From the very beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, here in the US, we heard about the challenge we were facing — flattening the statistical curve. If too many serious cases developed simultaneously, we were told, the healthcare system would be overwhelmed, and indeed we saw that happen, last March and April, in Italy and Spain especially, and also in New York City.
As a precaution, public schools were shut down in many countries, and teachers and families were expected to engage in ‘remote learning’.
The danger of overwhelming hospitals and healthcare workers appears to be a rising threat once again, in November… in many places across the US, and around the world.
The news about the pandemic’s effects on public education is mostly depressing lately. Philadelphia is the latest major American public school district to postpone or retreat from in-person instruction. Boston reversed course late last month October; Chicago has no set date to reopen its classrooms; Maryland districts are reconsidering or reversing plans. San Francisco has no timeline for its schools to reopen; San Diego has postponed a planned return to classrooms until January. In Los Angeles, most classrooms are unlikely to reopen before January… if then.
And here in Pagosa Springs, our high school football team has been quarantined.
I spoke with Archuleta School District Superintendent Kym LeBlanc-Esparza earlier this week and learned that the football game last Friday resulted in news, on Tuesday, that the entire Pagosa football team would be required to quarantine for the next two weeks, due to a reported COVID case on the visiting team.
When I phoned the superintendent on Wednesday afternoon, I started off with a friendly question:
“So… how’s it going?”
Ms. LeBlanc-Esparza, who took over as ASD superintendent this past spring following the retirement of Linda Reed, treated me to a hearty laugh. “You know… it’s going. It’s going…” Her tone became more serious. “I feel fortunate that we are seemingly navigating this challenge better than many of our surrounding districts, but it’s a day-by-day challenge, for sure.”
Earlier that same day, ASD and Pagosa Springs Medical Center had collaborated on a free COVID testing event for families of Pagosa Springs Middle School students, after two COVID infections showed up at that school.
“And we have another wave that will be testing on Friday [today]. That will be staff. We have about 150 staff members signed up to test as well. It was voluntary, if they wanted to, but given the cases that we’ve had, and the increase in cases in the community over the past two weeks, I think folks felt like it’s worth their time and energy to test. So we have between 125 and 150 staff members to test on Friday.”
Is the school district getting calls from concerned parents, as a result of the two reported Middle School infections?
“No, we’re not. We’ve had families, in various situations, who have requested a switch to remote learning, and we’ve worked really hard to accommodate that. But at this point, we really haven’t had folks call to say they don’t feels safe — or who’ve called to say, it’s no big deal. We haven’t seen either side of that spectrum, to be honest.
“At this point, the feedback we’ve gotten is appreciation for the communication that the schools have done, and that we’ve done at the District level. Appreciation that we’ve kept people in the loop, regarding cases and that kind of thing. And appreciation that our kids are still in school, in person — at least for now — while many surrounding districts are not.”
Here’s a quote from a Durango School District 9-R, sixty miles away to the west, sent out on Tuesday, November 10:
We commend all the efforts that our families and staff have made to allow 9-R to open up our school year with three different learning models, including in-person. That was not an option for many districts across the state and the country, and we are grateful for the opportunity to support students and enjoy success in the first quarter of the school year with little to no issue.
Transmission rates and positivity rates in our community are on the rise, and we are seeing much bigger impacts on our staff and students, with 12 cohorts alone going into quarantine in the past week. With these trends, we are at a critical point where we must make some immediate shifts in our learning models for families in an effort to slow the spread of the virus and reduce the spike in cases we are experiencing in our community.
Because of this, we will be shifting ALL students in all models to full remote learning beginning tomorrow, Wednesday, November 11, 2020, continuing through the winter break, which ends on January 4, 2021. Understanding the difficulties that this may create for families, the decision to move the entire district to remote instruction is a difficult one. We encourage you to think about how this will work for your family, perhaps identifying another family who has practiced the public health safety guidelines issued by our local health authorities, to reduce the burden and provide remote learning support for younger children.
Like the schools in Pagosa, 9-R had been operating their in-person instruction using ‘cohorts’ — semi-isolated classroom groups of students and instructors, within each building, that did not mingle with other cohorts. If a COVID case showed up within one cohort, that one group could be sent home for the recommended two weeks of quarantine (and ‘remote learning’) without affecting the entire school.
The assumption being, of course, that in-person instruction is superior to computer-aided ‘remote learning’.
We don’t actually have data showing that students learn more in a classroom than they do staying home with their families. The primary data used by the Colorado Department of Education to assess academic progress is the CMAS test, administered every spring in all Colorado schools. Due to the pandemic shutdowns, those tests were not administered last spring.
So, how’s it going…?