Back-to-School? You Go First.

To me, reopening schools and deciding on the best course of action to do so is a matter of trust.

I’ve been out of my classrooms for 5 years now and my granddaughter is not old enough that her parents need to make a decision about this Fall over the next weeks. So I admittedly do not have any skin in this fight, but I do know limburger cheese when I smell it. And the insistence by some in leadership positions that school buildings reopen for the Fall academic year is pretty ripe.

The New York Times editorial staff posted a piece today (“Reopening Schools Will Be a Huge Undertaking”) outlining many reasons why children need to be back in schools: socialization, food insecurity, social emotional health, and academics. I don’t think there is an educator that I know who would disagree that the overnight switch from face-to-face learning to distance learning has been “less than”. The sudden shutdown of school buildings and the resulting switch to distance learning will have impact on students - and educators - for many years.

The plans for returning to school buildings in the Fall that I have been reading and the advisories coming from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) appear to me to be just trying to accommodate a face-to-face return to school buildings happen without any significant guarantees of funding. We’ve all experienced the impact that those advisories can have. Theoretical plans and mandates coming from state and federal Departments of Education often come without any consideration of the realities in terms of costs.

Here’s an example from our very own Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). In the past weeks, DESE published guidance on classroom configuration which has been thoroughly analyzed by Blogger and Worcester School Committee Member Tracy Novick. I have to ask this: Was this entire document some undergraduate education major’s project? There are so many things wrong with this DESE “guidance”: 3 feet distance chair to chair in place of CDC recommended 6 feet; teacher in the front, removing all other classroom furniture but the student and teacher desks and chairs.

Loading 24 to 30+ students into building spaces where air quality has been an issue will also make safely reopening school buildings difficult if not impossible. For many school districts, including Lowell, carving out the suggested additional space needed to accommodate social distancing and student/faculty safety will be a very big factor. Where will the space be found and how will it be paid for? Nearly every nook and cranny in Lowell’s school buildings (K-8) is being used as learning space already. There is no more space available to socially-distance the nearly 15,000 students in Lowell Public Schools, no new school buildings, and even if there were, there is no money to pay for more space.

While the Times editorial suggests decision-makers think “outside the box” and consider instructional spaces created under tents in outdoor settings, that idea will only go so far if the virus lingers through the colder, winter months, as one might expect it will. However, more importantly, funding necessary for all of these out-of-the-box ideas will still need to materialize and the very same Federal government insisting that schools reopen buildings in the Fall is seemingly unwilling to back that up. At this writing, the Heroes Act, an act that might just provide some desperately needed monetary help is languishing in the US Senate.

Schools in Massachusetts have long been underfunded, and that is particularly true in the Gateway cities like Lowell. At the time the Student Opportunity Act was signed and passed last November, Lowell Public Schools was operating with $50 Million less as the Commonwealth has not kept the promise of funding public schools for more than 25 years. Schools systems like Lowell have cut and cut and cut until there really is no more to cut. If the Commonwealth cannot adequately fund schools under “normal” circumstances, what makes anyone trust that the extraordinary measures needed to keep students and faculty safe for a building reopening in Fall 2020 will end well?

From where I observe, this really does all boil down to trust, which has historically been tested and unearned. Locally, educators and parents see plans being made that put student and staff lives in danger. State and federal leaders are insisting that school buildings reopen as usual and yet there appears to be an unwillingness to dedicate adequate and appropriate funding and resources to do so safely. And that feels a lot like business as usual in the field of education.

In other words:

Many teachers, and parents, are wary of reopening schools. They fear policymakers will cut corners and safety measures will prove inadequate. These fears have been reinforced by the president and by Vice President Mike Pence, both of whom have publicly encouraged corner-cutting. Such a strategy is willfully shortsighted. It might succeed in reopening schools for a time, but it is not likely to allow schools to remain open.

As my grandfather used to tell me, “you reap what you sow.” That certainly seems applicable now - because of the history of underfunding schools and the history of unfunded mandates, parents and educators do not trust that buildings can reopen safely. They are pushing back on this idea and rightly so. Corner cutting will yield deadly results.