South Dakota’s wishful thinking on reopening schools and volleyball games as if coronavirus wouldn’t get us is falling apart. Supporting what I was hearing last weekend that the state Department of Health couldn’t follow through with its promise to make contact-tracing calls to families and school staff who’ve been exposed to coronavirus, Meade School District Don Kirkegaard says that the state won’t confirm that it is actually performing this necessary task to suppress the pandemic:
Both Meade School District officials and those at Black Hills State University have said that they are spending a considerable amount of staff time doing the contract tracing of students who test positive for COVID-19.
Meade School District Superintendent Don Kirkegaard said at the Meade School Board meeting on Monday that he had been told that the DOH will try to contact individuals, but they are not going to confirm with the district that those people were indeed contacted [Deb Holland, “DOH Says School Contact Tracing a Collaborative Effort,” Black Hills Pioneer, 2020.09.19].
Health Secretary Kim Malsam-Rysdom spins that “Schools are opting to help us with that process by identifying potential close contacts…. It’s a collaborative process in that regard,” which we should translate as meaning that the choice schools really have is to help by making the calls themselves or leave parents waiting for calls that our swamped DOH doesn’t have the time or staff to make.
Even if the state or the locals are managing to warn those who’ve been in close contact with a covid-19 case, everyone is realizing that the simple math of social contact means that just a few cases in a school can sideline enough teachers to make normal school operations impossible. Rather than accept that fact and move to the safe option of remote learning for everyone for the duration of the pandemic, the state and some districts are simply watering down their coronavirus precautions and putting more people at risk of infection. Aberdeen did that last week with its reclassification of all school staff as “critical infrastructure workers.” The state is doing it by telling schools they don’t really have to send close contacts home to quarantine:
One thing that has remained constant throughout most of the pandemic is the required 14-day quarantine if you come into close contact with someone who has COVID-19.
But recently, the South Dakota Department of Education notified school districts in the state that the 14-day quarantine is a recommendation, not a requirement. South Dakota Secretary of Health Kim Malsam-Rysdon explained during Monday’s media call school boards have the final decision making ability as to whether districts follow the recommendations [Whitney Fowkes, “S.D. Department of Education: 14-Day Quarantine for Covid-19 Close Contacts a Recommendation, But Not Required,” KELO-TV, 2020.09.18].
Harrisburg Tim Graf rationalizes putting his students and staff and community at increased risk of coronavirus by appealing to the absolute necessity of gathering for in-person education:
“It’s a mental health issue. It’s an emotional health issue as well as the academic piece, so we want kids in school,” Graf said.
…“93% of our students have chosen on campus learning. Recognizing that and the need to be in school, we’re wrestling with how do we now pivot based on the change that the Department of Education rolled out and now making that a recommendation. And not to say that this (plan) won’t change down the road because we’ve said our plan is fluid as well,” Graf said [Fowkes, 2020.09.18].
The surging pandemic in Pierre has drive Riggs High School to recognize that “need” to be in classrooms is subordinate to the need not to get sick and die. At a special meeting Friday, the Pierre school board adopted a version of the hybrid learning model I proposed in July:
As the number of active COVID-19 cases in Hughes County increases, Pierre’s T.F. Riggs High School has adopted a hybrid learning model for the foreseeable future. School was not in session Friday, Sept. 18, but will resume with a day of schoolwide virtual instruction on Monday. Other than the partial transition to virtual learning, current plans are for the school schedule to remain the same.
…The new plan will divide the student body in half by alphabetical order. Officials said the strategy will allow both halves of the students to attend school in person two days a week, and the other two days for online instruction. Every Monday will be entirely virtual.
…For classes such as welding with limited students per class or where remote instruction is not possible, students can come in every day. Students without internet access at home will have socially distant spaces set aside in the building for them to complete their online classes. Students with learning accommodations will be brought in as much as possible, and if need be, all day every day. Students will still be served lunch in the same way as usual, and students whose classes are virtual can still come in to school for lunch [Abby Wargo, “Riggs High to Start Hybrid Learning After Spike in Covid Cases,” Pierre Capital Journal, 2020.09.18].
Ditto across the river, where the Stanly County School District is moving classes online for a week and a half and requiring masks when they come back in October:
The Stanley County School District is moving to a distance learning model due to Covid-19. Superintendent Dr. Daniel Hoey says the reason for the changes is due to “staff exposure and subsequent quarantining.” The distance learning mode applies for the Junior Kindergarten through 12th grade classes. Distance learning will begin Tuesday September 22nd and will continue through the remainder of September. Traditional classes will begin again October 1st. All athletic and extra-curricular activities are being suspended. Hoey says when regular classes resume; all students will be required to wear face coverings when social distancing is not possible [Zach Nelson, “Stanley County Schools Moving to Distance Learning Due to Covid-19 Tuesday,” KCCR, 2020.09.21].
Rapid City is seeing a decrease in cases (and remember, that’s a decrease from the surge we saw after August), so they are bringing elementary school kids back to the classroom this week. But the middle school and high school students in Rapid City are remaining on their “Level 2” hybrid split-shift plan.
With Governor Kristi Noem’s Department of Health abdicating its duties in order to promote Noem’s fantasy that Freedom™ and horse-riding are more important than robust public health interventions, it’s surprising any school would take on the risk of gathering hundreds of children in an enclosed space for five full days a week amidst a pandemic. But stay tuned: we’re likely to see more school districts catch up with reality this week.
While visiting with two SD DoH contact tracers in the past week both mentioned how difficult contact tracing has become, especially within certain demographic groups. The most difficult were teenaged girls. Almost to a person these girls will lie, refusing to give names of close contacts and claim they had no close contacts. Some adults are just as bad. Assuring positive folks that they are not in trouble and no one is going to be arrested does little good.
One tracer also told me she fielded a call from a SD school administrator asking if the “within 6 feet for 15 minutes” standard for determining close contacts was a cumulative 15 minutes or continuous 15 minutes. His plan was for students to get up and walk around the classroom every 14 minutes to avoid the standard. The contact tracer told me that she told the administrator she felt he was quibbling and looking for loopholes. She restated that the CDC standard was 15 minutes and didn’t specifically address the continious or cumulative issue.
The two week quarantine for my daughter is up in a couple days. Never did get a call from DOH, but apparently the other girls did. Sounds like was because we don’t have a home phone (just use cell phones). Would think in this day and age this situation would be accounted for since the school managed to call us.
Nick: wow! That administrator needs to be outed. Any way we can find out which school(s?) are treating the CDC guidelines as trivial rules to be gamed and not a matter of public health?
Kids refusing to give information: there’s a challenge to contract tracing I hadn’t thought of. No amount of staffing or funding will solve that problem… at which point we have to decide what minimum amount of data we need to conduct school safely. If conducting school in person depends on having the ability to trace contacts, and if student refusal to report renders contact tracing impossible, we can’t do school in person.
“College students are learning less, partying less and a majority say the decision to return to campus was a bad decision, according to a new College Reaction/Axios poll.”
The Axios story is here, is.gd/lHpUvk
Sounds like Watertown High School is shutting down for the week as two vans with students that were riding in homecoming parade all tested positive. School board defeated an amendment earlier 3-2 that would have required masks in school. “Such a burden to place on students.” BS, now all the students are missing out on face to face classes this week for sure.
Have you noticed that Brookings county is one of the few with a 14 day downward trend after they mandated masks in public? Wear the damn mask.
Watertown is going online for the rest of the week:
Watertown provides its parents and community clear numbers; meanwhile just 30 minutes ago I received the “weekly covid-19 update” phone call from Aberdeen Central HS principal Dr. Jason Uttermark. He recited exactly the same boilerplate that he sent out in last week’s recorded message: “individuals” have tested positive, the DOH will contact us if our children have had close contact. No numbers, no new information, no acknowledgment of the news that DOH is not able to keep up with demand.
Tough for working parents to adjust their schedules to many changes.
What is better?
-a few days of classes followed by a few days off, with no idea of when classes may be called off,
-or, just going 100% online
What a struggle for all involved.
Scott, I’m immensely disappointed in my school district. Instead of wishful, risky dice-rolling, which leads to exactly the kind of performance-eroding uncertainty you’re talking about, we could have said on July 1, “You know what? There’s no way in-person school is going to work safely or reliably. First nine weeks, everyone learns online from home. We spend the rest of the summer pouring all of our prep time and spare cash into figuring out how to make online education work as well as it possibly can. We line up the resources (i.e., extra teachers and aides) to call kids and parents at home, to do web chats, to provide all the support we can to make sure they feel loved and supported as we teach by wireless.”
We could do that. We could accept hard times, rise to a challenge, and make the best of a new and unusual situation. Instead, we cling to the old ways, bend over backward not to infuriate the conservative snowflakes, and tell the people who are trying to be cautious, “Well, good for you, you’re on your own.”
Mr. Nemec, that particular fatcat administrator is one sick doggie. Also, he’s cutting it too close at 14 minutes. I wonder if they’ve thought about having 10 minute speed-classes, where you get 10 minutes of math, then do the Chinese Firedrill thing between classrooms. You still get a full hour of the math, only over 6 hours plus lunch. And eat faster, kiddos.
Corey,
A better yet solution would have been a continuous message from the president and governor to use face masks. Something so economical as a face mask could prevent so much pain, suffer, stress and agony.
How do working parents deal with no in person classes for their elementary and middle school kids? That is certainly a financial burden to the parents and talk about the stress that causes those parents. Some parents may be forced to quit there jobs, which will have long term impacts to their careers and earnings.
All this because you have a president and governor who think the most important thing is to appeal to the extreme right wing regime so that Trump can get re-elected. No concern what so ever about the people; just keep ignoring the issue. To make things even more interesting, lets throw doubt out their about the science and medical community so that we cause even more divide among the people.
I can not think of a time when I have been so mad, frustrated and upset about an issue.
Mr. Scott, it seems highly probably that schools will just shut down in many places, kids will be home on their own to learn from TV, or pods of children will have a stay-at-home mommy/teacher run the show. Perhaps some out-of-work teachers will be able to be hired on the side by groups of middle-income families to teach their “pods”. Education as we know it will cease. It may be be years before we recover from the days of Laura Wilder’s educational system to which we revert.
I, too, am very angry and frustrated. I blame the covid bugs, mostly, but Mr. Trump is not helping matters at all.
I share your anger, Scott. Simple leadership by example—Kristi Noem has yet to wear a mask even once in public, as far as I know—would inspire many more people to take precautions and would significantly reduce the spread of the disease, making it safer to maintain something like the normal school operations that most working families depend on to allow them earn their paychecks and provide the education that they aren’t equipped to provide. Kristi Noem is putting posturing and slogans above practical needs in public health, education, and the economy.