As COVID-19 cases rise, Gov. McMaster pushes for face-to-face school option

S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster is continuing his push to convince K-12 schools to offer parents the option to send children back to schools in-person, five days per week.

“We can’t afford to keep schools closed. We can’t afford to have them closed as long as we have,” McMaster said during a Wednesday press conference.

“I do not have the authority to make the school districts (reopen),” McMaster said. “Had I had the authority, I would have done it a long time ago.”

McMaster’s push comes as coronavirus cases continue to increase both throughout the country and in South Carolina. Tuesday marked the fifth straight day where there were 2,000 or more confirmed COVID-19 cases in a day.

During the press Wednesday conference, S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control epidemiologist Linda Bell said the promise of vaccine trials “gives us great hope,” but “it’s going to take some time.”

“Our case numbers here in South Carolina have reached an unprecedented level,” Bell said, urging people to socially distance and wear masks.

Coronavirus has done more than disrupt classes and educational norms — it’s taken the lives of several Midlands teachers. Staci Blakley, a third-grade teacher at Carolina Springs Elementary school in Lexington 1, died from COVID-19 complications Saturday. In September, Demetria “Demi” Bannister, 28, a Windsor Elementary School teacher in Richland 2, also died from COVID-19 complications.

McMaster on Wednesday announced the results of a survey of 15 school district superintendents that showed parents, when given the option between five days per week of in-person classes and virtual-only classes, overwhelmingly chose in-person classes, according to the survey published Wednesday.

The survey polled superintendents of the 15 school districts in the state that offered face-to-face instruction five days per week as of Oct. 9. While these districts made up only 16% of K-12 students enrolled throughout the state, the districts were a mix of large and small and Upstate, Midlands and Lowcountry, according to the survey.

In July, McMaster publicly called for schools to offer parents the option of five days per week of in-person classes starting after Labor Day.

“We need to get children back in schools or we’re going to be paying the price for decades,” McMaster said Wednesday.

McMaster said the state has a surplus of personal protective equipment, something schools have not been requesting.

Returning to a full week of face-to-face classes would also help parents get back to work, McMaster said.

“Parents should not have to choose between their child and their jobs, but that is what the decision of the schools who have not gone to five-day in-person education are asking them to do,” McMaster said.

The trend of parents preferring in-person classes over virtual classes was especially pronounced among those whose students who had “individualized education plans,” which are designed with parents and school professionals to help students with special needs, according to the survey.

In only one of the 15 districts did more parents prefer to send their children to virtual-only school instead of in-person classes. That district was Kershaw County, a mid-sized district located in a county where the first community spread of coronavirus began earlier this year. Even there, 49% of parents still preferred to send their children to in-person classes, according to the survey.

The survey also found that school enrollments either stayed roughly in the same — as it did in eight of the 15 districts — or decreased slightly compared to last year’s numbers. None of the 15 districts saw a decrease of more than 5% enrollment.

The biggest issues with reopening schools were busing and transportation, a lack of equipment necessary for remote learning, poor internet access in rural areas, low teacher morale and conducting contact tracing, testing and quarantining in a timely and effective way, the survey said.

Three districts (the survey doesn’t say which) said the S.C. Department of Education did not give them clear or timely answers to questions they sent to the department, according to the survey.

The following school districts were surveyed:

• Abbeville

• Anderson 1

• Anderson 2

• Anderson 3

• Anderson 4

• Anderson 5

• Berkeley

• Florence 2

• Florence 5

• Greenwood 50

• Kershaw

• Laurens 56

• Oconee

• Pickens
• Saluda

This story was originally published December 9, 2020 at 2:43 PM.