As one Virginia district prepares to reopen, educators and families are balancing Covid precautions and normal education

He says the Biden administrative goal of kindergarten to eighth grade, which returns to office five days a week by the end of the president’s first 100 days, is “unrealistic.”

The biggest obstacle is the distance of desks six feet apart.

“It virtually means the difference between two days a week and five days a week,” he said. “And so we need clearer national discussion. Every superintendent in this country wants even clearer guidance from the CDC on social distance, with universal masks worn along with other strategies for school mitigation. Can we reach less than six feet?”

When CNN spoke to Brabrand last summer because they planned to start school in the fall, he said it would ‘take five extra Pentagons extra space if the standard’ is for students to be safe at school five days a week to be.

Now he says that if the CDC had revised its social distance recommendations to just three feet apart, along with other Covid softening strategies such as wearing a mask, then it would feel comfortable to have enough space to bring the entire student body back full-time.

“To achieve five days a week, we need to be able to have data that can help us notify that less than six feet along with other mitigation strategies can safely bring the student back to school. Not just personally, but also personally for five days, “he said.

Preparing for Covid Safe Schools

First-year math teacher Leon Riddick says he is looking forward to finally meeting students in person. Like most teachers during the coronavirus crisis, he spent much of this difficult school year as a part-time counselor for frustrated students.

“I try to calm them down and say, ‘Hey, it’s not going to take long, then we can go back to the classroom and everything will be normal again.’ “

Riddick is fully vaccinated, which he says makes his family more comfortable when he returns to school.

Margaret Barnes, principal of Holmes, says because of the HIPAA laws, she is not sure how many of her teachers received the vaccine, but admits that some are still worried.

“Before I talk about anything, we talk about safety. We’re still tightening up procedures. That’s what keeps me going at night, how are we going to keep the kids at a distance when they get off the bus?” Barnes said.

Over the coming week, there will be 80 eighth-graders a day at school. As the sixth and seventh grades return in the coming weeks, it will climb to 240 students at the school each day.

Restricting the contact while the students change classes will pass the times.

Yellow tape now runs down the middle of each aisle like the lines in the middle of the road to keep foot traffic orderly, like a two-way street.

However, the principal’s biggest concern is the cafeteria. This is the place where masks go down so the students can eat.

Giant Xs of masking tape decorate most stools at each table and block the space to ensure students sit six feet apart. They will now sit on allotted seats to assist with the Covid-19 contact detection if there are positive cases.

“I can not just come to the cafeteria and sit with my friend who is in another class. She may be assigned in the lecture hall. She may be assigned to a table across the cafeteria. It definitely changes the dynamics. ” Barnes.

More than half of the students chose not to come back

Despite virtual learning frustrations and disadvantages, there is a difference in whether you should go back at all. According to Barnes, only 45% of students chose to return to school. The other 55% will stay at home full time.

“It does surprise me, but I also think they’m worried that the numbers are still high. We’re still in the red zone for numbers per hundred thousand for infection, but we also do not yet have a vaccination for students. “

The split runs throughout the Porter family, whose sixth-grade two daughters made different decisions. Elizabeth will return to school for hybrid learning.

“I want to hang out with more people and I made some friends at the online school and I want to meet them,” said 12-year-old Elizabeth Porter.

But her twin sister Katharine wants to stay home almost full time.

“We’re a classic example of strong, mixed opinions,” said their mother Jennifer Porter.

“I do not want my child to be in a position at school where they spend more time worrying about their exposure risks than focusing on the education they are going for there,” she added, referring to her daughter Katharine. , who is much more cautious about Covid-19.

Before CNN visited her family in Alexandria, Virginia, Jennifer Porter did some of her own reporting and asked parents in an online chat board how they feel about getting their kids back now, even just a few days a week. to send to school.

“I have many answers, many answers,” she emphasized with a knowing smile.

“They were everywhere on the board. And some people send me a message because they want to be anonymous. They did not want to be judged by their neighbors, for their opinion. Some people were really competent in: ‘I am for I am against it. “And other people had a lot of opinions and they really spelled out the background for their opinions,” she said.

Porter has a third daughter in high school and said she was so overwhelmed with emails from school that it was difficult to sort them out. Her older daughter could not figure out why her Spanish teacher no longer showed up for online class, until she realized she was missing one email, which told her the teacher was gone and changed the timetable.

A lawyer with a demanding job, Porter said she made time in her schedule to join the PTA school at Holmes Middle School in hopes of learning more about the Covid-related decision-making process of the school affecting her twin sixth-graders.

“I really realized that it was very instrumental to be in the management of the PTA, because I knew what was going on at school,” Porter said.

“Virtual school as a whole I think is (bad) for our children. My approach and thought to this year is that we get through and that we get the best out of it. But I just feel like we just make it out,” she said. .

‘Being ashamed to go back to school is not a strategy’

Last summer, then-Education Minister Betsy DeVos singled out Fairfax County, Virginia, as one she said was not doing enough to open schools.

Brabrand said that – plus other pressures at the state and local level – make a difficult decision-making process even more difficult.

“Every superintendent in the country has been under pressure from everyone. This is probably the most politically intense time any school superintendent or any principal has experienced in a lifetime,” Brabrand said.

“Being ashamed to return to school is not a strategy to return children and staff safely,” he said, referring to the Trump administration’s open pressure.

He said he and other superintendents feel they have more of a partner in the current president, but the political divisions and mixed messages about the reopening of the school still hang out and make it harder to find consensus.

“We’re turning the return to school personally into a political issue instead of the educational issue it is. And if we continue to be an educational issue, and if we stay based on science and health, then is we ‘I’ll get to the right place, but we’ve had a lot of messages from a lot of different places that have confused our community instead of bringing unity into our community and dividing our community. And it’s time to really get away ‘come from the politics of fear and talk about the politics of inclusion and the bringing back of all our children and our families,’ Brabrand said.