The strangest school year in Alaska’s history is about to start. On Thursday, Anchorage students will return to instruction, but not in schools. After a chaotic spring semester upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Anchorage School District will welcome students back virtually. Educators are hoping that a curriculum taught online — at least to start the school year — can suffice in the face of virus case loads that exceed the district’s tolerance for risking in-person classes. Meanwhile, parents are bracing for uncertainty and disruption and asking how it will be possible to hold a job and simultaneously educate their kids from home. Will it work? That’s an unanswered question. But one question we can answer is this: Can we do better for Anchorage’s students?
Yes. We have to.
Education is a big job even when there isn’t a pandemic complicating matters. Shepherding Alaska’s young people through the education system and ensuring their proficiency in many subjects is complex. Couple that with three different school plans parents can choose from and multiple risk levels that alter how long and how often students can attend classes in person, and it’s enough to make your head spin. And despite the efforts of teachers and curriculum designers, it’s clear that students will get less out of distance-delivery classes than they would in-person instruction. They will get less quality — online instruction just isn’t the same, especially for younger students — and less quantity, as the amount of direct learning time will be greatly reduced. Add to that the severe economic impact of so many parents having to remain home with their children, and it becomes clear that we must do everything we can to make it safe for school to resume in person as quickly as possible. Here are some aspects we need to work on.
Better metrics
ASD’s decision-making matrix, unfortunately, rests on a fundamentally incomplete gauge of the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic: new cases by day. If the municipality averages 30 or more new cases per day, school will remain entirely online indefinitely. But the potential danger to students and educators is far different if those new cases are occurring in isolated populations such as fish processing plants or care homes. Furthermore, new-case statistics can be dramatically affected by fluctuations in the number of tests being performed — for instance, if testing were to drop dramatically, the municipality’s case load would very likely appear to go down. The district would be well advised to pay closer attention to more meaningful statistics, such as the percentage of positive cases and where those cases are appearing. Analysis by the New York Times of case positivity statistics indicates that Anchorage is at a level where Harvard Global Health Institute guidance suggests it may be safe to reopen some schools, though for older students, that analysis suggests we wait.
Better information
Anchorage parents and students are starting the school year off confused, not knowing what to expect given the district’s turnabout on school reopening plans. Although the district has spent the summer crafting a more full-fledged online plan than the triage teaching that occurred in spring, parents are saying they still don’t know what that plan looks like, where they can go for help if they need computer hardware or internet assistance, or a host of other pertinent questions.
The district can’t assume that parents are all plugged-in enough to know what they and their students are expected to do under the different plans. They can’t expect parents to peruse the Return to School Operational Guidelines or other informational material at length. The district must be proactive in reaching out to parents, seeing where they need help and how much they need.
Better behavior
Incumbent upon all of us is the need to drive down Alaska’s incidence of new COVID-19 cases as much and as quickly as we can. That means keeping our social circles small, practicing social distancing from anyone not in our immediate households, using proper hygiene and wearing a face covering whenever we’re in public places, especially indoors. All of these behaviors will be especially crucial for students and teachers when schools return to in-person instruction. During the past several months, we’ve discovered that they’re the keys to stopping the spread of this disease; if we want our kids back in classrooms and parents to be able to return to work, obeying state and local health mandates is essential.
Better testing
None of our good behavior will matter if we don’t know that it’s effective, and Lower 48 schools that have reopened to in-person instruction without adequate safeguards have shown how fast the disease can spread. Given the conditions, some teachers and staff are wary about returning to school buildings. The reality is that educators are essential front-line workers, just like doctors and nurses. Like health care workers, teachers and school staff members should be given a free weekly COVID-19 test, and their results prioritized for speed. Like other places where testing is conducted broadly, such as airports, health care facilities and fish processing plants, this widespread testing would allow us to catch more asymptomatic cases and get a far clearer picture of where things stand in schools. And it would give educators more peace of mind about the return to classrooms. If funding is an issue, both the municipality and state have millions of dollars in unspent CARES Act funds meant to help ease the burden of the pandemic; what use would be more beneficial to more Alaskans than this?
For our students’ educational futures and for our economic recovery, it’s essential that we resume in-person instruction as soon as possible — but that’s only an option so long as it can be accomplished safely. It’s up to each of us, as well as city and school leaders, to prove that it can.