Just as schools begin to reopen, many are closing again as COVID-19 surges: ‘It’s almost an impossible situation'
It took more than six months and countless hours for New Trier High School officials to develop and execute an elaborate plan to bring students back into the classroom safely and gradually this fall for in-person instruction.
But it took just five days for administrators to halt their new COVID-19-era hybrid plan and send students back to their bedrooms for remote learning, at least for the time being.
The decision to put the brakes on New Trier’s hybrid plan came last week after a spike in COVID-19 cases in suburban Chicago and after the state reported some of the highest numbers of new cases since May.
The pause of in-person classes and will remain in place for this week, Superintendent Paul Sally said in a Friday letter.
“As in the previous week, our pause this week is due to the continued seriousness of the COVID-19 numbers across Illinois and in our community, not the number of New Trier student and staff cases,” Sally said.
New Trier officials recently approved a contract for voluntary weekly saliva screening for students and staff — a process that Sally said “could go a long way toward helping get more students back on campus for uninterrupted learning.”
Now, with the Illinois Department of Public Health on Monday reporting more than 3,100 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, suburban Chicago school district officials who in recent months have faced intense pressure from parents, demanding that schools reopen, will be forced to make day-to-day decisions with consequences that extend far beyond academics.
“I think everyone recognizes that in-person instruction is better for students than remote learning, but the problem is, reopening schools is not about an inconvenience — it’s a matter of life and death,” said Timothy Dohrer, an assistant professor at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.
“The stakes are much higher with these decisions, and it’s almost an impossible situation,” said Dohrer, a former principal at New Trier.
“Scientists have been telling us for months, if you reopen schools, you’ll be in person one day and back to remote the next, so I do think school superintendents and principals are seeing what they knew could happen,” he added.
While the potential need to flip-flop between remote and in-person learning was likely anticipated by administrators, for teachers on the front lines, the frequent changes can double the number of hours they spend on instruction and lesson planning, Dohrer said.
The constant uncertainty can prove daunting for students, too, dimming their academic progress, and compromising their emotional health, Dohrer said.
“These unprecedented changes and experiences during COVID are confusing and stressful for students, and all of this back and forth, opening and closing, and turning on a dime, can begin to disrupt the rhythm of a consistent school experience," he said.
Despite the recent halting of in-person instruction and temporary return to remote learning at New Trier, Elmhurst District 205 and Deerfield Public Schools District 109, students attending several other suburban districts are returning to the classroom this month for the first time since last March. Glenbrook High School District 225 also briefly halted in-person instruction earlier this month.
Arlington Heights-based Districts 25 and 214 and Barrington District 220 — all of which were the targets of recent parent protests calling for an expedited reopening of schools — are launching hybrid learning plans this month that limit the number of students in school buildings, and often include some element of virtual instruction.
While students at several North Shore elementary school districts, including Winnetka School District 36, Avoca School District 37 and Wilmette School District 39, have been back in the classroom with a hybrid instructional model since the start of the school year, the steady rise in COVID-19 cases has led other suburban districts, including Oak Park District 97 and East Aurora District 131, to delay reopening schools until January at the earliest. On Monday, Naperville District 203 announced that early childhood and elementary students will not resume in-person learning “at this time.”
Chicago Public Schools officials announced Friday that they plan to start bringing some of the most vulnerable students, including those in special education programs, back into the classroom sometime before the end of the calendar year — a proposal that was quickly slammed by the Chicago Teachers Union as “reckless” given the soaring COVID rates in the region.
Yet according to one recent study conducted by researchers at Yale University, child care centers that remained open during the early days of the pandemic did not contribute to the spread of the coronavirus.
The study, which surveyed 57,000 child care providers across the U.S., found that exposure to child care was not associated with an elevated risk of spreading COVID-19 from children to adults. That was the case when the child care programs followed safety measures — including disinfecting, hand-washing, symptom screening, social distancing, wearing masks and limiting group size — and were located in communities where the spread of COVID-19 was contained, according to the Yale website.
Still, the turmoil and ever-changing instructional models in the wake of the pandemic has added up to make 2020 “likely the most trying time any educator has had to face in their entire career,” Kathi Griffin, president of the Illinois Education Association said Friday.
“Shifting from in-person learning to remote learning and vice versa is difficult, as is teaching remote and in person simultaneously for multiple student populations,” Griffin said.
The health concerns related to COVID-19 are also “causing additional stress on students, staff and their families,” Griffin said.
At Palatine-based Community Consolidated School District 15, which began the school year with remote learning and started bringing students in prekindergarten through eighth grade back into the classroom in late September, officials say their rolling reentry plan has thus far been an overwhelmingly positive experience.
While the district enrolls 12,000 students, about one-third are expected to continue remote learning — a parental choice that dramatically reduced the number of students in each classroom, making it easier to follow the state’s COVID-19 health and safety guidelines, District 15 spokeswoman Morgan Delack said.
“We’ve been able to keep our elementary school class sizes small, because we had far less students coming back into the buildings than we anticipated,” Delack said.
All schools in the state are required to follow the Illinois Department of Public Health guidelines for appropriate social distancing, face coverings, enhanced sanitation measures, and other rules intended to ensure the safety of students, staff, and their families.
In addition, schools are required to adhere to the health department’s “Decision Tree,” which outlines the mandated protocol for students and staff displaying COVID-19 symptoms at schools and day care centers.
Illinois schools were allowed to bring students back into the classroom in phase three of the state’s Restore Illinois plan, with in-person instruction “strongly encouraged” in phase four, according to the Illinois State Board of Education’s transition recommendations.
But the state stops short of prescribing a specific slate of metrics for educators to follow when making school closure decisions, and most school districts, including District 15, rely on at least two types of data: the number of community COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents, and more specific information of how reported cases of the virus are affecting schools and particular classrooms.
While District 15 officials currently have no plans to shut schools due to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases across the state, Delack said the situation is being closely monitored.
During the past two weeks, District 15 has reported 11 positive student cases and six positive staff cases, she said.
“As goes with COVID, we always encourage families to have backup plans, just in case they need child care at the last minute,” Delack said.
The lack of a comfortably predictable school routine — which, in normal times, would only be interrupted by the random snow day — has thrust hardships upon families with children of all ages, said Alexandra Solomon, a licensed clinical psychologist at the Family Institute and assistant professor in the department of psychology at Northwestern University.
“All of this has been very taxing for parents, and creates a desire to point a finger at someone for doing something wrong,” Solomon said. “But we all know the decisions that these superintendents are making about school closures are so hard, and are guided by science and data."
For stressed-out parents facing the uncertainty of whether their children will be back in school on any given day, Solomon said there is always the good old “cry on the bathroom floor” to decompress in private.
“One thing I feel is really important, especially for parents of younger kids, is to tell them, ‘I love you, and I love being with you.’ Parents should make sure kids know they are not disappointed that they’re back doing remote learning in the home, even though it can be hard to work out the logistics,” Solomon said.
“This is so hard on everyone, going back and forth, and in some ways, it would be simpler if schools would just say, ‘We’re doing remote learning until at least January,'” Solomon added.
Northfield resident Amy Richmond said the decision to have her teenage daughter carry on with remote learning when officials at New Trier began bringing students back on campus was guided by science and common sense.
“My daughter and I talked about everything, including what the scientists are saying about how COVID spreads, so we both knew it was silly to think there was not going to be this back and forth, if school reopened," Richmond said. "She’s going to be doing this first semester all remote to keep things consistent, but of course, she looks forward to being back at school at some point, and misses her friends and teachers, and all her extracurriculars. It’s a struggle, and it’s going to be a painful junior year.”
Twitter @kcullotta
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