More than 200 employees have been locked out of work in Georgia's largest school district. An Indiana high school had to switch to online learning after just two days. And students in Mississippi were forced into self-quarantine after classmates tested positive for the coronavirus during the first week of classes.
The new academic year is off to a chaotic start as schools open in some parts of the country while infections continue to rage. Already in the South and Midwest, students and teachers have brought the virus to school with them, prompting lockdowns, delayed openings and temporary shutdowns as positive tests come in.
With the first schools open for just a week, a question quickly arises: How many positive cases will it take to close again?
It's a question to which education leaders have received vague, sometimes conflicting answers from state and local officials, with widely varying standards in different parts of the country.
In New York, two cases in unrelated classrooms would be enough to trigger a temporary closure of an entire school, which could be extended for two weeks. But California's rules say its schools must be closed if 5 percent of staff and students test positive, which in large schools can mean multiple incidents. Mississippi guidelines say schools “may consider dismissal” if at least three classrooms have simultaneous foci.
The federal recommendations also leave decisions largely up to schools, saying “a single case of Covid-19 in a school would not likely justify closing the entire school.”
Uncertainty means superintendents and other administrators are being asked to make decisions they are often ill-equipped to make, said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director at AASA, the Association of School Superintendents.
“Do the districts know enough? They don't,” he said, adding, “They're not pandemic experts.”
The rash of positive cases during the first week of school portends a year of stops and starts in which students and staff may have to bounce between classroom instruction and at home remotely due to infections and quarantines.
Many of the nation's largest school districts have already announced that they will begin the school year with distance learning because infections in their communities are so prevalent. This includes Los Angeles, the nation's second largest district, which reached an agreement on Monday with the local teachers union that would establish a distance learning program that looks more like a typical school day than homeschooling in the spring.
In Maryland, Governor Larry Hogan issued an emergency order confronting the Montgomery County Health Department, which said Friday that all private schools had to start the year remotelyjust as the district's public schools planned.
Montgomery County is home to some of the most prestigious private schools in the country, including St. Andrew's Episcopal School, which is attended by President Trump's youngest child. Mr. Hogan, a Republican, said the county's closure order was overly broad and “inconsistent with the powers that are to be vested in the county health officer.”
Mr. Trump, who has pushed for schools to reopen and threatened to withhold federal funding from those that do not teach in person, renewed his plea on Monday, writing on Twitter first “Open the schools!” and later “OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!!”
But some public health experts doubt that schools opening classrooms in hard-hit parts of the country will be able to avoid long-term shutdowns.
“It's just not possible,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, adding that “there is too much transmission of the virus” in a significant part of the United States, particularly the Sun Belt, to schools there to avoid large outbreaks.
“Once you open the classrooms, within two weeks, teachers and students will be sick, bus drivers will be sick and staff will be sick,” Dr. Hotez said. “And all it will take is one teacher being admitted to the school district hospital and that's it, it'll be lights out and no one will show up for work.”
While schools won't start in some parts of the country for several weeks, about 14 percent of American children they usually return the first full week of August, mostly in the South and parts of the Midwest.
It didn't take long for the virus to show up in the hallways and classrooms after schools opened in Indiana on Thursday. At Greenfield Central Junior High School, outside Indianapolis, a student tested positive on the very first day of school, and students who had close contact were asked to self-quarantine for 14 days.
In Elwood, Ind., a community of about 8,000 in the central part of the state, the superintendent of the Elwood Community School Corporation sent a note Saturday thanking students and parents for “Have a great first two days at school!” But the optimistic tone quickly faded: Several staff members had tested positive for the virus, he wrote, and an employee at the high school had possibly exposed other staff members.
Students in grades seven through 12 are now spending this week learning online. Employees plan to return to classroom learning as soon as next week.
That's the right answer, according to Dr. Troy Abbott, president of the Madison County Board of Health, which includes much of Elwood. No government requirements, he said, the county is recommending that schools remain open unless they average more than 24 cases per day over a seven-day period.
“We don't have a vaccine, and I don't know that we should wait for a vaccine,” Dr. Abbott said, citing recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics that it's important for children to be physically present at school. . He also noted that younger people are less likely to get seriously ill from the coronavirus.
“Our hospitals are not overwhelmed, they are not overworked, we are not busy for over a month and getting the children back to school is a very reasonable option,” he said.
But some public health experts are skeptical that it is safe to reopen schools in areas where the virus is spreading widely or where local officials lack the means to quickly test and identify people.
Even though children are less likely to get seriously ill, “every child I know lives in a home with an adult,” said Dr. Harry Heyman, clinical associate professor of health policy and behavioral sciences at Georgia State University. “The idea that you can safely reopen schools and not actually exacerbate the spread is not based on science,” he added. “It's based on wishful thinking.”
In some cases, the virus has reached schools even before the students.
In Gwinnett County, Ga., the largest school system in the state, teachers returned to work Wednesday preparing for the Aug. 12 start of remote classes. But as of Thursday, about 260 workers had been suspended from work because they had tested positive or possibly been exposed to the virus.
Sloan Roach, a spokeswoman for the school district, said the majority of cases were attributed to community spread. “We have people who have been called to report that they haven't been to school or work,” he said, adding that positive cases were expected.
Gwinnett County has confirmed about 4,000 new infections in the past two weeks.
About 55 miles away, a district in Pickens County, Ga., faced a similar problem after staff members gathered for training at an elementary school developed symptoms of the coronavirus. The district, which serves about 4,400 students, delayed the start of school for two weeks so all employees at that school could be tested.
“We're just being overly cautious,” the superintendent, Rick Townsend, said Monday, which was supposed to be the first day of school. He said he made the decision to delay classes until Aug. 17 in consultation with local health officials.
At Corinth High School in north Mississippi, students are enrolled in classes according to seating charts to limit their contact with others. They eat breakfast and lunch in their office. English and Maths classes are taught in large open spaces such as the cafeteria.
However, at least three students have tested positive for the virus since schools opened last week and about 40 are in quarantine.
“I've been in the business over 40 years – I've never experienced anything like this,” said Lee Childress, the area's foreman. “It's like drinking from a fire hose because it happens so fast.”
However, after a summer of preparation, he said he felt comfortable moving forward with the regular start date.
“It doesn't matter if you open schools in July, August, September or October,” he said. “It's something every school will have to deal with.”
