Gateway School District officials discuss potential return to 5-day, in-person instruction

The Gateway School District is working toward getting students back into school five days a week by the end of March or early April, depending on grade levels.

Superintendent Bill Short said during the school board’s Feb. 16 meeting that a survey would go out to families Feb. 22 to gauge interest on how many students desire to return to school Monday through Friday.

The surveys will need to be returned to the district by March 16 for building principals to figure out how to organize classrooms while following guidelines, such as maintaining 6 feet of space between desks, Short said.

The potential timeline, therefore, is to return to full, in-person instruction for kindergarten through fourth grade by March 24. The rest of the grades would go back April 7. Short said the dates offer a “light at the end of the tunnel,” but that officials need to remain cautious.

“We must remind ourselves that we are currently still in a pandemic,” Short said. “With every decision we make, we must keep in mind the health, safety and welfare with our students and staff with whatever we decide to do.”

Students would still be able to enroll or stay in GATE, the district’s fully remote educational program.

The district has operated under hybrid and remote learning models since the beginning of the school year. Buildings have closed several times as the district responded to cases of covid-19 in students and staff.

All students and staff returned to a hybrid learning model Jan. 26 after being fully remote since Nov. 23.

It is unclear how many positive cases of the virus have touched the school district since the beginning of the school year and how many active cases there are now.

Short and the district’s pandemic coordinator, Dennis Chakey, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on current numbers.

In September, the district sent letters addressed to parents to announce temporary shutdowns of school buildings. In letters published in September, October and November, officials provided a number of positive cases to justify shutting down buildings.

Letters continue to go out to parents, but the number of positive cases have not been included since November.

According to previous Tribune-Review articles, there have been an estimated 27 positive cases between students and staff since the beginning of the school year. The most recent cases reported were among two people between the high school and Evergreen Elementary School, which led to 10 staffers between the buildings being ordered to quarantine.

Short, during his presentation to the board, cited the state Department of Health’s covid-19 monitoring dashboard as the reason why the district has not yet considered moving to a five-day, in-person learning model. He said the dashboard still puts Allegheny County in the “substantial” level of transmission because the incidence rate sits at 104.8 residents per 100,000. The positivity rate sits at 6%. Those numbers represent cases from Feb. 5-11.

PDE recommends schools stick with a hybrid learning model until both the incidence rate drops to 10 per 100,000 incidents and the positivity rate drops to 5% in a seven-day period.

In other words, “if fewer than 10 new cases are reported in a county in the most recent 7-day reporting period, the county will automatically qualify as exhibiting a low level of community transmission,” reads the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s information on instructional models.

Short said that although Allegheny County is on a downward trend, he does not see that happening “in the foreseeable future.”

Short said he is hoping vaccines will be available to teachers by the time parents fill out surveys.

“Because I feel (vaccines) would be a game changer as well,” he said.

Teachers and staff inside school buildings fall into Phase 1B of the federal and state guidelines for priority groups. The state still remains under Phase 1A.

Board president Brian Goppman said he appreciates the “cautious effort” the administration is taking.

“If we do something too rash and jump into something too fast and that building has to shut down, now those parents are going to have to work on the fly to figure out what they’re going to do with their children,” he said.

Surveys will go out to parents Feb. 22. Officials said if parents do not respond to questions on the survey, preferences will remain unchanged. Hybrid learners, however, will be opted into being supportive of a return to 5-day, in-person instruction if the survey is not filled out, Short said.

To view Short’s entire presentation, click here.