Wake County Schools

Wake County schools will reopen for in-person learning

District staff recommend that pre-kindergarten through third grade students return for in-person learning daily and on rotation for grades fourth through 12th grade.

Posted Updated

By
Emily Walkenhorst, WRAL education reporter,
and
Nia Harden, WRAL reporter
CARY, N.C. — The Wake County Board of Education approved on Tuesday night a proposal to reopen schools for in-person instruction starting Feb. 15 and Feb. 17. Jim Martin was the sole "no" vote of the nine board members.

The board amended Tuesday's agenda to include the vote after previously only listing reopening plans as a discussion item.

District staff recommended, and the board approved, that pre-kindergarten through third grade students return for in-person learning daily and that fourth through 12th grades return to classrooms on rotation.

Modified and year-round calendar schools will reopen Feb. 15, and traditional calendar schools will reopen Feb. 17, following a teacher work day.

The decision followed hundreds of written public comments urging school reopening and parent survey results that showed a desire to get students back in the classroom.

Most of the 33,000 parent responses to the survey said they didn’t want to continue with full remote learning, district officials told the school board Tuesday.

All board members stressed the importance of students returning to classrooms, but board member Jim Martin opposed the resolution because it didn’t include enough safety precautions. He said studies showing lower COVID-19 spread at schools looked at districts that have taken more precautions than the resolution Tuesday laid out, such as physical barriers between students.

“I will stick with the science,” Martin said.

Board member Chris Haegarty said the school district needs do more than required by the state to protect students and teachers, but he favored reopening the classrooms.

“I think we can do more than the bare minimum required, and I think we owe it to everybody in the county to do more than what’s required ,but I don’t think that’s a barrier to keep us from moving forward and accepting the staff’s recommendation,” Haegarty said.

Board member Monika Johnson-Hostler said the board needs to advocate at a higher level for things like teachers getting vaccines sooner rather than later. Giving teachers access to vaccines would help protect them and alleviate concerns the board has had with staffing in case teachers must quarantine or isolate.

“The reality is we are still not there with staffing,” she said.

District Superintendent Cathy Q. Moore presented the proposal to the board for the first time Tuesday, but it is similar to what the district has done and planned previously.

Pre-kindergarten through third grade students will be on Plan A, where social distancing isn’t required but is recommended, as they had been before winter break. Fourth and fifth grade will be on Plan B, as they had been in the fall, although different from what the district initially planned for the spring semester. Sixth grade through 12th grade will return on rotation, as had been planned for the spring semester.

District precautions for reopening include daily temperature and symptom checks upon school entry, mask and face covering requirements, disinfecting supplies in classrooms, potentially altered lunches, hand sanitizing stations and social distancing.

By Friday, Moore said the district will have more detailed plans on the reopening, including plans for distributing free and reduced lunch to students and coordinating high school busing.

Martin made a motion to require that classrooms not exceed capacity, contending that some lower grade classrooms, according to a principal survey, can’t accommodate for three feet of social distancing. That means they’re over capacity, he said.

The board rejected the motion after some members said they were concerned voting in favor of it could partly reverse the board’s earlier decision to reopen schools.

The district surveyed parents and school staff last week on their thoughts on the fall term and returning to classrooms this spring.

In the parent survey – parents were allowed to submit more than one response if they had multiple children in the district – 58% said they didn’t want to remain in remote learning while waiting for the county’s COVID-19 infections to go down, and 63.4% said they didn’t want to remain in remote learning until vaccines are more widely available.

Most responses – 90.8% — said they were somewhat or very comfortable with returning to classrooms in rotation. Fewer responses – 70.3% — said they were somewhat or very comfortable with returning all students to classrooms everyday.

Principals surveyed reported that most classrooms could accommodate for 3 feet or 6 feet of social distancing if students returned on rotation. Few middle schools and high schools reported that they could do 6 feet of social distancing if students returned to classrooms daily.

The Wake County Board of Education has held off on reopening for in-person instruction this spring as COVID-19 cases have risen this winter and out of concern that the district would not have enough substitute teachers in the event teachers must quarantine or isolate.

The district has added dozens of substitutes in recent months, with more than 80 attending a recent orientation and more than 40 scheduled to attend one Wednesday.

Board members also heard Tuesday a report on attendance and student grades for the fall semester.

The difference in academic performance was seen at the secondary school level, Assistant Superintendent for Academics Drew Cook told the board.

The percentage of middle students failing a core course has increased from between 5% and 6% during the 2018-19 school year to between 13% and 15%, depending on the grading period, Cook said. For high school students, the percentage of students failing a core course rose from between 7% and 11% to between 15% and 19%. Course averages are about three to four percentage points lower than normal, he said.

Attendance was worse this fall for non-virtual students than in previous years, and was significantly worse among Black and Hispanic students, whom officials said may face different challenges in attending school during the pandemic.

Wake County board members discussed reopening just less than an hour after Gov. Roy Cooper, his secretary of health and top education leaders urged more schools to reopen for in-person instruction.

Eric Davis, chairman of the state Board of Education, said schools can reopen safely if students wear masks, wash their hands and keep a safe distance from one another.

“We know the pathway to effectively reopen schools,” he said during the state’s COVID-19 new conference Tuesday afternoon.

The state will not move educators up in the vaccination protocol to coincide with the push. Educators remain in the essential workers category, which is next on the vaccine list. State leaders continued to acknowledge Tuesday that vaccine supply, as well as distribution, remain challenges in North Carolina.

The debate comes as many parents say their kids are struggling with remote learning. Last week, hundreds of parents spent the day rallying in front of the Governor’s Mansion in downtown Raleigh pushing the governor to help reopen schools for in-person learning.

Other parents said, as the school schedule is scrambled, they are forced to constantly readjust.

Some Republican lawmakers in the state are also pushing for a return to classrooms. A bill filed Monday is still in the early stages but would require all public school districts to offer in-person learning, giving parents the option of virtual learning if they choose.

Senate Bill 37, named “In-Person Learning Choice for Families,” is scheduled to be heard in the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday.

The group behind the proposal pointed to recent studies saying schools can reopen safely, including a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While there is broad support to safely return to the classrooms, other issues would still remain, including a shortage of substitute teachers.

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