Rise in COVID-19 could leave schools too short-staffed, Midlands superintendent warns
Lexington-Richland 5 needs to change course on its plans for sending students back to school amid the COVID-19 pandemic, or some schools may not be able to continuing operating, the district’s superintendent warned the school board Monday.
Superintendent Christina Melton asked for the ability to return students in seventh to 12th grade to a hybrid schedule, spending two days a week in class on campus and three days learning remotely.
But the school board ultimately adjourned without taking a vote on Melton’s proposal, leaving the district’s current four-day-a-week schedule in place.
During a special-called school board meeting, Melton said that the new policy would have gone into effect on Thursday of this week, after schools’ weekly virtual learning day on Wednesday. The proposed change was in response to challenges from some schools that face a high number of staff absences during a spike in COVID-19 cases and precautionary quarantines.
Under Melton’s proposal,all schools in the district would have switched to an all virtual format from Dec. 16 to 18 to help district staff conduct contact tracing before students leave for the holiday break.
But some board members were skeptical such a short break would be enough to curb the spread of the virus.
“If we think when we come back in January, everything will be rosy, we’re kidding ourselves,” said board member Nikki Gardner.
Board Chairwoman Jan Hammond said she would prefer the board move forward with its current reopening plans, saying the spread of the coronavirus through the schools was not affecting the schools’ ability to operate. Rather, many students and faculty are going into quarantine as a precaution, including a large number of administrators at Chapin High School.
But Melton said she could not necessarily recommend returning to the district’s current four-day-a-week schedule after school resumes next year. She said the update she was preparing for the next board meeting in two weeks “is not the update I was hoping to give you two weeks ago.”
Without a change, Melton said she feared a rise in absenteeism among teachers, and that some will leave the profession entirely.
But after a three-hour discussion, board member Ed White made a motion to adjourn the meeting, saying he believed the meeting was failing to reach any consensus to move forward. He was supported by Gardner, Catherine Huddle and Ken Loveless.
“When you’ve got a school board that wants to do the superintendent’s job, it’s a mess,” said White,who earlier had proposed authorizing Melton to take whatever steps she thought necessary. That motion failed.
Hammond said she would have supported a more scaled down version of Melton’s proposal if it focused only on high school students, and was surprised by White’s motion to adjourn. But she also said she believes other members of the board will need more convincing to move forward with changing the reopening plan. She opposed the motion to adjourn, along with Rebecca Blackburn Hines and Matt Hogan.
“I’m disappointed we didn’t reach an agreement,” Hammond said. “But we covered a lot of ground, and I hope that the teachers know we heard their cry.”
Board members did take approve one action Monday. They directed the administration to put together a public, weekly updated dashboard tracking COVID-19 cases at individual schools. Other school districts have rolled out similar trackers on their district websites, in addition to the updates put out by DHEC.
As of Nov. 24, 339 of the district’s high and middle school students were in quarantine, up more than 200% from the 105 on Nov. 12. Fifteen teachers and staff in middle and high schools were in quarantine on Nov. 24, a four-week high, while 32 staff members were out at the elementary and intermediate level. Close to 200 teachers were absent for various reasons across the district at the same time.
Melton said the district currently has confirmed COVID-19 cases at 22 of 23 schools. That’s up from 18 schools last week with at least one case of COVID-19 among students or faculty members, according to the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. Those numbers don’t take into account the number of students, teachers or staff members who don’t have a positive diagnosis, but have been forced to quarantine after a COVID-19 exposure.
Hines said she was among several board members who have been “bombarded” with emails about large numbers of students and teachers being quarantined.
Her own daughter has struggled with learning remotely, Hines said, but “for kids to be successful (in school), there need to be teachers there.”
All schools in the district resumed in-person classes four days a week on Nov. 9, with high schools moving off the hybrid model last.
Just two weeks ago, the Lexington-Richland 5 school board voted for a full return to in-person classes five days a week beginning Feb. 1.
Students in the district currently attend school on a four-day-a-week schedule, and learning online on the fifth day while cleaning staff sanitize the district’s 22 schools.
The school board vote on Nov. 16 came after calls from many parents for a quick return to face-to-face instruction in the Chapin and Irmo areas, and a school board election that turned in part on how the district should handle re-entry. The new members elected in November largely support a quick return to face-to-face instruction.
The district has changed its re-entry plans before. On July 13, Melton announced plans for a full return on schedule for the fall semester with social distancing measures in place, but reversed course 10 days later, pushing back the beginning of the semester by almost a month and putting students on a hybrid plan.
Students instead started the year spending only two days a week in class and taking online lessons the rest of the time. They later moved to a four day a week schedule, rolling out the new schedule from the lower grades to the higher ones.
This story was originally published December 1, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Rise in COVID-19 could leave schools too short-staffed, Midlands superintendent warns."
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