A look inside schools' reopening decisions

Gary Peiffer was “cautiously optimistic” at the beginning of this school year.

The superintendent of Greensburg Salem School District felt ready for the district’s planned hybrid model. Federal CARES Act funds had been used to purchase laptops, cleaning materials and plastic barriers. Teachers had gone through training for new remote learning and in-person safety protocols. And cases in the region were receding after a spike in mid-July.

But two months later, the district is still fighting delays to obtain the rest of those laptops. Infections are surging in the region, and some buildings have had to temporarily close. Moving into the second quarter, with the winter months looming and cases already on the rise, Peiffer said there’s still a lot for him to worry about.

“The longer this goes on and we’re delayed, it becomes difficult to ensure equity, to monitor kids,” Peiffer said. “If the numbers continue to jump exponentially and the governor mandates another shutdown, then we’re fully remote. And are we able to get enough devices for kids? It’s just a lot of questions.”

Educators such as Peiffer, as well as decision-makers on school boards, aren’t just dealing with the coronavirus. They’re dealing with the digital divide, impending learning loss and inequities in students’ home lives — on top of staffing shortages after teacher furloughs and some infections. The longer this goes on, Peiffer said, the tougher those factors are to juggle.

Strategies shift as cases rise

The debate over whether to open school buildings — and how to do it — has been ongoing in every district for months.

But as schools move into the second quarter amid surging covid-19 cases in the region, the stakes are even higher. Just last week, the Pittsburgh Public School Board returned about 800 students to remote instruction after only four days of in-person learning. North Allegheny, Allegheny County’s second-largest school district, moved to online learning Thursday through the end of the month.

Numerous individual schools throughout the region have closed because of infections among students and staff.

“It’s the idea that you want to have as much of a normal educational experience for them, and the heartbreak when you can’t deliver that,” Peiffer said. “What’s the alternative?”

It’s not a simple decision, to open or not to open — especially when guidelines from the CDC and the state are changing so quickly. Districts are all handling their responses differently, based on their individual buildings, available space and size of their student bodies. Peiffer acknowledged that can lead to confusion and frustration, for both educators and parents.

Best education, safety decisions conflict

“You’ve got people that say all kids should be back in school five days a week, and for educational reasons, they’re absolutely right,” Peiffer said. “Then you have people that say none of the kids should be back because of the severity of the virus and the positivity rate of transmission, and from a health care perspective, they’re right.”

Repeated studies have shown transmission among elementary-aged children is much lower than, say, high school students and adults, according Julie Donohue, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health.

That’s given rise to discussions in the science community about whether to prioritize lower, foundational grades that are risking a “lifetime loss of learning.”

Throughout the country and region, even as cases are reported among students and even though some buildings had to close, the number of in-school infections has been lower than many had expected.

Allegheny County Health Director Debra Bogen has said infections among students are rarely linked to classrooms; rather, they’re traced back to sports or extracurricular activities, sleepovers or other group hangouts.

But schools across the country still worry about transmission among teachers and staff, which in turn spreads in the larger community. Educators also worry about labor shortages that inevitably follow when too many become infected and need to quarantine.

“That is really the frustration,” said Nina Esposito-Visgitis, president of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers, the teachers union which had, over the summer, resisted returning to the classroom without more safety measures. “(Students) are taught by adults, and we’ve had a lot of adults going out.”

In all schools with any degree of in-person learning, Donohue said certain protocols are critical to stemming potential transmission and allowing at least some degree of normalcy.

She named strategies such as universal mask-wearing, heightened sanitizing and hygiene practices and “cohorting” — dividing students and staff into distinct groups with minimal interaction between each other — to reduce their number of contacts throughout the day.

But each district is grappling with its own set of variables — population density, testing ability and community transmission, for example, that contribute to infections spreading in buildings. And as districts in Western Pennsylvania operate mostly autonomously, with limited concrete guidance from the state, Donohue said educators have a difficult balance to strike.

“It’s an incredibly challenging set of decisions to make,” Donohue said, one that involves weighing the “very real costs associated with fully remote learning.” Some examples of those costs: learning loss, interference in parents’ ability to work outside the home, productivity, income loss and inequities for vulnerable populations.

A challenge for parents, too

It’s challenging for parents, too, said Amy Halter, mother to a fourth-grader and high school sophomore in the Kiski Area School District.

“Every day, I’m seeing record cases in Westmoreland County, record cases in Allegheny County,” Halter said. “It does make me nervous, because it’s inevitable that people are going to get sick and they’re going to shut down again. I think Kiski has done everything that they could do — cleaning and sanitizing and also the online education has been great. I think it’s just going to be beyond their control.”

Kiski Area has reported at least 14 infections among students and staff so far. But as no cases were linked to classroom transmission, the district had managed to keep all buildings open for hybrid instruction until last week. The high school is temporarily closed after seven new cases were reported Friday.

Halter said she is grateful her children have the option for some degree of in-person instruction — though she recognizes the risks weigh differently for each one. That’s partially why her fourth-grader, Charlie, is attending East Elementary four days a week, while high school sophomore Jacob is fully remote.

All Kiski Area students spent the first two weeks of the school year online and have since been working under a hybrid model with two days of in-person instruction a week. A four-day option began this week for all schools except the closed high school, even as Westmoreland County’s infection incidence rate rises.

Superintendent Tim Scott acknowledged this might seem confusing, but said students should at least have the opportunity for learning in the classroom if businesses are open and large gatherings continue. Schools, experts agree, are not the primary issue when it comes to transmission.

“I think we all know that there is a cost to not being educated in school,” Scott said last week. He noted district schools can transition to fully remote learning or fewer days in-person if cases in the buildings rise.

As cold weather approaches and the number of days in the classroom increases, Halter said it seems like only a matter of time before more infections occur. No matter what district a student attends, Halter said, the virus acts the same.

“It’s a struggle as a parent every day to decide,” Halter said. “Should I send them? Should I not send them? What should I do?”