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In a little more than a month, elementary schools will reopen to some Henrico students who want to return in person.
By a 4-1 vote this evening, the Henrico School Board adopted a four-phased approach to a four-day in-person return for those students who choose it, while allowing other to continue learning virtually. Brookland District board member Kristi Kinsella was the lone dissenting vote.
Aside from one slight adjustment, the board followed the recommendation of Superintendent Amy Cashwell and its health committee in approving the plans, which will welcome back pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first-grade and second-grade students Nov. 30 – two weeks after the start of the second nine weeks – and third-, fourth- and fifth-graders Dec. 7.
Sixth- and ninth-grade students who select in-person learning would return to school Feb. 1 and 2, as a way to become accustomed to their new buildings, and then other middle school and high school grade levels would return Feb. 4.
The last day of in-person learning before winter break will be Dec. 18; Cashwell’s plan would have brought in-person students back Jan. 4, but the board agreed with a proposal from Three Chopt District board member Micky Ogburn that will delay that by one week – to mitigate the risk of spread after winter holiday gatherings.
Any students who want to continue learning virtually will be able to do so; they’ll follow the same schedules as their in-person counterparts, though the amount of instructional time will be reduced across the board, as Wednesdays become independent learning days (except for two hours of teacher-led instruction at the elementary school level).
School will look different for those who choose to return; students will sit no closer than three feet apart on school buses (which will carry at most 23 or 25 students, likely necessitating several round trips in many cases), and at the elementary school level they’ll spend most of the day wearing masks, seated at desks with plexiglass dividers around three sides, with a break only for recess, Superintendent Amy Cashwell told the board.
Cashwell seemed to indicate that there would be no guarantees that any students – those who remain virtual or those who attend in person – would have the same teachers once schools reopen.
And though she said that the school system’s human resources department would seek to work with individual requests from teachers who wanted to remain virtual – including providing more flexibility for those who live with people at higher-risk for COVID-19 – she said the situation “is really complex, and staffing challenges are significant.”
How many of those requests to remain virtual ultimately are granted will depend upon the results of a binding survey to families that school officials will distribute soon, asking whether they’ll send their students back or not. (Teachers with medical conditions themselves also have a variety of leave or accommodation options available to them.)
Some teachers will be required to teach in-person and virtual students at the same time; those who do so at the elementary level will receive a quarterly stipend of about $600, while secondary school teachers who do so will receive $125 per course per quarter, Henrico Schools Chief Financial Officer Chris Sorensen said. Elementary school teachers who are required to eat lunch with their students will receive stipends of $225 per quarter, he said.
School officials will host a virtual town hall meeting on Tuesday at 4 p.m. for employees and 6:30 p.m. for families to receive and answer questions about what the new plan will look like.
Results of a non-binding survey from earlier this month found that the four-day plan was the second-most popular among the 64% of families who responded, with about 57% saying their students would remain virtual in such a plan while 43% said theirs would attend in person.
Board members explain their votes
The board spent about 5 and-a-half hours at today’s meeting at the New Bridge auditorium on Nine Mile Road considering the plan presented by Cashwell and the board’s health committee for the second nine weeks and beyond. It heard specifics in department-by-department detail, then heard impassioned pleas from about 40 teachers, students and community members advocating for or against the in-person option, a slight majority of whom favored remaining fully virtual.
Hermitage High School science teacher Brent Halstead made arguably the most powerful impression during the public comment period, when he walked from the back of the room – where speaker microphones were located – to the School Board podium, took out a tape measure to measure six feet from Cashwell, then took his mask off and began to eat from a bag of snacks he had brought with him. As he did so, two deputies approached and several other officials stood to loudly implore him to put his mask back on.
His point: that if school officials were afraid of someone eating without a mask six feet away, teachers are justified feeling the same way. He was escorted out of the room to cheers.
His protest – and the responses of teachers in the crowd – drew admonishment later from Varina District board member Alicia Atkins.
“Sitting in this seat and watching HCPS staff find joy in watching an individual behave so dangerously is disturbing, and as an individual who really wants the best for our staff, it’s so counter-productive what happened here today,” she said.
Atkins said she voted for the plan only after being satisfied and seeing for herself that schools in her district were or would be prepared with sufficient personal protective equipment, updated HVAC systems and other mitigation efforts.
Tuckahoe District board member Marcie Shea described her challenge in deciding a course of action as a struggle between doing what she believed and doing what the majority of people in her district wanted.
Those two things “often the same, but today they don’t quite align,” she said. Many of the frequent calls for resumption of in-person learning have come from Tuckahoe, and Shea said her vote in favor of the plan was for them.
But she urged families countywide to weigh their options thoughtfully.
“As I heard my district this week, even the ones that are clamoring for parent choice, they also want teachers to have a choice,” Shea said. “The only way that’s going to happen in a truly meaningful way is if parents consider for themselves, Is returning to the building a want or a need for my child.”
In voting against the plan, Kinsella said she was doing so based upon feedback from the school leaders in her district, who felt that trying to bring students back as cases are rising and just after one holiday and before others would be a mistake.
“They always say, Ms. Kinsella, whatever they ask we’ll do it,” she said. “But how much more can we really ask?”
During the meeting, Kinsella floated the idea of delaying all in-person learning until Jan. 11 and said she would have supported that plan, but no other board members endorsed it.
Kinsella also said that she wished teachers would have had more flexibility to continue in virtual mode and knowing that some will have to decide between returning when they feel unsafe and resigning “breaks my heart.”
Ogburn said she hoped that people on both sides of the issue would use the decision as a time to cease angry comments.
“Do what’s right for your family and then move on,” she said. “I would just hope that we can move forward in a positive way.”
Board hears impassioned pleas from speakers
Every teacher who spoke at the meeting but one advocated for the continuation of virtual learning.
Highland Springs High School teacher Ryan Burgess, who has been a leader of a group of teachers and families advocating for that plan, told the board she didn’t trust students to follow all COVID guidelines.
“They’re kids – they do what kids do,” she said. “We should not place the burden of safety on them.”
Hermitage High School social studies teacher Dana Franson asked what would happen to teachers like herself, who live alone.
“Who’s going to take care of me when I get sick?” Franson said.
But other speakers pointed to other nearby school systems, private schools, child cares and CDC guidance to suggest that in-person learning already is happening and with few known outbreaks of COVID.
“Statistically speaking, there is more of a risk of us dying driving here today than from COVID,” one speaker said. “Keeping kids from learning face to face will lead to a generation of adults with long-lasting damage to their economic prosperity, economic justice and mental health.”
Critical care nurse Jennifer Farmer, responding to comments from some who have advocated for virtual learning as a way to ensure they don’t have to attend the funerals of any students, said that remaining in virtual mode wouldn’t prevent that.
“They reality is, you will – and [their deaths] will not be from COVID,” she said, but rather from suicide, abuse or other effects of isolation.
Parent Scott Sheldon suggested that officials should simply match up teachers who are willing to go back to school with students who want to go back and let all others remain virtual.
“This felt more like an opportunity than a problem,” he said.
Later, Shea said that general idea wasn’t as easy as it seemed, citing the fact that although 75% of employees reported in this month’s survey that they would return to school, most did so grudgingly.
“That survey did not reflect, necessarily, what the teachers wanted,” she said. “It reflected what they were willing to do to keep their job.”
Buses may make 2 or 3 trips to pick up, drop off students
As part of the plan, in some cases – such as with library, art, music and PE classes at the elementary school level and others at the secondary level for which there may be only one teacher – virtual and in-person students will learn together online.
Classrooms will be spaced to provide six feet of room from the mid-point of one desk to another. Students won’t attend any field trips or have any large group gatherings. Visitors will be allowed by appointment only.
Officials expect parents to conduct screenings of their children each day before they leave for school, and schools will conduct random temperature checks of staff members and students, Cashwell said.
Every school will have at least one electrostatic sprayer to disinfect areas – especially the isolation room for those suspected of having COVID – quickly; bus drivers also will use such sprayers as a way to quickly disinfect their buses, since some may have to make more trips than normal each day because they’ll be limited to 23 to 25 students per trip.
With a limited number of students permitted on a bus at one time, Cashwell said some buses might have to make two or three trips to pick up and return students.
The three nonprofits – the YMCA, Henrico Education Foundation and Henrico Police Athletic League – that are providing full-day child care for a total of about 650 students inside some Henrico schools will transition back to afterschool programs after Dec. 4.
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