How well have things gone for the first two weeks of the public school year, marking the return of in-person learning as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to surge? It depends on who is being asked.
The answer from some teachers and parents has been a primal scream. These are members of the school community who are worried that the promised layers of safeguards are not uniformly available or enforced to protect students and staff.
Officials of the state Department of Education rightly emphasize that the mission is to counter the learning loss during the 2020-21 year of distance learning, primarily by giving students the in-person attention from teachers that they need.
They point instead to numbers indicating that there is no evidence yet that public school campuses are becoming petri dishes for viral transmission. The protocols, said interim Superintendent Keith Hayashi in a written statement, are doing their job.
“While community transmission levels have increased, we have no known cases of students getting sick with COVID-19 as a result of coming to school and there is no evidence indicating our schools are amplifiers of transmission,” Hayashi said.
That surely brings no consolation to the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA). The union is pressing for consultation with the DOE over protocols and contingency planning should the latest surge in the delta variant of COVID-19 grow into an even bigger threat.
They have good reason to worry. The number of infection cases is rising statewide, and among those who attend or work on campus — the current week’s total of 383 is up from 325 the previous week. And that suggests the risk of transmission on campus also will increase.
It’s essential that the DOE get ahead of that concern, before real problems can manifest in schools. Consultation with the affected unions could help to bring more weak links — and potential solutions — to light.
All of the public-employee unions have aired their dissatisfaction with the state administration’s lack of negotiation over vaccination and testing requirements, including in an Island Voices column appearing in the Aug. 15 Honolulu Star-Advertiser. But the teachers’ union is taking the lead on pressing for better school safety protocols — logically, since their members have the front-line view.
On Wednesday, HSTA President Osa Tui Jr. spoke at a news conference that highlighted the union’s chief complaint: A memorandum of understanding it had negotiated with the DOE for the past school year expired June 30 and was not renewed. As a result, Tui said, teachers have no recourse if they see the department’s guidelines for safe practices are not being met.
Some of them report seeing exactly that. Crowding in some classrooms, inadequate ventilation in others, students coming into close contact with others as they change classes. Efforts to “cohort” the students to limit how freely they mix can be defeated when they eat in the cafeteria in large groups, commute on buses and have other encounters that are tough to avoid.
And when individuals turn up on lists confirmed as infected with COVID-19, they said, decisions over whom to send home to quarantine can be inconsistently implemented.
While time might have been short to ready schools for in-person learning before classes convened Aug. 3, the DOE now would benefit from discussions with faculty and staff representatives.
Could class-changing in a more staggered way reduce the crowding in the halls? Could increasing the options for outdoor classes reduce the risk inherent in poorly ventilated or windowless rooms? Could the use of cafeterias be modified, so that more students eat their meals outdoors? Yes, on all fronts.
There is a drumbeat for offering the distance-learning option much more broadly than it is now. At a Board of Education meeting on Thursday, Hayashi acknowledged that his staff is investigating alternative ways to deliver instruction in case a particularly severe outbreak compels the state Health Department to order schools closed. That’s a relief, but late in coming.
It is heartening to see localized innovations such as the Pineapple Academy in Central Oahu, an online platform for home teaching in coordination with the regular faculty.
By necessity, however, these options have to be limited, more closely resembling home-schooling by parents prepared to shoulder that duty, rather than the teacher-led online instruction of 2020.
The only realistic way forward for the 256 schools of the DOE is to clarify protocols and operations designed to make in-person education safer. Plans for school-based COVID-19 testing are in the works and should be rolled out quickly, as should more on-campus vaccination campaigns.
Until a vaccine is available for the youngest keiki, reinforcing safety on school campuses is an imperative. And unless the school community of teachers, staff and families works collaboratively, it will be all the more difficult to achieve.
