Kelly Kenoyer
Sweet Home Public Schools is trapped in a tug of war between rising cases of COVID-19 and continually shifting state recommendations for schools re-opening, driven at least partially by the wildfires that ravaged the state in early September.
The coronavirus numbers are looking worse for Linn County and statewide: the week of Sept. 20 to 28 saw 55 new cases in the county, or 43.5 per 100,000. Schools cannot fully reopen until cases are below 10 per 100,000 for three weeks in a row, and the K-3 exception requires case rates below 30.
Although Sweet Home’s public schools remain closed, alongside other districts in Linn, the charter schools which chose to re-open for K-3 still have in-person classes, thanks to a shift in the stated requirements announced Sept. 24.
Jeff Tompkins, the principal of Sweet Home Charter School, said the announcement from the Oregon Department of Education that day that “the metrics are for opening, not closing.”
“We work on the recommendation of the health authority, and working with them, there have not been cases that directly impact our community and our school,” Tompkins said. “We are being proactive and precautious.”
The new numbers for the week of Sept. 27 to Oct. 3 again were above the metrics that allow for a school to open: there were 37.9 cases per 100,000. But Tompkins said the Oregon Department of Education is allowing the school to remain in-person.
“I’m on the call now with the state, and once you’re open the numbers to close are not the same as the numbers to open.” Instead, the meterics are related to community spread within the school itself: if there are two unrelated cases within the school, it is required to close, he said.
Tompkins is also in contact with Linn County Public Health, and “they have not made any recommendation for closure at this time,” he said.
In brief: the requirements for closing a school that is already open are not the same as the requirements to open a school that isn’t open already.
Charters that have already opened can stay open, even though schools that haven’t opened yet are now prohibited from doing so because of the rising case rates.
During the summer, Sweet Home Supt. Tom Yahraes committed to staying remote for all students for several weeks at the beginning of the year to make sure students wouldn’t be constantly shifting from in-person to distance learning.
That choice was partially because ODE had not clarified that a single week of high metrics would no longer force students back to their homes.
“I have been dismayed at the communication to from ODE on their decision making,” Yahraes said. “We are the key communicator for education in our communities, and yet I sometimes learn about things from the TV.”
For example, Yahraes notified families the week of Sept. 23 that the district was out of compliance on the metric of test positivity rates: Linn County had a positivity rate of 6.1%, and the district had to stay below 5% to reopen. A day or so later, ODE announced that positivity metric requirements were being waived for September because of the wildfires.
“I’ll give ODE a grade: they have not been proficient with their communication process and timing,” he said.
“It is a point of irritation,” he said, voice taut with anger. “When I’m given a set of guidelines, and I follow state, federal county laws, and something shifts or an application of that changes or they erase a provision or rules, and I’m not notified in advance that this is in the works.”
Chief Academic Officer Rachel Stucky gave ODE a bit more credit.
“I’m not trying to defend them, but I have a feeling that they’re just as exhausted from things constantly changing,” she said, noting that the science around the pandemic has been changing constantly since the virus is so new. She noted that early science said masks don’t work, while further studies have proven masks to be effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19.
“I believe they’re experiencing their own sense of disequilibrium coming from the national level,” she said of ODE.
A Sept. 21 ODE meeting shows that some of the decision making around the K-3 exception is still up in the air.
At the meeting, Scott Nine, Oregon’s assistant superintendent for education innovation and improvement, explained the recent shift and said, “The only questions on K-3 because of the number of students involved, is should there be a county case rate upper limit.”
“Right now that’s not a decision they want to make,” he added.
Although Yahraes appeared frustrated by the shifting sand beneath his feet, he said comprehensive distance learning is going well. His own son, a third-grader, proved that at the end of week two, he said.
“He kept track of the schedule, he zoomed, he answered questions, all by himself.”
although classes are still remote and will remain so for at least three weeks, the district has implemented a program of limited in-person instruction allowed by the state. Students can come to school for a maximum of two hours a day for in-person instruction.
The program is focused on English learners, those without internet access, special education students, and career and technical training classes, among other options like assessments.
Stucky said those in-person classes are already up and running.
“It has to be during certain windows of time and not, during core instruction. You wouldn’t want to pull a kid for supplemental when they’re trying to learn the foundations of reading,” she explained.
“We’re going to keep going and building until we can’t anymore. We run out of resources, we run out of space, we but we’re going to try and get as many kids in as we can,” she added.
Though the poor COVID numbers for the county are disappointing to school officials, Yahraes is looking on the bright side.
“The silver lining could be perhaps that that will have a strong distance learning program,” he said. “And we’ll be able to pivot much better if we have a volatile year: one week we make the provisions next week we don’t. And as long as we can shift to our distance learning program as a baseline foundational learning method, we’re going to be much better off.”
Yahaes hopes the schools can reopen to all students, but said that can’t happen until the metrics are down sufficiently in the county.
“The more we work together to follow the safety protocols of wearing a mask, social distancing, washing our hands, staying home when you know, you’re sick. We need to do those things to get our kids back in school.”
“The more as a community and as a region we do those things, the higher the probability is we can get our kids back in classroom.”