How To "Reopen" Schools This Fall/Accept The Inevitability of Remote Learning

Decisions around the opening of schools have been passed to the hyper-local level. Thousands of districts, with access to the same news and information as the general public, with varying percentages of the same feedback from staff and parents (i.e. the full spectrum of comfort at every school), are being tasked with creating re-opening plans.

I am grateful to be on the small COVID team for the Noble Network of Charter Schools (a network of public charter schools serving 12,000+ students in Chicago) that has met at regularly-scheduled and spontaneously-needed times since mid-March when we, alongside the rest of Chicago Public Schools, went remote. These opinions aren’t that of Noble, nor predictive of what Noble will do (it's a complex ever-changing eco-system ahead), but rather my current reflections as a parent of three kids, former teacher, former principal, and current HR professional in the thick of making the best decisions we can alongside thousands of other districts and millions of parents. And, with new information on COVID and watching others succeed or fail, clearly, my opinions will shift. However, as of mid-July, and the information I have, here are my reflections on what’s happening and the path we must take (or accept)…

The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that schools and districts are being forced to ask the wrong question. That wrong question is this:

• What’s the best approach that gets the vast majority of kids safely back in schools?

To me, that question is a fair question to ask, but only after you can answer these questions in the affirmative:

• Are you comfortable with a student, or their family, or away-from-school network dying as a result of COVID exposure in your school building (or en route to/from your building)?
• Are you comfortable with a staff member, or their family, or away-from-school network dying as a result of COVID exposure in your school building (or en route to/from your building)?

If you answer yes to those questions, then, yes, we’re back to the question of how to maximize students and staff in buildings as safely as we can.

This isn’t meant to be hyperbolic for effect. If students and staff are given a choice to attend or the collective national solution to COVID is herd immunity, then there are perfectly reasonable and moral ways to answer “yes” to those questions.

However, there is no collectively-shared strategy for ending COVID in the US (and certainly not one involving herd immunity); students with working parents* may not have a choice but to come back to a school building; and a large percentage of teachers and staff will be needed in buildings effectively eliminating the ability to provide choice to teachers and staff.

I see plans to bring the maximum number of students back as an act of futility primarily because districts, teachers, and staff aren’t comfortable letting students, staff, or those related to them die. And, clearly, that’s a good thing.

However, it means that every reopening plan that brings students back to school buildings that I have seen will end in schools re-closing quickly. Each time there is an emergence of symptoms of COVID or a positive test for COVID, shut down protocol emerges. When a person positive for COVID is learned to have been in a building, schools are disinfected, students and staff are informed of possible contact, and remote learning kicks in for a certain number of days for a certain percent of staff and students. This sequence of open-and-close will occur even before we enter the flu and cold season where false symptoms will run rampant and exacerbate this pattern.

The inevitability of this happening occurs because each student and staff member brings with them their route to school, the people they were with at home, the places they attended while out of school, and the networks of each of those points of contact as well. The chain of contact represented in a school on any given day will be an almost immeasurable representation of a broad community that is mathematically guaranteed to involve someone with COVID in virtually all parts of the US.

There are four compelling reasons that I’ve seen driving the urgency to keep trying to answer the question of how to reopen schools with the maximum number of students as nostalgically close to pre-pandemic as possible:

1. Economic: A failing economy leads to worse health outcomes; our economy requires a workforce; a high percentage of our workforce needs schools to affordably/logistically go to work
2. Socialization: Kids need socialization; the impact of low socialization is harmful; given the extremely low % chance of a kid dying from COVID and the known need for socialization for the health of kids it’s a worthy health risk
3. Students In Most Need: There are specific students, whether spelled out in an IEP or a student without consistent at-home living conditions, that licensed professionals would agree are best served in-person
4. Learning is Optimized In-Person: Remote learning isn’t as effective as in-person teaching; lost learning is harmful

Whether you’re compelled by the economic, the more emotional-appeal side of specific students, or maximized learning, most people can sympathize with one of those arguments.

So, instead of asking:

• What’s the best approach that gets the vast majority of kids safely back in schools?

We should be asking:

• How do we safely and optimally provide for the social, emotional, and learning needs of students while acknowledging the economic need to have parents back in the workforce?

I think there are variations on the how, and certainly, community-specific variations on the percentages and subsequent resources needed, but here are the core solutions to that question as I see it:

• Remote Learning For All Who Can: For any family that can provide at-home instruction and remain employed, remote learning should be the exclusive form of learning
• Home-School Bubbles: It should be recommended that remote-learning families create small home-school bubbles/pods comprised of a few families that support both the socialization of students and reduce the remote-learning burden on remote-working parents. I think of it like an at-home one-room school-house where kids still see their friends just in small (trusted) bubbles/pods and parents divide the learning support and supervision
• School As Safe Supervision Hubs: Schools should staff toward providing supervision where parents are in-need of a free safe place for their child to learn while parents are at work. This acknowledges the economic needs of our country, is more feasible to staff (i.e. doesn’t require forcing licensed teachers into buildings against their comfort), and allows maximum safety within the physical space of a building with reduced numbers of students at school
• In-Person Direct Service: Where agreed by licensed professionals as absolutely necessary, provide at-school or in-home direct support for the most in-need students by service providers (special educators, occupational therapists, psychologists, nurses, etc.)
• Collectively Fund Remote Learning: Public and private dollars focus financial efforts on creating the best remote learning resources and infrastructure possible to maintain, ideally improve, student learning outcomes
• Rely on Families, Communities, and the Market: Rely on families, communities, and the market to supplement learning, socialization, and other supports where schools aren’t sufficient. This already happens, it’s just an acknowledgment that schools don’t have to be the solve-all hubs; we’ll all respond and support our kids whether through love or market forces.

Of major downside in thousands of localized decisions happening with regard to school re-opening is that there aren’t broader policy supports in place. Historically, in wartime situations, we recognize the need for temporary policy solutions to support the saving of lives or national infrastructural needs. And, though (and not really relevant) I’m typically a strong proponent of localized decision, in moments of war (and now pandemic), certain supports are needed and are only able to be provided at levels well above the school or district level. Among a few key supports I see that could bolster this plan include:

• Return to Work Labor Policy: Employers across the country may continue to expand the non-essential staff being asked to return to work. In doing so, this will further constrain schools as the number of students needing a physical school building will increase. By creating a shared definition with temporary labor policy that defines duties that truly require a return to work we can increase the number of households setup for remote learning — saving space for the children of essential workers.
• Sick Time Policy/Funding. Sick workers need to stay at home. However, employees who are sick are coming into work out of necessity (as shown in most major outbreaks in the meat industry). Until employers have the funds and employees have the opportunity to take sick time, we’ll continue to have people come to work while sick out of financial necessity. Setting up temporary policy and funding will control the spread of COVID.
• Targeted Funding Increases for School Staffing. Financial support that allows for extra staffing or increased pay for school-based staff can allow teachers to focus on remote learning over supervision and give schools the resources to staff without mandating staff return to work.
• Targeted Funding For Remote Learning. We should aim to see the same collective work happening in pursuit of a vaccine in the medical and science community happening in K-12 education. The more targeted funding resources we’re able to provide toward a high-quality remote learning infrastructure (curriculum and home technology) the more likely learning outcomes improve. Like a vaccine, we’re a long way off from over-funding this still.

The proposed approach to re-opening schools can definitely happen in the absence of the above policy supports; these policy and funding improvements would simply maximize our ability to teach students remotely.

Without a cure to COVID, there are only two outcomes ahead that I see:

1. Schools open with local decision-makers creating hybrid-plans that result in students still spending a significant amount of time learning remotely both by hybrid-design and repeated closures; the circle of in-person to remote repeats itself repeatedly or ends because of a full shutdown based on loss of lives as a result of the hybrid model bringing together exponential contact networks.
2. We collectively agree on a remote-learning infrastructure and accept it’s not ideal but there are ways to make it better given the inevitability of it; by focusing our collective energy on remote learning across broader communities, we can have strategic cohesive policy and funding support for the shared approach to learning.

Clearly, I believe remote learning is inevitable, there’s just one path that gets us there faster and more effectively. There is a significant opportunity cost to constant adjustments and trying to force the nostalgic win of trying to get as many students as close to a setting as we saw before. Rather than committing to a hybrid that’ll inevitably lead to regular change and likely remote learning, let’s pool our collective resources and question-answering behind a conscientious approach to majority remote learning.

*I use “parents” for simplicity but recognize how unique guardianship and households are for students