Why CMS voted for all-online learning
Why CMS voted for all-online learning
Get ready to be home with the kids for the foreseeable future; 7-1 vote to keep classrooms empty
Today is Thursday, July 16, 2020, and we’re coming to you with A SPECIAL BONUS EDITION on last night’s big — and long — CMS board meeting.
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In glitch-filled online meeting, school board opts for fully online learning plan after a 2-week in-school ramp-up
Masked Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board members held an emergency meeting at Mallard Creek High School on Wednesday to decide the back-to-school plan for its 147,000 students.
by Cristina Bolling and Tony Mecia
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students will report to school buildings for just three or four days of socially distant orientation next month, then crack open their laptops and learn remotely from home for the foreseeable future.
In a 5 ½ hour emergency board meeting Wednesday night — plagued by technical snafus that enraged thousands of parents watching online — board members voted 7-1 with one abstention to adopt a plan that will give students face-to-face time with teachers for the first two weeks on a rotating basis to maintain social distancing.
That gives students a chance to meet their teachers, receive laptops and iron out any technical difficulties. By Aug. 31, all students will switch to remote learning until the school board decides it is safe to start returning students to the classroom. Parents can enroll their students in a fully-remote option if they don’t want to participate in the in-person orientation, school board members said.
Weighing the risks: Board members listened to a parade of medical experts tell them that children seem to be more resistant to the coronavirus and spread it less than adults, and that there are many social, emotional and health benefits to having kids in class. But the board’s majority said there are too many unknowns, that teachers would be overburdened and at risk and that the community needs more time to get the virus under control. [See board member quotes below]
They rejected an option that would have put students in class one week, followed by two weeks of remote learning.
The decision affects the parents of 147,000 CMS students, many of whom will have to continue to scramble for childcare.
Sean Strain, who represents District 6 in south Charlotte, was the lone “no” vote on the all-virtual plan. Rhonda Cheek, who represents District 1 in northern Mecklenburg County, abstained. Cheek had proposed a plan earlier in the evening calling for school buildings to open with social distancing, but that motion failed with only Cheek and Strain voting in favor of it.
On Tuesday, Gov. Roy Cooper told North Carolina counties that they could either enact a plan mixing online and in-person instruction, or a plan of all-online instruction.
At one point, as many as 7,500 people were watching Wednesday night’s marathon meeting on the district’s glitch-ridden Facebook page. The broadcast kept freezing during one of the most consequential CMS board meetings in recent memory:
11th-hour petitions and surveys: Tensions in Mecklenburg ran high among parents and teachers prior to Wednesday’s meeting, with school board members hearing from vocal members of both the return-to-classroom camp and those asking to keep schools closed to avoid spreading Covid-19.
Two petitions from CMS staff asking for the board to choose an all-remote learning plan drew more than 2,310 signatures less than 24 hours.
A survey of CMS employees released Wednesday showed that some 88% of the 12,000 who responded said they’d report in person if schools reopened. About 11% of employees who responded said they'd seek an alternative/remote job if schools reopen. There are about 19,000 employees in CMS.
Furloughs coming? Under the all-virtual plan, CMS might have to furlough as many as 2,100 hourly workers such as bus drivers and cafeteria personnel by the end of September. CMS staff said they would look for ways to keep those workers employed.
Doctors weigh in: During Wednesday’s meeting, school board members heard from several local health leaders, including Mecklenburg County Health Director Gibbie Harris and several top doctors from the Atrium and Novant health systems.
Harris ran through the current virus stats: The percent of Covid-19 tests coming back positive, an indicator of the spread and seriousness of the pandemic, has been hovering around 10% to 11%, she said — “It’s not good, we want it to be lower, but it’s been somewhat stable.”
Hospitalizations have been ticking up since May, Harris said, but it’s been “a slow rise, a steady rise. Our hospitals have been able to manage it to this point.” Both Novant and Atrium have said in recent days that they’re operating at 80% capacity and aren’t worried about being overrun with Covid-19 patients.
Several of the doctors who spoke to the board reported that children aren’t getting infected at nearly the rates of adults, and when they do, their symptoms are milder. Several said they planned to allow their own children to return to school buildings if given the chance. Nobody under age 20 in Mecklenburg County has died of Covid, according to county data.
Dr. Catherine Ohmstede, a pediatrician with Novant Health, told school board members Wednesday that of the 15,000 children under age 18 who have been tested for Covid-19 within the Novant system, 2,000 have tested positive. Only 10 have been admitted to the hospital, she said, and nine of those children went home quickly.
“Children are somehow being spared from this virus,” she said.
Dr. Gary Little, chief medical officer at Atrium Health, cautioned the board to remember that it is walking down an uncharted path.
“Where you start today is not where you will be in a few months. You will make decisions today … that you will have to reassess and be flexible and change,” he said.
In their own words
School board members explain their stances in comments at Wednesday’s meeting:
In favor of all-remote learning
Lenora Sanders Shipp, At-large: Err on the side of caution
“As I think about this plan, I think it’s very important that we are erring on the side of caution always and that safety comes first. We will look at data to drive our decisions as we move forward. It’s very important that children have an experience of that first day of school, the opening of school, and the process is so important. …
“Teachers understand that need to transition children back to school, back to the building. For the teachers, that will be a good way to begin to feel a sense of what it’s going to be like.”
Elyse Dashew, At-large: We need time to lower infection rate
“I don’t see this as forever remote. … We need time for the community to work together to lower the Covid infections. …
“It is certainly urgent that the city, the county, CMS, our partners in the towns, everyone in the community keep pushing on wearing the masks and the social distancing and following the commonsense public health rules to bring down the infection numbers to the point where we can safely return to our under-resourced schools … in a way that is safer than it is today.
“Our heath department depends upon it. Lives depend upon it. Jobs depend upon it. And education of our children depends upon it. So we need that to happen. We cannot wait forever for it to happen. It needs to happen as quickly as possible. But we’re just not there yet. That’s my sense of it.”
Jennifer De La Jara, At-large: Too many unknowns to return to class
“I also heard from our presenters tonight several unknowns — things that they weren’t able to confirm, because there are so many things about this virus that we don’t understand. I did also hear one doctor say in passing that the rates are going down in Europe ... I think that’s an interesting statement the way it was presented. Many folks say, ‘Europe is opening. Maybe we should be opening.’ Their rates are going down, and ours are not. It’s important that we keep that in mind because we are not in the same situation necessarily. …
“Dr. Little [one of the speakers] said one of the things they decided to focus on was the question of what are we going to stop doing so we can focus on other things. I thought that was really poignant, because I’m not sure of us asking our teachers to go back in with all of the uncertainties, and the lack of the robust program that they talked about. …
“The lack of proper PPE, the teaching that has to go on, what exactly are we going to ask our teachers to stop doing so that they can focus on everything else? I’m not sure that we will be able to do that.”
Thelma Byers-Bailey, District 2: Students will benefit from initial human contact
“I’m really positively impressed by the [remote plan with 3- or 4-day in-person orientation], with the opportunity for the kids who were otherwise getting lost. When we tried to go remote the last time, we lost track of people. This eliminates that. Everybody comes in and gets their new technology, and everybody is accounted for. We don’t have to go running down people in parking lots or whatever. They come to school, they get their new technology, they meet their teacher … When we do go the remote part, they are fully knowledgeable. …
“After the 31st, everybody is remote until we decide we don’t need to be remote any more.”
Ruby Jones, District 3: Teachers will be overburdened
“Forehead scanning. Hand sanitizing regularly. Spatial distancing. We’ll spend more time monitoring than we do teaching. We have to do extra partnering with parents, which for some communities is extremely difficult. Yes, my colleagues listened to some things, and some of us listened to other things. I listen to such things: So much we do not know about Covid.
“Our response plans, how tight are they? We need the time to get teachers more comfortable. Not just teachers — everybody is in a state of angst, questioning. We don’t know. If I recall, Superintendent Winston, pre-Covid, in those normal times, we had about a 70-teacher shortage. Where will we be if we delve right into that pre-Covid normal? Seventy teachers plus how many more? What does that mean on a real day-to-day basis? It means that we crowd students into classrooms. …
“So yes, fears when fears are based on genuine concern, I don’t even want to call them fears. I want to call them commonsense questioning and reluctance. There are things we need to do to make our employees feel safe. … I’m sorry CMS, we have not done that. We need the time to do that.”
Carol Sawyer, District 4: Too many questions, and CMS lacks PPE
“I think the most telling moment about our school safety and the conditions when when Ms. Dashew asked one of our guests if he would send his children to a school with a 30% infection rate in the surrounding community. There was not a quick ‘yes’ to that question. There was a rather pregnant pause and a noncommittal response. I think we have to deal with that. That is where I live and the district I represent. If someone who is generally in favor of reopening schools in person rapidly has that kind of reaction to the local conditions we face, that gives me pause. …
“We are not doling out fresh PPE throughout the day. We will not likely be able to provide a change of mask mid-day after lunch, which would be probably a better practice. I know that our facilities staff has been working for months to stockpile cleaning supplies of all sorts, but I also know that they are finding that some kinds of supplies are just not available. They may be available soon — things like sanitizing wipes, the kinds of things that would be a in a classroom for a teacher to wipe down a table or do a quick clean-up on a high-touch surface. We don’t have a stockpile of those. We need time to amass the equipment that we need to keep our students safe.. …
“Face-to-face unmasked is the way people learn. But that’s not where we are right now. I hope … that we can get there as quickly as we can. The CDC person that was here speaking the other day said if folks practice social distancing and masking religiously for six weeks, we could squash this. We have six weeks. Our community has six weeks to make sure that we can more safely open schools sooner, and that we won’t have to worry about unemployment gaps. It’s going to take a concerted community effort to do that.”
Margaret Marshall, District 5: We need more time to get organized
“We need some time to get teachers comfortable in the building. We need some time to get our remote learning working well. We need some time to for teachers and staff to figure out how we can successfully get students back in the building.
“Most importantly, we need some time for our community to do the work of getting this virus under control. …
“This is a community issue. We want to get back in person. And this remote learning for me … it’s not an indefinite approach. This is a posture on trying to figure out how we can get folks back in our buildings. There are way more questions than answers, and we are acknowledging that right now.
“We need some more time, and that’s what we are looking to do with this program, to get our remote learning tight, to get people started well. And to get people started well, we’re going to need some in-person orientation. I think that is reasonable. …
“I’m just asking for time, but not an indefinite amount of time. I want us to get students back in the building. We just need to figure this out a little bit better and give us more time.”
Opposed to all-remote learning
Sean Strain, District 6: Risks of children at home are too great
“Our K-12 services, I certainly deem as essential services. We have seen essential services throughout the country layered on. There are other things that have been layered on, in terms of adding risk and exposure, in terms of the Covid virus, which we can argue are not essential services: restaurants, bars open at 1 a.m. I’m not sure those are essential services. School learning, I think we can agree, are essential services …
“I didn’t hear a single reason — not a risk, but a single reason — to go fully remote. We were asked time and again by the medical professionals to put kids in school — actually, to put their kids in school. Our team is on track. It’s on track for academics, and it’s on track for operations. The public health officials are confident, as we heard tonight, in the ability to manage this outbreak, with increasing concern regarding youth health issues, of being out of school and at home. They mentioned suicides, overdoses, child abuse. One of the doctors mentioned that the suicide rates are going to be tremendous in comparison to Covid, in terms of the youth population, if we don’t get them back in school.
“Our regional healthcare systems are prepared and available to serve. This risk is known and mitigated. The continued risk in escalating issues associated with our youth is actually being out of schools. It’s a very significant set of equity issues with the remote learning plan. … There is clear and broad agreement on the very significant incremental value of in-school learning. … As it stands, we don’t know when we are going to come out of this. There’s no metrics. We just discovered that in mid-September, we’re likely to furlough 2,100 personnel. We don’t have any other way to hang onto them. But it’s OK to put students and staff into school for two weeks… [interrupted by Elyse Dashew, discussion ensues].
“The point is it’s OK to send all our students and staff to school for two weeks, just not any longer. I don’t understand that at all.”
Abstained
Rhonda Cheek, District 1: Let’s follow the medical and health experts
“Based on the clinical data we heard tonight …. The question was point-blank asked, ‘Are we ready to open school?’ Our medical experts have said it is time to open. The time will not change over the next 18 months. … When I asked staff, I have had every person on our staff … all say we are ready to open schools on Aug. 17, should the board decide to do that. …
“We have our public health department saying we are OK to open schools. We have our medical experts here saying they will send their own children to schools if they open on Aug. 17.”
Loves me some internet (bonus CMS edition)
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