COVID-19 closed America’s classrooms. How have Manatee County schools remained open?

As schools throughout America remain shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic, Manatee County schools have operated for the last six months with no closures — a testament to the ongoing safety measures, local leaders said.

However, as COVID-19 cases continue in the second semester, those same leaders are calling for vigilance and even greater measures to keep schools open through the 2020-21 school year, which ends in May.

“I am astounded by the number of states and the number of school districts across the country that haven’t even been open for a year,” said Scott Hopes, a school board member and an epidemiologist.

According to data compiled by Education Week, five states required schools to be open as of Friday. They were Florida, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas and West Virginia.

Four states — California, Delaware, Hawaii and New Mexico — were still under partial closures. In the remaining states, decisions about in-person learning were made on a local level.

Many school districts are looking to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for guidance to reopen — and keep open— their K-12 schools. The agency updated its guidance earlier this month, highlighting the importance of an in-person education.

“Schools are an important part of the infrastructure of communities, as they provide safe, supportive learning environments for students, employ teachers and other staff, and enable parents, guardians, and caregivers to work,” the CDC reported.

The report said schools should be the first to reopen and the last to close during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the ability to maintain open schools was complicated in areas with high community transmission, which includes Manatee County, according to the CDC criteria.

Protecting against community spread would require multiple layers of protection, including mask wearing, social distancing, hand-washing, contact tracing and regular cleaning on campus.

Many of the CDC-recommended safety measures have been in place since August, when Manatee County schools reopened, but some have become more difficult to maintain as more students return to campus, Hopes acknowledged.

He said it was important to keep following the current measures — and perhaps a few more.

KEEPING TABS ON COVID-19 IN SCHOOLS

As of Friday evening, the entire county recorded 30,892 cases and 570 deaths since the pandemic began.

In alignment with the CDC guidance, Manatee schools track the COVID-19 cases that infiltrate local campuses, along with the people who become exposed to those infected students and employees. An “exposure” is defined as close and prolonged contact (less than six feet for more than 15 minutes) with a positive COVID-19 case.

Both infected and exposed people are quarantined, helping to limit spread within schools. The district also encourages students and employees to stay home if they feel sick or have a COVID-19 test pending.

“International and domestic experiences have demonstrated that even when a school carefully coordinates, plans, and prepares for delivering in-person instruction, cases of COVID-19 may still occur,” the CDC reported.

In the first seven weeks of the current semester, district schools and offices identified 297 positive cases and at least 4,199 exposures to the infected people, quickly outpacing the previous semester.

In the last semester, there were 81 confirmed cases and 1,055 exposures during the first seven weeks of school.

HOW MANY CASES IS TOO MANY?

While those numbers may seem daunting, Hopes said they paled in comparison to cases in the broader community.

Most cases were starting outside of local schools before making their way onto campus, but if cases began to spread from classroom to classroom, schools would have to close down.

“Let’s just say 5% or 10% of your student population within a week period of time ended up becoming positive,” Hopes said. “That would be an indication of spread within the school, not just an isolated case coming in from the community.”

The school district, he said, was succeeding in its goal of protecting approximately 50,000 students and 7,000 employees, especially when most were back on campus for the second semester.

But now was not the time to ease restrictions, he continued. Schools are constantly guarding against COVID-19, keeping an eye on new variants of the novel coronavirus and awaiting the chance to immunize thousands of school employees.

A MIGHTIER MASK

Mask wearing is at the top of the CDC’s list of recommended safety measures, but not all masks are the same.

The School Board of Manatee County decided to continue its district-wide mask mandate in early February. The policy, which calls for a discussion every 90 days, will be reviewed again in late April.

In the meantime, Hopes said he would push for better masks to protect educators and bus drivers who work in close quarters with students every week. Any interested employee, he said, should have access to a KN95 mask — a step above cloth and disposable face coverings.

“KN95 masks may be preferable in some situations or for some people — especially for situations that require prolonged close contact with people who do not live in the same household, or for people who are at increased risk for severe illness from COVID-19,” the CDC reported.

Hopes said the mask mandate was keeping schools open, especially when social distancing — another top CDC recommendation — was becoming more difficult.

A KN95 mask would help to further protect district employees who worked on the front lines.

THE COST OF CLEAN AIR

The CDC also recommends a host of measures related to airflow and ventilation, but that was more complicated —and costly — than buying a new mask, Hopes continued.

“The ideal thing is to have a pretty high level of fresh air exchange,” he said. “It’s difficult in certain buildings because we just don’t have a lot of cross ventilation.”

“In most facilities, we don’t have the ability to open both sides of the building,” he explained. “You only have one door in a classroom. so even if you open a bunch of windows, you need that air to blow through.”

The solution, he said, was an $8 million to $10 million investment in air purifiers for every classroom and district office. Hopes said the school district requested more money from the CARES Act, though no update was available on Thursday.

“I’m just waiting for the Department of Education and the governor to give use the allocation,” he said. “We’re ready to move forward.”

‘EVERYONE NEEDS TO STAY VIGILANT’

Even with the measures currently in place, some educators remain nervous to do what they love, while others have completely left the profession.

The CDC recommends several options for high-risk employees, including older adults and anyone with underlying medical conditions. That could include working from home or modified job responsibilities.

Unfortunately, there were only so many off-site jobs available, said Pat Barber, longtime president of the local teachers union.

“The district was never able to provide enough positions for all high-risk employees,” Barber said. “They provided as many eLearning positions as they could. They’re not required to create a position under the ADA.”

“From this first day of school, we had many high-risk teachers who were back in the classroom or who took a leave or resigned from their positions because they did not feel safe,” she continued.

Motivated by a lack of technology, a struggle with digital classes, a lack of child care or a mix of all three, many families sent their online students back to school.

The migration gained even more traction after Florida’s education commissioner, Richard Corcoran, urged school districts to bring their struggling online students back to campus in November, Barber said.

More students meant less opportunity for social distancing, a key measure in the fight against COVID-19.

“I don’t believe there’s hardly anybody who can still socially distance,” Barber said. “I don’t have any empirical evidence of that, but I know anecdotally that teachers are feeling like they have a lot of kids in their classrooms.”

Fortunately, the school district had adequate cleaning supplies and masks, the “saving grace” in a district where most students were back on campus, Barber said.

According to data from late January, 84 percent of students — or 41,544 people — were learning in person.

“There’s not a perfect solution,” she said. “We’re dealing with so many people in our school system and everybody’s trying to do what’s best for kids and employees. Everyone needs to stay vigilant so we can continue to do what’s best for everybody.”

This story was originally published February 20, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "COVID-19 closed America’s classrooms. How have Manatee County schools remained open?."