As COVID-19 and student failure soar, SC’s largest school district grapples with plan

As Greenville County leads the state and nation in COVID-19 cases and more students are failing classes than ever before, Greenville County Schools officials are trying to balance safety with achievement and are garnering criticism from all sides.

Some parents want school back in session full-time. Others say the school district promised to match attendance days with the spread of the virus.

Since October, the district has added in-person attendance days, beginning with full-time in elementary schools and a phased-in plan for middle schools that brought those students back full-time last week.

But high school was always the outlier. With bigger students and bigger classes, it was difficult to fit those students safely in their schools. The district’s decision to add more face-to-face days beginning next Tuesday for high school schedules caused an outcry from some parents who said their children will be exposed to unnecessary risk.

School board members said they have been inundated with emails and calls from parents and teachers, some in favor, some opposed

“You are trying to satisfy a lot of different people — thousands — and all have different risk tolerances,” board member Angie Mosely said during a board meeting Tuesday. She said she believes one of the problems is many people think exposure means infection, and that’s not the case.

Burke Royster, Greenville County Schools superintendent, said the district is still considering the rate of coronavirus spread in the community, but that concern has been mitigated because students and teachers can be protected by installing Plexiglass shields at every desk and workstation.

“School is safer than the community,” he said.

Face masks are mandatory in schools as opposed to the greater Greenville community, where a significant number of people refuse to wear them. The city of Greenville requires masks in many public spaces, but the county does not.

Since school began in the fall, high school students have attended in-person school two days a week and online the other three. They will now attend in-person four days a week on a staggered schedule, and one week each month will go three days. That represents 75% in-person attendance, but because of the staggered schedule, roughly half of the students will be in school at any one time.

Parent Katie Halstensgard said in an interview the county’s COVID-19 testing positivity rate at 40%, the district’s attendance plan goes against the common belief that people should stay home.

Halstensgrad said she taught theater for six years in Greenville County schools and still has friends who are teachers. They are worried about the risks, she said. She elected to enroll her kindergartner in virtual learning.

Some teachers elected to not come back in the fall, while others have quit during the year, school spokesman Tim Waller said. He did not have the precise numbers.

“Some were eligible to retire when COVID came along,” he said.

Others have underlying conditions or weakened immune systems or live with people who do, and they do not want to take the risk, he said.

The county has led the state in numbers of COVID-19 cases for most of the past two months, and last week the White House COVID-19 Task Force reported the Greenville metro area, which includes Anderson County, had the worst infection rate in the nation of communities of similar size.

To help protect students and teachers in classrooms, Royster said the district designed special shields and contracted with a company that makes Plexiglass products at a cost of $5 million, paid for by the state through CARES Act money. A demonstration room was set up in each school and at a district warehouse so people could see them before they were installed. Representatives from other school districts viewed them as well, he said.

Safety versus student success

Royster said safety is foremost in his mind. Student success comes next, and Greenville County students failed their first semester at a rate three times higher than normal. He expects the second semester to be similar.

School officials said the high failure rate was caused by students not handing in work on the days they are not in school.

Greenville County has 75,000 students, and 22,000 of them elected to attend virtually for the entire school year.

Greenville County schools have recorded more than 1,300 positive COVID-19 cases since school began, most of them among high school students. The number of teachers with positive tests is more than 800.

David Wood, who has two children in public school and another in a church preschool, has proposed shifting responsibility for attendance schedules to school-level administrators to allow them to work on an individual basis with parents.

Royster said in the school board meeting Tuesday that principals have that authority. In addition, each student can have 10 days of unexcused absences for the year.

Another idea Wood proposed to the district is to have all students attend two days in person, three virtually and to allow students who need to be in school for a particular reason to go full-time.

“This allows me to keep my family safe and help other families to keep going,” Wood said.

Some parents of special needs children or those who must work but have no child care have said they need full-time, in-person school.

A survey posted by parent Candace Eidson on SurveyMonkey shows most are unhappy with the current attendance plan and most favor Wood’s proposals.

Wood said he was heartened to see that board members in Tuesday’s meeting listened to the concerns of parents.

He said he and his fourth grader were in tears about having to go back to school Monday when his son learned Greenville County’s positivity rate was 40%. Wood kept his son home.

Halstensgard, whose petition asking for more transparency in the school district’s decision making has garnered more than 2,300 signatures from Greenville County residents and 4,000 overall, said the district’s attendance schedules do not match the messaging coming from medical professionals who are encouraging people to stay home.

She also said children are among the least likely to show symptoms and could expose any number of students and teachers without anyone suspecting.

“You can’t stop something if you don’t know where it is,” she said. “It is dangerous.”

Halstensgard also said she believes the issue is systemic. Parents should have better child care options. Standardized testing schedules should be adjusted.

“These children are surviving a global pandemic,” she said. “Maybe we could take a year off” for standardized testing.

The state Department of Education has asked the federal government to forgo state-mandated standardized testing this year, said Derek Phillips, public information director for the South Carolina Department of Education.

Phillips said it’s unlikely that they will hear from the U.S. Department of Education before the Biden presidential administration takes over.

Royster said the results of standardized tests are the least of his worries.

He said a concern has been staffing classrooms when a teacher is out. Greenville County is normally short on substitutes, and the pandemic has made it worse.

On Tuesday, about 300 teachers were out sick. Sometimes it is as many as 400, Royster said, and administrators from the district office have to be sent to staff classrooms.

During the school board meeting Tuesday, Royster said the positivity rates for students and teachers increased when school came back from holiday break but have decreased the past few days.

The board voted Tuesday to give all employees a $1,000 bonus to thank them for their work during a difficult time. Royster said the weight of the pandemic has been unyielding for all employees.

The overall cost to the district will be almost $12 million.

This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 9:11 AM.