Back to School: COVID-19 Challenges Lesson Plans

By Paul Natinsky

As we head toward fall in what have been dubbed “uncertain times,” Michigan and its schools face an uncertain return to halls of learning.

The MI Safe Schools Return to School Roadmap and its six-phase “MI Safe Start” protocols serve as the overarching guidance for individual K-12 schools and districts. In following the Roadmap, school districts would create a plan for reopening and adhere to mandated safety protocols marked “required” in the Roadmap. 

The first three phases provide for distance-only learning. They are lumped together in the Roadmap and don’t seem very differentiated. Phases 4 through 6 provide for in-person instruction and gradually loosen spacing and other restrictions. 

In Phase 4, the most restrictive in-person reopening phase, students and teachers are required to wear face coverings (with some medically based exceptions). Students from multiple classrooms cannot combine for assemblies or other events. Hygiene supplies and instruction are required as is a beefed up cleaning schedule using EPA-approved disinfectants, which ranges from wiping down classrooms after every class to cleaning light switches, bathrooms, doors and other “frequently touched surfaces” every four hours.

However, spacing requirements inside classrooms, special areas within schools to quarantine students, and rules governing when students and teachers can return to school after testing positive for COVID-19 or exhibiting symptoms appear under “strongly recommended” or “recommended” measures. Cooperation with local public health department protocols and guidelines is listed as “required,” but it is unclear how that coordination will take place.

Athletics is governed by a list of “required” restrictions that limit contact between athletes, call for separate water bottles for athletes and social distancing and face coverings for spectators, among other provisions.

“The West Bloomfield School District will be following the ‘required’ and ‘strongly recommended’ protocols for each of the MI Safe Start Phases,” said Superintendent Gerald Hill, PhD. 

The first requirement listed for returning to in-person instruction under Phase 4 states that, “The number of new cases and deaths has fallen for a period of time, but overall case levels are still high.”

At press time, daily reports of new cases were in the hundreds and tagged as rising in Johns Hopkins University data. Other requirements for a Phase 4 reopen regarding hospital capacity and disease tracking and testing are equally vague.

Money

Michigan’s School Aid Fund is facing a whopping $1.2 billion shortfall, mostly from to a drop in sales tax revenues for big-ticket items during the recession that began in February. That is about $600 per student.

Adding insult to injury, one estimate pegs the cost of extra personal protective equipment, daily deep cleaning, screening and other costs at almost $2 million, or about $500 per student for an average-sized school district. These shortfalls and added costs come during an era in which schools have taken a budget beating already. 

“We know that safety protocols come with costs,” stated Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the forward to the Roadmap. “Thus, we will be investing a significant amount of federal funds to support schools in the implementation of the required safety protocols outlined in the Roadmap and to address other needs resulting from COVID-19.” 

“If our state and nation are serious about opening schools safely for the fall, additional resources, not budget cuts, are imperative,” said West Bloomfield’s Hill. “The federal government must pass additional stimulus legislation that backfills the loss of state and local revenue caused by the recession. Schoolchildren and teachers cannot be expected to learn and work safely and productively in stripped down learning environments. One of the keys to a successful economic recovery is an appropriate investment in K - 12 public schools. Our future, and our children’s health and safety are at stake.”

Crash Course

Like many K-12 school districts across the state, West Bloomfield was not set up to provide distance learning when Michigan schools shut down in mid-March. At press time, the district was finalizing its plans for blended distance and in-person learning, a program called Classroom to Cloud, and refining a remote-only option, called Lakers Online. 

The new strategy is designed to be flexible and meet the challenges presented by a changed environment for in-person learning and a newly minted necessity and demand for distance learning.  “The hybrid option of Classroom to Cloud, which will be implemented if we are in the MI Safe Start Phase 4, requires significant investments in PPE (face masks, hand sanitizers, etc.) as well as less efficient space utilization due to social distancing on school buses and in schools (which necessitates smaller groups of children in classes),” said Hill. “Additionally, because students will also be working remotely, we are providing Chromebooks for each student to use at home in addition to the Chromebooks that will be used during face-to-face instruction when they are at school.”

Teachers

Remaining in play are issues regarding teachers, who have a list of safety and work process concerns, and parents who decide to keep their children home this fall.

Time Magazine reported in early July, “About 20 percent of teachers said they aren’t likely to return to teaching if schools reopen in the fall, according to a USA Today/Ipsos poll conducted in late May.”

The Magazine reported that EdWeek Research Center surveys conducted around the same time found that, “more than 10 percent of teachers are more likely to leave the profession now than they were before the pandemic, and 65 percent of educators said they want school buildings to remain closed to slow the spread of the virus.”

Students

Still, the undisputed goal among all parties is to return children to school as soon as it is safe to do so. The Michigan chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics urges “in-person education to the maximum extent possible,” according to an email on school reopening.

“In our offices we have seen large discrepancies in available at home learning support…which increase the achievement gap (especially with) younger and special needs children,” the email reads. “School closures have put mental and social health at risk (for students) and that affects their educational trajectories.” Schools also provide meals, personal health services, mental health support and a better environment for English learners, AAP notes.

Time reported that “…the pressure to reopen schools is strong. Recent studies show that students have likely suffered significant learning loss during this period of remote schooling, worsening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students…Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, agrees. ‘I feel very strongly we need to do whatever we can to get the children back to school,’ he said during testimony before the Senate on June 30,” reported the magazine.

With regard to the fears about spreading COVID-19, the doctors refer to data suggesting elementary and pre-school kids are at low risk of contracting the virus and they are “less likely to be primary vectors for the spread.”

For children, the benefits of being in school might outweigh the risks to their health, but older teachers administrators, custodians and others who work in school buildings fall into higher risk groups for both infection and death. 

The state has provided a framework and schools are working on plans, but money, logistics and developing science regarding COVID-19 leave much work to do in an increasingly short window.