SC students may not return to schools if COVID-19 spread doesn’t slow, official says

If coronavirus cases continue to rise as they have been for the last few weeks, K-12 students will not likely return to in-person education in the fall, a top official said Monday.

“If it continues on the same path we’re on right now it’s going to be extremely difficult for us to be able to go back face-to-face,” S.C. Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman said at a Monday press conference. “Hopefully we’ll see a change and things will start decreasing.”

There is no question being able to teach in-person is better — especially for young students — than being purely online, Spearman said. However, she said she will not risk student and teacher safety to meet that goal.

“Certainly, if the virus is running rampant, we’re not going to sacrifice the safety of our students and our teachers just to say ‘we’re going back to school,’” Spearman said. “We’re going to do it safely.”

Spearman made the remarks Monday as a statewide task force released its final report on how K-12 schools can best return students to the classroom in the fall while minimizing the spread of coronavirus.

The report was a culmination of ideas of the 13-member committee of educators dubbed AccelerateEd, which last met on Friday.

The soaring number of coronavirus cases has complicated the decisions schools must make on how best to reopen. Since S.C. has begun reopening, the number of new cases per day has continued to increase. Saturday, S.C. broke yet another record for most confirmed cases in a day, 1,157.

When S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster first canceled in-person schools in March — on March 15 — there were 28 known or confirmed cases of coronavirus in S.C., according to a previous article from The State. That day, there were nine new confirmed or suspected cases in S.C.

On April 22, when McMaster moved schooling online for the remainder of the school year there had been a total of 4,834 cases and 160 new cases that day.

As of Sunday, there have been more than 25,000 cases, with 907 being new cases as of Sunday.

This is a developing story. It will be updated.

This story was originally published June 22, 2020 at 3:57 PM.