477 districts nationwide, also
shows one-third of school districts overall still haven't made their
fall plans public.
Dive Insight:
As fall nears, many large urban districts have backtracked on their
plans to return to brick-and-mortar buildings, including the Los
Angeles Unified School District, Chicago Public Schools and Fairfax
County Public Schools in Virginia. New York City's public school
system, however, is pushing forward with in-person instruction and
rolled out plans last Friday to quarantine individual schools for up to
two weeks if there is a positive COVID-19 case on-site.
While New York City officials considered the standards — which include
opening schools only if the city's infection rate is less than 3% — the
decision was immediately met with pushback from the city's teacher
union for falling short of members' expectations.
On Wednesday, the United Federation of Teachers said New York City's
plan "does not meet safety standards." Both the organization and New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have expressed concerns that while the plan is
to routinely test teachers, other school-based staff and school
community members, the capacity for such testing may be lacking.
The prior week, UFT's parent organization, the American Federation of
Teachers, floated the possibility of teacher strikes or lawsuits in the
event districts push to reopen buildings without sufficient health and
safety precautions in place. The Florida Education Association, a
state-level branch of the National Education Association, also recently
filed a lawsuit alongside educators and parents against Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis, the state's department of education and its board of
education on the grounds that reopenings are unsafe in current
conditions.
The debate around reopening has divided the nation's school
administrators, teachers, parents and politicians. "This has created
polarization in communities that are typically pretty united," said
Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School
Administrators, adding that national divisions typically do not filter
down to local communities.
This time, however, mounting pressure from the White House to reopen,
pushes from health experts to send students back to classrooms safely,
and conditional funding mechanisms tied to reopening in some states
like Texas, Arizona and Indiana have pushed districts to make tough
decisions at the risk of upsetting teachers and parents.
Meanwhile, rural schools, as the recent data suggests, remain largely
unaffected by these reopening debates. This trend aligns with low virus
spread in those communities as well as the possibility that rural
facilities have the capacity to support social distancing
recommendations.
However, Dan Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School
Superintendents Association, told Education Dive that the longer
Congress takes to agree on a federal stimulus package, the more
difficult it will be for districts to reopen in person.
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