Tomorrow morning the buses will run and students, albeit in a limited number, will enter our doors. At that moment, for the first time in months, school will feel normal. All educators, at least the great ones I know, went into education to work with kids. Tomorrow is going to give us the opportunity to do so again. We will have an opportunity to do what it is we do best. No more excruciating hours playing arm-chair epidemiologist or health expert. Now, we get to do what we do best – even if it is short lived.
I am beyond excited for this to take place. I am also scared out of my mind. After all, this is my first Pandemic and leading a district through this has been one of the greatest challenges of my career. I am not nervous because something will go wrong with our plan. Something WILL go wrong with our plan. But when something goes wrong, I am perfectly confident that our team will react appropriately and we will find a way to continue to make it work.
I am nervous because I am afraid this will not last. And if this does not last, it will look like an enormous risk for a limited reward. How painful will this be for kids who were longing for school that then have it ripped away from them again. This is the leadership calculus we have been forced to play. Let me explain.
If schools that are opening eventually stop providing face-to-face instruction, it most likely will NOT be for the reason you are suspecting. Most people, particularly non-educators, that I speak to assume that if schools are to shutter the doors again after reopening it will be that a clear and increasing risk to health and wellness of students and staff has presented itself through increased cases and positivity rates. While there are scenarios where this plays itself out, I believe it is FAR less likely to close schools than sustained logistical chaos.
And to be clear, the logistical chaos is coming. Imagine the scenario of one week having no fourth grade classrooms due to someone exposing one teacher who exposed the rest of their team to COVID. The next week, there will be no school provided transportation due to a quarantine and there are no substitute bus drivers available. The next week 80 plus high school students need to quarantine after attending an off-campus party the weekend before.
In each of these scenarios when someone tests positive, is symptomatic, or has been around someone who has/is then are guidance is to not allow the student/staff back to school for 10 to 14 days or until released by the local health department. Thus far, our health department has done an incredible job, but wait until contract tracing quadruples with the opening of schools. The workflow will be incredibly demanding and with such the quarantine time will increase while waiting on communication.
Does this sound like I am being fatalistic and dramatic? Am I exaggerating? Well, over the past 17 days I have had to order approximately 15% of my staff to quarantine at one time or another. At this time, the Health Department can give us guidance almost immediately and thus our days of lost work has stayed relatively manageable. But what happens in two weeks. our current number is staggering considering students do not start school until tomorrow. As I see it, these continued triage and quarantine scenarios are what will shut schools. It will be death by a million paper cuts.
We are seeing it already in Illinois and elsewhere. It is hard to stay open for any sustained amount of time in this environment. The virus is active and is somewhere in almost every community in America. Putting hundreds of people together every day for multiple hours in spaces with poor ventilation is bound to bring out the worst possible situation. And on the bright side, even if it does not, the proactive quarantine measures will still inhibit forming any continuity to the in-person educational experience.
To be clear, I am one-hundred percent in favor of aggressive contact tracing and subsequent quarantines and isolation to prevent the spread of the virus. That said, this very process which will ultimately protect us from ourselves is precisely what makes the prospect of staying in session (face-to-face) so daunting. This is nobody’s fault, but people need to adjust their expectations, increase their flexibility, and prepare for the worst and hope for the best. This will be a rocky year in which the best districts continue to remain flexible and I hope that parents and communities also demonstrate flexibility as their districts attempt to navigate uncharted territory.