CMS staying remote into February, with later start for older students

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students will stay in remote learning through at least Feb. 12, the board voted in an emergency meeting Thursday.

The sudden change comes days before the district planned to bring all students who opted into Plan B back to some form of in-person learning.

Thursday’s debate and vote was expected after a Tuesday board meeting, where officials were told of a new directive from Mecklenburg County Public Health Director Gibbie Harris. The guidance, which is not mandatory, asks schools and businesses to shift all operations to remote platforms unless in-person activity is required. Harris’ directive is in effect through Feb. 2.

“What we’re wrestling with is safety and academics,” board chair Elyse Dashew said. “Even though remote schooling is working fine for some kids, it’s not working fine for a lot of kids. And yet, the numbers are just in a really bad place... I don’t see how we can go back on Jan. 19. I just don’t think that’s responsible.”

Under the plan approved by the board in an 8-1 vote, CMS will have pre-K, elementary, a small fraction of middle school students and some students with special needs start in-person learning Feb. 15. Middle and high school students will begin their rotations Feb. 22.

But those dates could be further pushed back if community spread does not come down. The district will reevaluate the state of the virus’ spread between Feb. 2 and Feb. 8, and bring a recommendation for whether to proceed with the return to school at the Feb. 9 board meeting.

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Most in-person sports, extracurricular activities and before- and after-school programming will be suspended during the closure. Community use of school buildings will also stop for the time period.

The board also approved extending federal and local leave provisions until March 15, allowing employees who cannot work remotely to access 80 hours of paid leave.

Board member Sean Strain criticized Superintendent Earnest Winston and CMS staff for delaying the proposed return past the Feb. 2 date in the health department’s directive. Strain was the lone vote opposing the delay.

“The only reason we’re here is because they’ve asked us not to return to schools,” Strain said. “We could say, ‘no thanks it’s really important.’ Where is the alternative here? How is this in the best interest of kids, even if we kiss the ring, to delay past Feb. 2?”

Strain said rising failure rates in the district indicated that remote learning was harming students, and that academic achievement was falling behind. But Breana Fowler, the board’s student representative, said that grades and failure rates had to be understood in the context of pandemic.

“Grades are not evidence of mastery,” Fowler said. “This pandemic is a learning curve. We are all adjusting to this new form of learning.”

Other board members rebuked Strain for his language. They said it was critical to work with the health department and to listen to public health officials, who have indicated the community spread is too high for in-person schooling.

“Kiss the ring language is not consistent with teamwork — teamwork with the health department and parent partnerships and other entities that the superintendent and his staff have so diligently regarded,” Ruby Jones said.

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CMS in red zone

Board member Rhonda Cheek, who is a registered nurse and works as a nurse case manager, said that as a health professional, she believed the county’s metrics had reached a point where in-person schooling had to be reconsidered. She said that while schools had not been a big driver of spread, community behavior had forced CMS to pull back on in-person learning.

“Us staying remote is not going to change the disease progression,” Cheek said. “That is happening because people are gathering. Us staying in remote is not going to change that. We’ve got to change our behavior as a community.”

In total, roughly 40,000 children were part of those rotations in the fall. The district had two clusters reported in the first semester, one at Francis Bradley Middle School and another at the Metro School.

Students were scheduled to start their in-person learning rotations on Jan. 19. During a nearly three-hour public comment section, parents and teachers implored the board to hear their case for either returning to in-person learning or keeping the district in remote learning.

Supporters of in-person learning said they were confident the school system had all the right safety measures in place, and that children were struggling in the remote environment.

But advocates for staying in remote said the worsening spread meant everyone should limit in-person interaction. They also said that the district would likely not be able to sustain a long-term reopening as the pandemic worsens, creating further uncertainty for children who struggled to adjust to constant changes.

Dashew said that while she wished the board could make a decision to extend remote learning for a longer time period, such as the end of the quarter, CMS had to balance the needs of employees who would be at risk of furlough during a prolonged closure.

“I’m concerned what that means for our employees who would have to get furloughed if we stay in remote too long,” she said. “As soon as the numbers are down, I do support going into the school house, because a that’s where (students) learn best, and that’s what’s best for the CMS family.”

Board members questioned whether the leave provisions would jeopardize the ability of the school district to open for in-person learning in February. Chief human resource officer Christine Pejot said that it was a possibility, but it would be difficult to forecast staffing levels as employees request the leave when they are impacted by COVID-19.

Pejot said that the district had not had any furloughs, and had been able to reassign a large number of hourly employees to alternative or remote work. She said the leave provisions would affect roughly 2,500 employees and the leave would cost $1.7 million per week, which the district can cover using COVID-19 relief funds.

A shortage of bus drivers in the fall prompted the district to delay the start of middle school in-person rotations, as drivers took those leave provisions in November. But board members and staff said it was important to consider the needs of employees who are also navigating the pandemic.

“We don’t have school without staff,” Dashew said. “Our students don’t have school without teachers, bus drivers and custodians. I want to make it clear to the public there are a lot of CMS employees who can work in remote learning, and there are some employees whose jobs cannot be done remotely and for whom there is no job if we’re in remote. I don’t want those folks in the unemployment line.”

Some board members said they hoped to allow limited athletics to continue, particularly in outdoor sports like cross country that are approaching the end of their playoff seasons. They said it was important for students’ mental health and that involvement in athletics can motivate students academically.

Winston granted an exception to fall sports in their playoff seasons, allowing those students to compete in their final matches of the year.

But board member Carol Sawyer said that many people thinking an individual activity is safe was exactly what was driving the spread of the virus.

“We can’t continue to just say, ‘We have to shut everything down except,’ because everything has an exception,” Sawyer said.

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