Preparing for a Safe Fall Reopening
EDIT: Please see my mid-August newsletter for updated safety and quarantine protocols. If you haven’t done so you can subscribe to the 3rd District Newsletter here.
When Richmond Public Schools shifted to virtual learning in the spring of 2020, no one imagined it would be so long before we reopened in person. I write this in summer of 2021, which is a deeply conflicted moment. The vaccine is more widely available than ever before. The Delta variant is spreading. Despite widespread advocacy in Virginia and nationally, policy failures ranging from delayed unemployment benefits to lack of parental leave have challenged families to reimagine and restructure their lives without sufficient resources.
As is far too often the case, our public schools are left to address broader failures of our social safety net. In these contexts, our School Board acts as a body not solely tasked with governing education policy, but also public health policy. In truth: public education policy has always sat at the intersection of issues: transportation, health, infrastructure, facilities, curriculum, and more. As a governing body, our Board is tasked with ensuring administrative accountability for all of these issues. With that in mind, we need to take a careful look at our current reopening status, and track carefully what progress needs to be made before our return this fall.
In early 2020, then 2nd-District representative Scott Barlow and I recognized the magnitude of our district’s reopening challenges by recommending a standing update from RPS administration on preparation for full reopening in Fall of 2021. That standing update was to include a public-facing dashboard with clearly defined metrics for reopening and the current status of the district with regard to each metric. Since that time we’ve received regular updates on school facilities with an eye for public health metrics and safe return.
Our Current Reopening Status
As we track our current reopening status, we need to remember a few things:
First, our school district faces unique challenges at the start of the school year even in normal circumstances. Our aged school buildings often have emergency maintenance needs; we are often unable to fill all of the open bus driver positions; and our students move more frequently, which means we have to be prepared to quickly adjust school staffing and transportation routes to meet our students where they are at.
Second, the district will be navigating a lot of change this fall beyond our return to in-person learning. The district has adopted new start times; some communities will be adapting to new school buildings; many communities will be adapting to new bus routes as the result of rezoning. We have adopted a new science curriculum, and our math and reading curricula (new to the district last year) will be newly rolled out for in-classroom use.
Finally, while we face a lot of changes, reopening protocols for COVID have been well supported, and should be well-implemented. As a Board we have been discussing reopening since July of last year, and the district has received millions of dollars in federal funds to support preparation for reopening. Because our district remained virtual all of last year and because we deferred our discussion of year-round school to the next calendar year, we have had more time for reopening preparation than any district in our region, even beyond the original proposed timeline for reopening associated with a 2021 start to year-round learning.
Reopening constitutes a major challenge, but we should be ready. Let’s look at the data. Our August district-wide dashboard read as follows:
As you can see our progress is varied. Health and safety training for all custodians is completed, and hand sanitizer distribution is near complete. Air filtration for school busses is nearly 90% completed, whereas HEPA filtration units in our classrooms are installed in less than 30% district wide.
What does this look like in 3rd district schools?
The 3rd district’s progress varies somewhat, with particular need for work in our air filtration systems. Schools like Obama Elementary and John Marshall High School are both in need of work on their HVAC systems and HEPA filter installation, which have not yet begun. There’s no question: air filtration is the highest-priority point of intervention for an airborne pathogen. We need to see significant work done in ensuring clean air circulation for all of our schools before reopening occurs.
District-wide, our communication of protocols to our stakeholders is listed as “in-progress,” a status I hope will be completed as soon as possible. Accessibility of information is paramount as parents and workers alike prepare for the fall. I hear questions every day from parents and school workers about core policy considerations, particularly around our response process in the event of exposure. Under what circumstances will families be notified of confirmed cases on site? What policies govern exposure response for students who have siblings in other schools? How will RPS ensure compliance for its mask mandate? These questions must be answered, and both our return policies and our current dashboard must be made available in Spanish for RPS’s Spanish-speaking families.
Send us feedback!
As a district we need to continue to move forward on facilities preparation; we also need to answer core questions about our protocols for in-person learning this fall. As always, our Board sets policy; our administration carries it out. As your representative, I commit to tracking district accountability on all of these issues, and I invite all our constituents to submit their questions and concerns to me (or in the case of residents of other districts) their Board representative as we near reopening. For 3rd District residents I’m streamlining this process through the form linked here, where you can tell me about your priorities and needs, so that I can track those concerns to scale.
